Slowly Moving Bodies: Signs of Pictorialism in Aki Kaurismäki’s Films

Author(s): Jarmo Valkola / Language(s): English,Estonian Issue: 3/2015

Aki Kaurismäki is arguably the best-known Finnish filmmaker, owing largely to his feature films such as Crime and Punishment (Rikos ja rangaistus, Finland, 1983), Calamari Union (Finland, 1985), Shadows in Paradise (Varjoja paratiisissa, Finland, 1986), Hamlet Goes Business (Hamlet liikemaailmassa, Finland, 1987), Ariel (Finland, 1988), The Match Factory Girl (Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö, Finland, 1990), I Hired a Contract Killer (Finland/ Sweden, 1990), La vie de bohéme (Finland/France/ Sweden/Germany, 1992), Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana, Finland/Germany, 1994), Drifting Clouds (Kauas pilvet karkaavat, Finland, 1996), Juha (Finland, 1999), The Man Without a Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä, Finland, 2002), Lights in the Dusk (Laitakaupungin valot, Finland, 2006) and Le Havre (Finland/France, 2011). A large body of his work has been made in Finland, but also in countries like France and Great Britain. Besides feature films, he has also made documentaries and short films, as well as musical films with the group Leningrad Cowboys. In a broader context, Kaurismäki has a unique place in Finnish and international film history, as well as in media and communication culture. Kaurismäki’s cultural context includes elements that have been turned into national and transnational symbols of social communication and narrative interaction by his stylisation. The director’s cinematic strategy investigates and makes choices evoking a social understanding of characters that has special communicative value. Kaurismäki’s films have been scrutinised for over thirty years.

Folk Elements in Aleksei Balabanov’s Brat and Brat 2: A Morphological Analysis

Author(s): Emily Schuckman Matthews / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2015

The article uses Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale as a framework to illustrate the way in which Aleksei Balabanov masterfully creates a modern folk tale using classic motifs and structures in his 1997 film Brother (Brat) and its sequel Brother 2 (Brat 2, 2000). The paper argues that Brother and Brother 2 are post-Soviet retellings of classic tales of Russian folklore and that Danila is a modern hero, an unlikely savior of the Russian nation and the Russian soul. Danila’s journey is formulaic, predictable and straight forward, yet nevertheless makes for a powerfully new take on concepts of Russian nationalism and heroism.

Scandinavian Perspective: Towards a Baltic Film Industry

Author(s): Karlo Funk / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2015

review of: Scandinavian Perspective: Towards a Baltic Film Industry Jan Erik Holst (ed.), Stork Flying over Pinewood: Nordic-Baltic Film Cooperation 1989–2014, Oslo: Kom forlag, 2014, ISBN 978-8293-191-27-8, 158 pp.

Filmi audiovisuaalne keel

Author(s): Maarja Ojamaa / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2015

review of: Jarmo Valkola, Filmi audiovisuaalne keel [Audiovisual Language of Cinema], Tallinn: Varrak, 2015, ISBN: 978-9985-3- 1938-3, 487 pp.

Polemiki

Author(s): Katarzyna Smyczyńska,Marcin Mazurek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 5/2002

Content of Commentary: -Wirtualny podmiot Bukatmana – wprowadzenie -Bukatman' s Virtual Subject - Introduction -Świat według Bridget Jones: rozważania nad fenomenem znaczeniotwórczym femino-polo. -The World According to Bridget Jones: Reflections on the Semantically Productive Phenomenon of ‹‹Femino-Polo››

“Dokumentarne” tendencije u hrvatskom i svjetskom eksperimentalnom filmu

Author(s): Vanja Obad / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2014

What is an experimental documentary film? The histories of documentary film such as Erik Barnouw’s seminal Documentary: a History of the Non-fiction Film (1993) or Betsy A. McLane’s A New History of Documentary Film (2012) generally mention the avant-garde film movement as an important impetus for the development and formation of documentary film itself. However, little has been said about the documentary tendencies of the second film avant-garde, despite the filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage or Jonas Mekas (the latter explicitly calling his films diaries). From the opening example of Brakhage’s film Window Water Baby Moving (1959), which stands as a “hybrid” between documentary and experimental film, the paper deals with the specific film procedures that manipulate the “presumptive trace” (Noel Carroll), a direct optical-acoustic recording, without the film losing its “representative” relation to the world in front of the camera. Questions are primarily raised in the context of discussing the two main tendencies of experimental cinema: the poetic (Brakhage, Pansini, etc.) and the minimalist one (Gotovac, Warhol, Frampton, etc.).

Ideology and Film in the Spain of General Francisco Franco

Author(s): András Lénárt / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

Миграцията и ксенофобията във фокуса на екранните изкуства

Author(s): Boril Metchkov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2015

Parisul lui Matei Vișniec

Author(s): Cristina Scarlat / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 21/2016

The Paris of Matei Vișniec is one of nostalgia, of the daily street show, of the joy to live in a horizon where past and present, story and history go together, in a harmonious, lively, coloured manner. The documentary made by the Romanian Television (TVR) Iași, in 2015, represents another touching page, signed by another great Romanian who settled down in Paris. Cioran, Ionesco, Eliade, Tzara, Brâncuși breathed there and looked there for their calm, their freedom, their fulfilment. They stood out in a quite significant way and fulfilled themselves, becoming voices who made themselves heard beyond France’s borders. And Romania’s as well! They signed pages of glorious artistic revelations, which seemed as natural as possible, parts of the universal cultural life, turning thus into undeniable trademarks and symbols. Matei Vișniec, together with George Banu, come to join this list of illustrious ones, in a natural, but also abundant, full and bright way. To the applauses after the shows we add the applauses of thoughts and those of words. Just like the TVR documentary does.

The Paris of Matei Vișniec

Author(s): Cristina Scarlat / Language(s): English Issue: 21/2016

The Paris of Matei Vișniec is one of nostalgia, of the daily street show, of the joy to live in a horizon where past and present, story and history go together, in a harmonious, lively, coloured manner. The documentary made by the Romanian Television (TVR) Iași, in 2015, represents another touching page, signed by another great Romanian who settled down in Paris. Cioran, Ionesco, Eliade, Tzara, Brâncuși breathed there and looked there for their calm, their freedom, their fulfilment. They stood out in a quite significant way and fulfilled themselves, becoming voices who made themselves heard beyond France’s borders. And Romania’s as well! They signed pages of glorious artistic revelations, which seemed as natural as possible, parts of the universal cultural life, turning thus into undeniable trademarks and symbols. Matei Vișniec, together with George Banu, come to join this list of illustrious ones, in a natural, but also abundant, full and bright way. To the applauses after the shows we add the applauses of thoughts and those of words. Just like the TVR documentary does.

Questions of transnational cinema: the Baltic case from culture to branding

Author(s): Giuseppe Raudino / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Although Baltic Cinema is nowadays acclaimed as an industry full of great potential, its international success is still dependent on – and limited by – some factors that are worth being explored. It is undeniable that huge efforts have been made in the past years with regards of cooperation beyond the national borders of the involved countries, promoting transnational productions, festivals and debates; though, it seems that Baltic Cinema as a unity, model, or even genre, is not yet achieved. The paper aims to explore – starting from the cultural, economic and political diversity of the players – the reasons why the works produced within this area are not always perceived as parts of the same cinematographic paradigm.  In fact, the idea of Baltic Cinema as a whole clashes with a plethora of different interpretations and perspectives, so that it is possible to distinguish in the first place between narrow and broad acceptations of the adjective Baltic and the geographical range it stands for. Furthermore, the paper presents a reflection on some concepts and common habits typical of the mainstream cinema industry, such as product placement, synergy, cross-media entertainment, in relation to their presence in the Baltic film production (or the lack thereof). The ultimate goal of the paper is to provide the reader with some elements that might be useful to characterize, (re)define and come up with a preliminary idea about Baltic Cinema as a profitable, internationally appealing and unique brand.

Świat przed Zagładą. Tajemnica istnienia archiwalnego obrazu filmowego we współczesnej strukturze filmowej na przykładzie filmu Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci Jolanty Dylewskiej

Author(s): Maciej Kozłowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 26/2015

The text is an analysis of the composition of archival footage in contemporary documentary film. It presents artistic strategies concerning visual narration used in the film. From this perspective, it also describes the cinematic image of the provincial world of Jewish culture in Poland before II World War as captured by Jewish amateur cinematographers in their home movies, and how the same place is filmed nowadays. The mutual relationship between two visual layers is also interesting: archival footage and contemporary film and the meanings that arise as a result. Among the elements of visual film language are representations showing the metamorphosis of the place of action that occurred as a result of the passage of time and historical dramatic events. Also analyzed is the function of film close up in describing a wider context and portraits of witnesses who remember the world before the destruction of the Shoah.

A tizenegyedik óra előtt. Balázs Béla, a marxista

Author(s): Deodáth Zuh / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 10/2016

Béla Balázs’s Marxism – so the predominant majority of his interpreters – is seemingly conjured up at the end of his 1924 book, The Visible Man, just to fulfil his duty towards the old comrades from the Party. Balázs was – again, seemingly – never able to overtly brake up with this urge to compensate his bourgeois worldview. Accordingly, his film-books are a documents of his reluctance to embrace politically activist Marxism. A closer look reveals that in The Visible Man Balázs is literally framing his early film theory through Marxism. In this study, I will list and comment on the keywords and phrases which support a Marxist way of interpretation. On my account, there are dozens of sections in The Spirit of Film which do not only have Marxist overtones, but a general Marxist outlook, conceding that his film theory is a legitimate form of doing classical interpretive Marxism in the genre of concise, journalistic essays. All of them are following, for better or worse, The Visible Man’s ideological framework.

Urszula Antoniak: kondycja nomadki

Author(s): Ewa Szponar / Language(s): Polish Issue: 95/2016

If a national perspective in the study of Polish cinema turns out to be the most appropriate to describe its identity making role in the 20th century, a different perspective, one that transcends national borders, appears to be more promising when dealing with newest films. The definition of what it means to be Polish is changing in part due to mass migration. One of the better known Polish women directors working abroad is Urszula Antoniak. Although she graduated from the Silesian University in Katowice, she made her debut only following emigration to the Netherlands, where she made three feature films. In interviews she highlights her status of an outsider, and her film stories consistently focus on the problem of loneliness and the impossibility of communicating with another person. In his article Szponar is trying to answer the question dealing with not so much the issue of transnationalism, but “un-nationalism”, that is uprooting as an element of the human condition of the 21st century. This point of view is further explored using the feminist perspective, and the notion of womanhood as being “an escape from the world”. The work of Urszula Antoniak falls within the category of “women’s films”, and coincidentally agrees with the words of Virginia Woolf, who wrote: “As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world”.

Обективният фактор и субективният творчески мироглед в документалния филм

Author(s): Rosen Petrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2014

The article is based on the research ofhow the objective fact viewed through the individual, subjective worldview, transforms the documentary film in art. How with the help of cinematic technology and film montage the photographic image from documentary is turned into a creative and esthetic factor of the surrounding environment. The content of the research is focused on the subjective perceptions which become esthetic reflections of the individual worldviews and relations of the documentary film author. The subjective factor becomes the creative frame, which includes various worldviews and suggestions targeted to the individual viewer who identifies with the characters taking part in the film action. On this basis a research of the creative approach of two famous documentary film authors Mihail Rom and Nikola Kovachev is conducted. How do they realize their creative views grounding themselves on the authentic visual documents on the history of humankind? How the objective facts and the individual creative developments make this specific film genre a work of art?

Uniwersalizm i etnocentryzm w polskim kinie

Author(s): Marek Hendrykowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 95/2016

Rejecting the theory of “ingredients”, the author presents an interactive theory of the universality of film work. This theory exposes the difference in cultural potentials between that which is universal and that which is local. It highlights the importance of locality (uniqueness of the individual and collective experience) in the process of film reception. Due to differences in cultural potential, both its cultural aspects – “local” and “universal” – jointly establish in the process of film reception the type of the asymmetry of meanings: constantly interfering and oscillating between them. The strategy of winning this struggle, raised to an art form in film, allows filmmakers to organize and draw from elements of “local” cinema its universal meaning.

Z kamerą w carskich mundurach. Polscy operatorzy jako czołówka Wojskowo-Kinematograficznego Oddziału Komitetu Skobielewskiego (1913-1917)

Author(s): Mariusz Guzek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 95/2016

Military-Cinematographic Branch of the Skobelev Committee was one of the most important players in the film industry of the Russian Empire in the pre-revolutionary period. In addition to the publishing and audio branches (responsible for editing postcards from the front-line), it was the cornerstone of the propaganda apparatus during the Great War and the 1917 revolution. The core of the production and filmmaking team consisted of Polish filmmakers who gained their experience and skills in the interior of Imperial Russia (Mieczysław Domański, Władysław Starewicz and Piotr Nowicki) and those who were forced by the war to leave the area of the Polish Kingdom in the beginning of the world conflict in the summer of 1914 (Jan Skarbek Malczewski, Antoni Fertner and Gustaw Kryński). They made feature films, diplomatic documents, they recorded the rituals of the court of Nicholas II, but above all they filmed the area of the front-line, that is the area of the future Polish state (Galicia, the Kingdom of Congress). They worked at the crossroads of two cultures, and were pioneers of both Polish and Russian cinematography.

Smak orientu i inne przyjemności. Rola filmów przygodowych i morskich w propagandzie II RP

Author(s): Adam Uryniak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 95/2016

In Polish journalism of the 1930s a recurring theme was the question of building a colonial empire. Because the government of the Second Republic made no official attempts at gaining overseas territories, this discussion took place above all in the press, literature, and on cinema screens. The schematic plot of adventures of a brave Pole having adventures in far off countries or dealing with international criminal gang appears in several important films of the era. Titles such as Voice of the Desert (“Głos pustyni”, 1932, dir. Michał Waszyński), or Signals (“Sygnały”, 1938, dir. Józef Lejtes), offered to Polish audiences attractions in the form of distant countries and sensational adventures, and served as a way of healing national complexes, placing Poland in line with the most powerful countries of the time. These films, as also noted in the article, reveal further details and contexts of life in Poland of the time.

Polscy aktorzy emigranci w powojennym filmie brytyjskim (do 1989 r.)

Author(s): Artur Patek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 95/2016

After World War II in Britain there were many Polish actors. In the following years, for various reasons (political or economic), even more arrived. Many took the effort to remain in the profession in their new environment. Few were successful. The language barrier, Eastern European accent and lack of connections and understanding of local context stood in the way. In film Poles appeared most often on the second or third plan and in episodes. Usually they were cast as foreigners, especially from Eastern Europe. However a number of artists gained recognition and regularly appeared on film and on TV. Amongst them: Władysław Sheybal, Izabella Teleżyńska, Krzysztof Różycki, Joanna Kańska, Gwidon Borucki. The article brings us closer to their histories.

Transnarodowa, czyli wszędzie obca? Syndrom aktorstwa filmowego Anny Prucnal

Author(s): Karol Szymański,Grzegorz Piotrowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 95/2016

Relationships – life and professional – with Poland, Germany and France, and aesthetic contexts and artistic communities of the places where she worked, shaped Anna Prucnal’s film acting as a phenomenon in which the readable sources of local and national elements are obscured by the irreducible Other-Different. Thanks to that Prucnal in films be Fellini, Makavejev, Deville, Wajda, Vadim or Amalric functions on the one hand as the fascinating, disturbing Other, and on the other hand by transcending the local, she might be easily assimilated by international cinema (which paradoxically turned against the actress, when after 1989, she tried to return to the local, that is Polish cinema). The authors describe the means of expression in Prucnal’s roles, they analyse her characteristic, “excessive” presence on the screen. They ponder to what extend is she a “foreign body” and to what extend is she a unique, transgressive, dissonant, confusing “added value”. The aim of the article is the definition of “Prucnal’s acting syndrome” and the interpretation of the forces that shaped it (by reference to opera, the aesthetics of Brecht and Felsenstein, Student Satirical Theatre, Avignon avant-garde theatre, counter-culture and camp, and left wing views), above all from the perspective of the strategy of reinterpretation of symbols of national cultures and tensions between what is local, transnational and international.