![Around the Bloc: Romanian Cinema Feted Yet Again](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2016_24473.jpg)
Around the Bloc: Romanian Cinema Feted Yet Again
After more success for the country’s films at the Cannes Film Festival, talk again has turned to the prolonged run of quality that the country has managed for over a decade.
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After more success for the country’s films at the Cannes Film Festival, talk again has turned to the prolonged run of quality that the country has managed for over a decade.
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The paper is part of a study by the same author dealing with the earliest Bulgarian musical films produced by the authorities under communism. Made in 1970, Rangel Vulchanov’s musical based on a romantic-adventurous plot and abounding in songs and dances (music by Ivan Staykov, choreography by Bogdan Kovachev) was promoted by the media as the first Bulgarian musical feature film. Indeed, the impulse to flee the conventional everyday grind can be traced at all levels of the production: from the building of the storyline and the active plot to the cinematic rationalisation of individual episodes and scenes including songs, actor’s gesture and plasticity, various ensemble dances with a stylish choreographic solution. In a general sense though, the keyword flight predetermines entirely the behaviour of a couple of romantic characters in the context of the comically covert conflict between the individual and the society: their attempt at ‘purification’ through another kind of communication in the non-urban scenery on the banks of the Ropotamo. Ivan Staykov’s music was composed mainly in the vein of the festival Bulgarian pop songs of the 1960s and the 1970s, applying the principle of improvisational variations (especially in the parts of purely orchestral episodes or offscreen reminiscences, related to various situations. Furthermore, variation is the general compositional approach adopted in the cinematic rationalisation of the songs, where each further repetition relies not only on typical emotional nuances in the arrangement but also on respective changes in the meaning of the lyrics, rendering them the necessary association with certain screen representation. The most memorable in this respect are the variations of the leit- theme ‘Moments come unexpectedly...’ (lyrics by Rangel Vulchanov and Ivan Staykov), performing also the function of a musical envelope. The same is true of the love ballad/duet The Two Banks (lyrics by Marko Ganchev), which at the time topped the charts.
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The article focuses on the evolution of the vanguard movements in animation in some of the former Socialist countries. As early as the end of the 50s there emerge dark grotesque, eschatological predictions about the forth-coming downfall of humanity, graphic omens of spiritual and physical death that turn in to a specific form of protest against the dogmas of Socialist realism. This “poetry of pessimism” undergoes its asynchronous and non-linear development. And if in the case of Romania or the German Democratic Republic censorship quite efficiently hinders the emergence of extreme misanthropic, individualistic and vanguard-non-communicative films, in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria or Hungary it is precisely such films that periodically mark the upward trend of artistic achievement and strive to free the language of art from ideological limitations.
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The article The Eccentric Entropy of the style “Litvinova” is the first research in Bulgaria, dedicated to the only woman in the Russian cinema today who tore to pieces its muscularity. The text analyzes the specifics of her style through the different works of Renata Litvinova as a screenwriter, actress, producer and director.
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The first foreigner, who can film - Charles Nobel, arrives in Bulgaria in 1903. Since then foreign cinematographers periodically visit our country and in a documentary manner present different subjects or make films about nature and the people. Documentary events are more popular - war, upheavals, assaults, etc. In the study presented in details are the documentary films from Great Britain - The Lure of the East (1924), Murder Most Foul! and To be Publicly Executed! (1925) as well as the Bulgarian-German production In the Kingdom of Roses.
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Animation in itself contains in the most generalized way the main parameters of cinema as a space-time art. The present text examines the specifics of the animation image in juxtaposition between the characteristics of animation and chrono-photographic cinema, accenting on three major aspects: image, movement, space and time.
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Since there are today many attempts, mostly under the influence of women associations (some people name them with the old “feministic term”), to point out and prove that women are not only means of film and entertainment industry in general, but also means of “serious” informative TV shows and since there are no “serious topics and problems” on the screens, with this paper we want to show that the reason for that is neither the quantity of women journalists nor “lack of women” as associates in informative electronic media. On the contrary! The paper, with the research on numeral representation of women, above all at many faculties of journalism, points out (the authors’ intention is to prove) that the reason for the above mentioned is firstly exclusion of women as the owners of media companies, in fact there are almost no women in that area both in developed and in our so called “transition” period and space (of former Yugoslavia). Exclusion of women from the ownership structures in the period of the film and later radio and TV emergence, especially from the current – corporation media companies and using of women exclusively as “performers” of the entertainment-tabloid contents (info-tainment) brings them to the position of the “means” and not subject of media. Contemporary media “Copernican revolution” lies in the fact that all citizens with some knowledge and for our circumstances a little bit more expensive equipment can be and are journalists (an example of September 11) and they can get their own media (Internet TV through WEB). In that way they can gradually change the ownership structure of media or more concretely they can become SUBJECTS and not only the objects of media.
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The essay discusses mental and political thoughts in Smarzowski’s cinema and presents an analysis on Polish mentality, class differentiation and deconstruction of traditional symbols. The author begins his study by outlining three theories tied with political ideology of national identity. Next, he traces the struggle for national mentality in Smarzowski’s movies and through an account of how characters of varying films unite in search of ethnic roots. The article concludes with a discussion on Smarzowski’s thinking about collective memory.
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The purpose of the article is presentation Images of Women's in Polish Film Chronicle in the 1949–1953 years. This article is intended to present the following issues: 1) What role in the editorial team of Polish Film Chronicle was played by women? 2) How was the image of women shaped and evaluated in 1949–1953 in PFC? 3) What specific rituals were observed during the celebration of International Women’s Day between 1949–1953?
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Action is among the most cinematographic genres. Ever since the advent of cinema, the genre has developed rapidly, making now the highest-grossing films with the biggest budgets. Practically, action occurs in all commercial genres. The paper treats the trends in action movies and two elements in particular: fight and chase scenes. Three major trends are highlighted: of increasing dynamism, movement on the brink of perceptions and the ‘endless’ duration of action episodes and the way these are taken by the audiences.
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Film distribution and exhibition are undergoing a profound transformation after 1989. It’s not just about breaking the state’s monopoly and prioritising private capital as a form of ownership pertaining to the current economic organizations. The period was also characterized by a radical change in the structure of the film repertoire and a significant reduction in the number of operating theatres. The paper outlines the stages undergone by this transformation, the main trends typical of it, the way these processes reflect upon the relationship between Bulgarian film audiences and national film between the early 1990s and the mid-2010s.
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The process of making a feature film is an integral whole of several major and autonomous to a degree stages. The assumption of a working marketing communication of a feature film seeking its best placing on the market relies on an analysis of the marketing aspects as early as the process of filmmaking rather than solely of the completed product. The specifics of each of these stages offer various options for using marketing instruments, which shows in the overall result of the substantial improvement in its communicativeness compared with the previously targeted by the authors audiences.
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The paper treats the influence wielded by some twentieth-century art movements such as Romanticism, Symbolism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and Pop Art on the stylistics of animated film. A comparative analysis is made of certain paintings and prints and animated works, whose manner has been influenced by those artworks. The significance of plastic arts is underscored as a source of inspiration in the process of quest and invention of new devices in animated film.
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The paper explores the characteristics, the use, and the significance of le temps mort (dead time) as an element of contemporary film language. A major reference to the theoretical reasoning on this term is Gilles Deleuze’s views of image-time (l’image-temps) in film. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (2011) and Winter Sleep (2014); Michael Heneke’s Amour (2012); Lisandro Alonso’ Jauja (2014) and The Sinking of Sozopol (2014) by Bulgarian director Kostadin Bonev provide case studies of different uses of dead time. All works under consideration suggest a single main goal in the use of dead time in contemporary film: revealing the metaphysical dimensions to existence. Le temps mort proves to be a major cinematic tool used to generate spiritual contents, elements of the film language through which film provides evidence of its ability to be their mediator and by coding them into the very structure of the film too.
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The Filmovi Novoni (Film News) journal was one of the most successful and most popular specialised film periodicals under communism. Along with the Kinosizkustvo (Art of Motion Pictures) journal it was published by the Union of Bulgarian Filmmakers to meet specific professional and social needs in the field of film. Following 1989, the journal had to adapt to the changing business environment and began to tailor its form and content to meet the market requirements.
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The analysis of eleven films, which return to the story about Orpheus and Eurydice, proves universality of the myth and depicts its new cultural and symbolic contexts in different stages of development of cinematography. Adaptations, inspirations, and references to the tragedy of the ancient heroes reflect variable fashions and social realities in which their namesakes live, as well as form the starting point to reflection on the theme of love and death, meeting and loss, power of poetry, and widely understood artistic creativity. The author focuses on the range of styles, diversity of film conventions and interesting influences of the other works of an Orphic.
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