The Balkans. Impressions
Te presented collection of photographs come from the album, The Balkans. Impressions (collective publication) 2012.
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Te presented collection of photographs come from the album, The Balkans. Impressions (collective publication) 2012.
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The films by the Polish director Patryk Vega: PitBull (2005), Pitbull. Nowe porządki (2016) and Pitbull. Niebezpieczne kobiety (2016) provoke a reflection on the devulgarization of the language spoken by movie characters. It appears that the profanities formulated by the protagonists can replace numerous verbs. While the analyzed material fits into the rouge cinema, most of the curse words used do not apply to the sphere of criminal offenses. Instead, the obscenities primarily describe everyday activities, such as moving around or eating. The verbal aggression featured in the movies of the Polish director thus puts the audience at risk of adopting bad language habits.
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Michelangelo Antonioni’s "Zabriskie Point"(1970) – a film about political and cultural unrest in the US in the late 1960s – not only was a commercial failure, but it was also completely destroyed by American (and not only American) critics. Masłoń tries to show that the allegedly simplified representation of American conflicts that the film is accused of showing, is in the "Zabriskie Point" a reflection of ahistorical pastoral ideology, professed by a large part of American society, which Antonioni not only presents, but also analyses. What is more, what critics took for naive and groundless idealization of youth counter-culture, if one looks closely at the film, turns out to be an unbiased and perceptive analysis of the mechanisms of their fantasy and their relationship with the virtual world created by the media.
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The theme of travel belongs to both the most universal in cultural texts en bloc, and those readily updated in American culture. There it is eagerly combined with categories of progress and emancipation, not only social but also individual. That is why characters in some way excluded or underprivileged often set off on the American road. The obviousness of the juxtaposition of journey and emancipation, however, is problematic in mainstream cinema dealing with the topic of racial relations from the 1950s, through the 1980s to the present day. In those three moments, Hollywood film-makers reached for these themes with greater intensity, placing them within distinctive film phenomena (e.g. civil rights cinema), as well as in travel topos.
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The article is devoted to narrative techniques used by Oliver Stone in "Natural Born Killers" (1994). The author describes how Stone undermines the convention of traditional road cinema and the scheme of initiation journey. In addition, Birkholc argues that the narrative of the film, full of intertextual, stylistic and genre references, is subjectively motivated by the “sensitivity” of the characters, which was shaped by neo-television. Stone uses a very special form of focalization, which is emphasizing the media mediation of the character’s consciousness and – thus – questioning the image of a free and independent subject. The contradictory strategy of the creator, trying to describe the fundamental cultural and social changes, makes the "Natural Born Killers" an extremely intriguing record of the ambivalent experience of American culture in the era of neo-television.
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The text is an attempt at the broadest possible approach to the issue of migration in film on the example of German cinema. To this end, the author introduces four analytical categories, within which she defines individual contexts of migratory cinema – that is, cinema created by artists with such experience and, although not necessarily, devoted to this subject – while assigning them specific film works. Fiuk calls these categories spaces, deriving the relevance of this term from the significance of various types of space for the migration phenomenon: territories, spheres, areas, fields, and then classifies them as: space of time, place, culture and medium. In addition, to characterize migration cinema in Germany, she uses the concepts of post-migration, trans-culturality and trans-nationality, referring to existing theories, but also proposing her own understanding of these terms.
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The article deals with two films, which are examples of contemporary diasporic cinema, whose characters come from countries with a Muslim religious tradition: from Turkey and Morocco. "The Great Journey" (2004) by Ismaël Ferroukhi and "The Edge of Heaven" (2007) by Fatih Akın are films about the intergenerational distance in diaspora families, and the formula of the road cinema used in them illustrates the attempt of the heroes to get closer to themselves thanks to a joint ("The Great Journey") or separate ("The Edge of Heaven") overcoming large spaces. In both of these films there is a characteristic theme of diasporic cinema, which is the myth of a glorious return. Both films also take the form of film parables whose significance is rooted in Islamic spirituality and beliefs. Whilst the two films are not religious in the strict sense, they strongly mythologise space: in a positive manner in the case of "The Great Journey" and negative in "The Edge of Heaven".
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Starting from James Clifford’s statement that ethnography is a product of travel experience and referring to the concept of Michael Taussig, who in his studies of South American tribes took into account the history of colonial conquest, the impact of missionary activities and the role of cultural borrowings, Loska proposes an analysis of the Colombian film "Embrace of the Serpent" ("El abrazo de la serpiente", 2015, directed by Ciro Guerra) in a post-colonial perspective. The author interprets this film as an attempt to critically consider the Amazon myth, that is the European fantasy created by explorers and travellers seeking Paradise Lost, but also as a story of disinheritance from tradition, loss of memory by indigenous people, reflection on the effects of colonial violence and hybridization (understood as a space where influences clash and languages mix).
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The author compares selected aspects of the work of two directors who are separated by a considerable time distance: Robert Flaherty and Wojciech Staroń. The American classic travelled with the camera to distant places to find the Other, to save from oblivion and to promote the values that the Other was a carrier of. Contemporary film-makers are increasingly travelling to distant areas to protect themselves and to find themselves again. Both authors refer to the utopia of the place. Like in an “educational” utopia, the most important goal of staying outside one’s own civilization circle seems to be education or re-education. Especially Staroń’s "Argentinian Lesson" inspires reflection on the educational aspect and dimension of films and documentaries of both directors, which refer to the search for authenticity, an aspiration present in Western culture since the Enlightenment.
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British architect and filmmaker Patrick Keiller is the author of the crictially acclaimed "Robinson Trilogy" ("London", "Robinson in Space", "Robinson in Ruins"). Keiller’s unique style of filmmaking intentionally depicts places that are nearly or altogether devoid of human presence and activity. They are sites in which events might take place, and the events are seen rather as possible contemporary myths. Keiller’s film essays explore the notions of place, the production of space, the workings of memory and the feeling of nostalgia. His investigation into the idea of “drifting”, understood as free association in space, reveals Keiller’s fascination with the “built environment” presented in an innovate filmic way, combining imagery, sound and editing. The paper concentrates on the first part of his trilogy, where the author addresses the “problem of London”.
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The author of the article proposes a look at Pavel Lungin’s "The Island" in terms of a film about a spiritual path realized as an internal disposition of man, independent of external circumstances. The main hero’s penitential pilgrimage, which is the result of conversion, does not take place physically, but takes place in his bodily and spiritual emptiness, prayer, directing his life towards God and towards other people. It is also a return pilgrimage to the hero’s experience of the overwhelming reality of divine immanence and transcendence as well as the reality of interpersonal relations. In parallel, the spiritual paths of the other protagonists of The Island lead to Anatoly, who changes their trajectory. The inner world and the metaphysical movement in the film are realized in its verbal layer, whereas the external world and physical movement in its image layer. It is also a film about existential travel, prompting philosophical reflection on human identity.
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An important figure in the work of Theodoros Angelopoulos is the refugee, and many of his characters have just such a status. Importantly however they consider themselves refugees regardless of the place in which they find themselves. They are condemned to travel, to an everlasting journey from place to place in search of home they covet so much. Angelopoulos emphasized that his films are also a search or a quest and that is why each of them is a journey. In his work this subject is largely related to the category of time. We should understand travel in the broadest sense possible, also as human life. The director devotes great attention to the passage of time, as evidenced by such films as "Eternity and a Day or Voyage to Cythera". The interrelation of time and the theme of travel seems to be one of the deepest intentions of the Greek artist. In the article, Cichoń attempts to interpret Angelopoulos’ films as specific journeys through time.
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The author attempts to analyse the film "Happy Together" (1997) by Wong Kar-wai in terms of auteur cinema, road movie, motifs of Chinese and Argentinian culture, and the political situation. The focus is on the journey of a pair of homosexual protagonists to Buenos Aires, where they try to save their relationship, but they break up and try to live separately, although their paths still cross. Argentina, that from the perspective of Hong Kong is highly exotic, overwhelms one with emptiness and gives rise to alienation, which each of the characters tries to overcome in their own way: by working and saving for the return ticket home, or by immersing and losing oneself in the night life. Although the film is set in Buenos Aires, there are many motifs derived from Chinese tradition, such as strong family ties or filial piety. Happy Together also has an atmosphere of imminent defeat that accompanied Hong Kong residents before July 1, 1997, when the British colony became once again a part of China.
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In the article the Queen phenomenon is considered through the prism of the film "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the exhibition "Notes on Fashion" at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, inspired by the famous text by Susan Sontag "Notes on Camp" from 1964. The author argues that Bryan Singer’s film, although quite superficial, is successful in one aspect: it shows well how the singer, Freddie Mercury, and the rest of the Queen achieved their level of show business camp. Giżycki also claims that Mercury, who while studying as Farrokh Bulsara at Ealing Art College in London in the 1960s, must have known Sontag’s text and shaped his image strategy according to its theses.
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The review deals with the textbook "Historia kina. Tom 4. Kino końca wieku" ["History of Cinema. Volume 4. Cinema of the End of the Century"] (2019) edited by Tadeusz Lubelski, Iwona Sowińska and Rafał Syska, which is a continuation of a series of textbooks on the history of cinema initiated with the volume on silent cinema. The author focuses both on the overall concept of the volume (covering the time range of the 1980s and 1990s), profiled primarily on national and author cinema, as well as on individual texts prepared by film scholars from several Polish and foreign research centres. Particular emphasis was placed on the implementation of the basic function associated with the textbook formula, that is the cognitive function, and on further strategies used by both the editors and individual authors dealing with the area of global cinematography of the end of the century.
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The review of Rafał Koschany’s book "Zamiast interpretacji. Między doświadczeniem kinematograficznym a rozumieniem filmu" ["Instead of Interpretation. Between Cinematographic Experience and the Understanding of Film"] (2017). The author of the book, starting his analysis with the classic essay by Susan Sontag "Against Interpretation" (1964), reflects on the status and methodology of interpretation procedures in contemporary humanities, and above all in film studies, in the face of the fundamental dilemma of the inadequacy of language tools to describe a phenomenon of audiovisual, ephemeral, non-material nature such as film. He reviews ideas and methodologies inspired by Barthes, Shusterman or Gumbrecht, which work “against”, “beside” or “instead of” interpretation. Koschany consciously shifts the focus to the reception of the work, emotions, affect and direct cinematographic experience.
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The article is a review of Jerzy Wójcik’s publication "Sztuka filmowa" ["Film Art"] (2017), consisting of transcripts of lectures given by this cinematographer to students of the University of Warsaw. The author draws attention to the uniqueness of the book, which is neither a guide on film production nor an academic textbook, but a kind of treatise on film art. Jerzy Wójcik describes individual elements of the film “language”, but each time he encapsulates them with philosophical and aesthetic reflection. The cinematographer focuses heavily on form and describes the mutual references of structural elements in the work, however he is far from the formalistic-structuralist orientation. As the author notes, the key for Wójcik is “optical gnosis”, an epiphany associated with the reception of a film work, expanding the internal life of the spectator. According to the author of the review, the cinematographer, by presenting a subjective vision of cinema that goes beyond academic discourse, extends filmlearning horizons, even if some of his ideas seem anachronistic. Most importantly, Wójcik shows the richness of cinema as a medium of stories about man.
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Starting from their basic role as elements of literary, cinematographic and theatrical description, light and shadow develop a close relation in all these three arts. They exceed their primary purpose and become involved in the process of narrating the events and setting the mise-en-scène. Even more, they are also engaged in changing the atmosphere, visualizing the images, modifying the reader’s or viewer’s attention, increasing or diminishing the dramatic intensity, conferring dynamic effect, accumulating meaning and revealing symbolic, philosophical, psychological and metaphysical significance to literary, cinematographic and theatrical artworks. Transferred from literature to cinematography and theatre, light and shadow have to adjust their means of expression so that to correspond to the specificity of each art. Taking after the techniques in the art of drawing, naming the tree-dimension perspective and chiaroscuro, light and shadow bring new aesthetic values to theatre and cinematography. Regarded as instruments of creating literary and visual metaphors, light and shadow highly influence the perception of the images outlined by them. The study aims to take into discussion the manner in which light and shadow may be employed as instruments of creating literary as well as visual metaphors. At the same time, it analyses the transposition of a metaphor generated by light and shadow from literature to cinematography and theatre as in Liviu Rebreanu’s “The Forest of the Hanged”.
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Review of: Ivana Peruško Vindakijević, Od Oktobra do otpora: Mit o sovjetsko-jugoslavenskom bratstvu u Hrvatskoj i Rusiji kroz književnost, karikaturu i film (1917. – 1991.). Zagreb: Fraktura. 2018. 380 str.
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The author of the present article focuses on the direct presence of nomenclature in the foreground in the Czech language, concentrated on ethnic stereotypes. He particularly addresses the issue of the title autostereotype in his nation's eyes, that is how the image of a Czech has been established notionally and linguistically in the excerpted examples, cited from native Czech literature and cinematography, where the analyzed Czech ethnonym is exposed.
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