“Fill All My Holes”: Nymph()maniac’s Sadean Discourse

Author(s): Linda Badley / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Lars von Trier’s exploration of pornography as a cinematic language Nymph()maniac (2013, 2014) culminates his long-term fascination with the Marquis de Sade. This paper argues that, as in Sade, the film’s real provocation lies not in eroticism but in its discourse of excess, its desire or compulsion “to say everything.” A Gargantuan hybrid, a cross between cinema, novel, encyclopedia, and treatise, the film resembles anatomy, a genre favored by Sade’s greatest (and lengthiest) hits, as the heroine’s narrative/libidinal drive is matched by the abstruse digressions of her interlocutor. In Volume I, the body is dissected and reduced to its anatomical and functional materiality; Volume II, however, shifts to overt sadomasochism staged as melodrama whose affect is as typical of von Trier as it is different from Sade, bewildering, disturbing, and/or enraging even the most favorably disposed audiences.

Provocation by Space: Shocking Images of Forest in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist

Author(s): Vesna Dinić / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Rather than shocking images in the forest, this paper attempts to analyse the shocking images of the forest in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) and the role of space in creating an affection-image. In this film, von Trier seems to have reached a culmination of his aesthetics of sensation in the way Gilles Deleuze understands it. In contact with the spectator, as Deleuze suggests, the art should function as a force, intensity, as a sensation, that way addresing the nervous system rather than the brain. The French philosopher compared film image to canvas paintings that can communicate directly the vibration and resonance created by the movement. In Antichrist, von Trier painted the sensation of the forest on his film canvas, making it a legitimite character of the film. Instead of being just a backdrop, von Trier’s forest steps forward, occupying most of the screen space, but also overruning the two main characters of the film. Foreground and background therefore blend together, causing the shocking actions of the characters to be precieved mainly as an integral part of the overall horrific atmosphere, not carrying the value of shock on their own

Grace as Provocation to Politically Correct Dogville: Von Trier’s Challenge of the Canons of Society

Author(s): Marija Petrović / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

The aesthetics and poetics of Lars von Trier constantly provoke the audience. His movies are shifting the limits in visual arts and very often communicate with the audience through the effects of shock, whether targeted to aesthetic or moral values.In Dogville, Lars von Trier synthesizes formal elements of the movie and Brecht’s theory of the epic theatre. Destroying the existing aesthetic and visual canons, von Trier enables the spectator to experience new level of content reception.Through the experience of Grace, the main character, von Trier is pointing to the experience of man in today’s society. Grace points out the imperfections of the society, and therefore puts herself in the position of the victim of the subjective and objective violence (symbolical and systemic). Žižek says that opposing to all forms of violence – from physical (mass murder, terror) to ideological violence (racism, purring the violence, sexual discrimination) – is the main preoccupation of the dominant “tolerant liberal world view”. Focusing on the obvious violence you miss to notice objective violence, the one which is part of the society. Grace was an object of both subjective and objective violence without opposing, desiring to fit into the society which, paradoxically, had no grace for her.Von Trier provokes Dogville inhabitants through the character of good, hardworking and obedient Grace, and he destroys the ideal picture they had of themselves. Grace becomes their mirror of reality. In the character of Grace, this closed society gets the role of the Other (Lacan) and uses it as a mirror, to see itself.Using the relation between power and violence, von Trier points out to the imperfections and shallowness of the society which is relating to what we today call political correctness. The movie itself is von Trier’s provocation of the society and a call for rewieving the limits of the social and political correctness.

On the Fringes of the Male Hetero-Heterotopia in Von Trier’s “Depression Trilogy”

Author(s): Rafał Morusiewicz / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

While heterosexual sex turns to be the frequent driving force and the litmus test of characters’ actions in Lars Von Trier’s “Depression Trilogy”, it is rarely given subjectivity. At least part of the blame lies in the filmmaker’s tendency to draw female protagonists as emblems, burdened with the task of channeling oft-multi-layered yet still mostly symbolic meanings. Such is also the function of sex the female characters undertake and represent. Posited in a binary opposition to what Von Trier deems to be the dull idiocy of the bourgeois family life, their sexual activity is a destructive force, feeding them with an illusion of liberation, which irrevocably results in their failure. In Antichrist, She’s sexual activity, climaxing in her multilating both her and her husband’s sex organs, is closely connected to her son’s tragic death; it is through sex that She channels the trauma of her loss, negligence, and guilt. In Melancholia, Justine’s random fling, happening instead of the anticipated marital honeymoon sex, is paired with the ascending doom, both internal and external, which looms in the literal form of planet Melancholia, dancing the “dance of death” with the Earth. Even Nymphomaniac Part I and II, which revolves around Joe’s sex-driven narrative peripetia and quagmires, uses sex to portray the protagonist’s ultimate moral descent and degradation. Despite its binary-driven gloominess, the largely heteronormative and dualist sexual world reveals a few cracks, through which lurk potentialities of bliss. The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at the third-tier characters in the “Depression Trilogy,” the “jocks”, the “queens”, and the non-humans, breaking the sex narrative binarisms with the never fulfilled promises of sexual bliss.

Disturbing Representations in Cinema and the European Film Awards

Author(s): Jagoda Stamenković / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

In this paper, the attention was paid to the disturbing images representing aggressive and violent behavior in the movies awarded with the European Film Award. Among the winners of the EFA awards (1988-2014) is a greater number of representations of violent behavior and death, in various forms. Whether it is about the murder, self-punishment or legitimately imposed penalty, the representation of violence as an act of punishment, lethal, is in the focus of many European filmmakers – from Kieslowski, Amelio, fon Trier, Polanski, Haneke to Pawlikovski and others. The causes should be sought in turbulent times and events that have marked Europe in recent decades. Using the examples of European award-winning films, the paper deals with the phenomenon of violence and is representation on cinema, as an individual act but also as an act in which the State punishes the perpetrators, imposing the maximum sentence. Special emphasis was given to the two films that deal with violent deaths and result with death sentences handed down by the law as formal way of violent act: A short film about Killing by K. Kieslowski (1988) and Open Doors by G.Amelio (1991). It points also to the ethical-philosophical question of prescribing the death sentence. The violence is in function of deterrent and represents a method of social impact, as anticipatory but also as a corrective factor.

Film, fesztivál és más kellemetlenségek

Author(s): Noémi Kruppa / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 12/2012

A Filmtett idén ünnepelte 12. születésnapját, és szokásához híven megadta a módját: a 12. Filmtettfeszten nemcsak torta, hanem telt ház is volt. Ez bizonyítja, hogy a szervezõk már régi motorosok, és olyat tudnak kínálni, ami a célközönség nagy ré- sze számára egyébként elérhetetlen: friss, aktuális, magyar szerzõk mûveit, vagyis olyan filmeket, amelyeket nem fogsz torrenten megtalálni.

Przemoc „niemiecka”

Między istotą a wrażeniem

Author(s): Łukasz Musiał / Language(s): Polish Issue: 06/2013

The article opens by posing the question whether and to what extent one can speak of specifically “German” forms of violence. In a search for answers, selected aspects of German- language reflections on violence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are examined. An analysis of the major topics in contemporary German studies on violence (Gewaltforschung) is enriched with observations about two films by Michael Haneke – White Ribbon and Funny Games.

Kino zmutowane. Nowa estetyka komiksu filmowego na przykładzie "X-Men" Bryana Singera

Author(s): Tomasz Żaglewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 91/2015

Cinema and comics remained in the orbit of mutual interest for most of the 20 th century, and the effects of these mutual inspiration varied depending on the prevailing fashions of artistic and technological capabilities. This article aims to outline the historical evolution of film adaptations of comics, for which a pivotal moment came in 2000 with the premiere of Bryan Singer’s adaptation of the „X-Men”. The film, widely regarded as the symbolic beginning of the “golden” era of comic book film adaptations introduced into this specific film genre new narrative and aesthetic elements, the aftermath of which can be found in almost every contemporary film adaptation of a comic book story. Initiating a veristic trend, that is one that is as close as possible to the graphic and ideological comic book original, into the comic book related cinematography, „X-Men” prove to be an important point of reference for the analysis of later comic book adaptations, that are closer or more distant mutations of the ideas contained in Singer’s original film.

Kobieta, komunistka, filmowiec

Author(s): Piotr Zwierzchowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 91/2015

Monika Talarczyk-Gubała took another step toward filling still too many gaps in the history of Polish cinema. The protagonist of her new book „Wanda Jakubowska. Od nowa” [„Wanda Jakubowska. Afresh”] (2015) is the eponymous film director. Through her book, Talarczyk-Gubała made the film director both familiar and enigmatic, almost completely forgotten, and yet one of which we are constantly reminded. Her films are constantly watched, and yet the film reels are covered in dust, as nobody reaches for them. The book is an essay of the highest order. It takes up a rarely discussed topic, it adopts an original approach in its analysis, especially in view of research on Polish cinema, that is it considers Jakubowska’s work as an example of women’s cinematography, with all the consequences of this label. The book is wonderfully written and reads very well.

Mentalities and Historical (Re) Presentation in Aferim! by Radu Jude

Author(s): Ileana Barsan / Language(s): English Issue: 17/2016

This article attempts a thorough analysis of Radu Jude’s Aferim! in relation to the differences between historical representation and historical presentation, and also to study the relations between mentalities and language.

Usturoi: naive and picturesquenes

Author(s): Ion M. Tomuş / Language(s): English Issue: 17/2016

In this article, I intend to prove how Usturoi, directed by Lucian Alexandrescu and written by Radu Bazavan, is one of the most surprising movies that the Romanian industry produced after 1990, for many reasons: the documentary aspect of the film creates a special way for the audience to be connected to the fiction and the story being told. Also, the movie depicts a journey of initiation that I will analyze: the main characters run away from home in order to become actors, which has complex implications on their spiritual universe. The journey of initiation the two kids undertake will be explained as a desire not to evade, but to transform. I will also focus on how the movie deals with classic means of creating comedy and how the characters will develop in such a special environment as the Transylvanian village.

Revivre

Author(s): Florentina Heroiu / Language(s): French Issue: 17/2016

In the front line of Korean Cinema genre, Im Kwon-taek is a pathfinder and everlasting special filmmaker. He patterned his name in the big history of world cinema (Best Director Award at the 2002 Cannes International Film Festival & Golden Bear Award for his lifetime achievements at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005). Not in the the last, "Revivre" is the 102nd film of Im Kwon-taek. Im Kwon-taek is the most renowned Korean Film director who has profoundly explored the distinctiveness aesthetic of Korean Cinema endlessly with passion and investigational ardor.

La radiographie de trois images

Author(s): Corneliu Gheorghiță / Language(s): French Issue: 17/2016

I imagined a cinematographic story from a few images that come from my childhood. Any creative fiction is based on lived facts. The biographism is not the substance of a story but it is the main mechanism.

Ki volt Ausländer Saul?

Author(s): András Sólyom / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

Saul fia

Author(s): Diána Groó / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

Képek a pokol epicentrumából

Author(s): Júlia Vajda / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

Emberként még dönthetünk. Dorogi Katalin interjúja a Saul fia rendezőjével, Nemes Lászlóval

Author(s): Katalin Dorogi,László Nemes Jeles / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

Saul fia-napló 2.

Author(s): János Kőbányai / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

Saul fia-napló 4

Author(s): János Kőbányai / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

A Saul fia finn és svéd fogadtatása

Author(s): Juha Tynkkynen / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2016