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Review of the movie "The Pale Blue Eye, 2022", Director: Scott Cooper/ Review of the book The Pale Blue Eye (2003), by Louis Bayard
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Review of the movie "The Pale Blue Eye, 2022", Director: Scott Cooper/ Review of the book The Pale Blue Eye (2003), by Louis Bayard
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The text shares the experience of the lectureship in Bulgarian language, literature and culture at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in organizing and conducting seminars on modern Bulgarian culture and contemporary art. In particular, student essays created after the Bulgarian Cinema Month at the University of Naples, whose goal was to promote contemporary Bulgarian cinema, are presented and analyzed. Special attention is paid to the image of Bulgaria and Bulgarian culture, which is built in the student essays.
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Review of: Rzemieślnik zdegradowany? Kręte drogi Kazimierza Kutza (Kazimierz Kutz, Będzie skandal. Autoportret, Kraków 2019)
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In this article, we introduce readers to the works of the Czech director Marek Najbrt, unknown in Poland, using the example of the film Mistři (2004, Champions). The artist in his work tells about unemployment, contemporary national myths, illusions, love, and hockey. It is a movie addressing issues of Czech national identity, mentality, and the situation in which the Czechs found themselves after 1989. After fifteen years of experience with political independence, market economy, openness to the world, providing new challenges, and enabling comparisons and recapitulation, the artist takes up a story, created from fragments of the history of the “abandoned” inhabitants of certain devastated border areas. In the reflection on the Czech director’s work, we will pay attention to the message about the features of “forbidden narratives” and previously unnoticed narratives. The discourse on the Czechs and Czechness presented in Champions is also developed through the specific creation of film space and applying specific meanings to it (or resulting from it). The authors of the script offered the viewers a bitter tragicomedy about emotional emptiness and human littleness.
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The author of this article discusses the series Il-Kabīr Awī, pointing at cultural contrasts and the assimilation processes. The series shows an exaggerated image of Egyptian society and a stereotypical view of Upper Egypt and the USA. It helps to understand that a certain way of thinking, speaking or behaving, is determined by one’s place of upbringing. Il-Kabīr Awī features a clash of cultures, distrust, and finally the gradual merging of cultures, which actually exists in Egypt.
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According to consumer-centered marketing theories, “the consumer is the king”. As there are so many alternative brands in the market, it is vital to understand the reasons for customers’ choices. Likewise, in the film industry, the audience is “king” heaps of times. The filmmakers rely on popular genres, characters, actors, and directors to gain the target audience’s appreciation. However, when it comes to art, cultural and creative industries, implementing customer-focused strategies has caused controversy. If cinema is an art, how important should the expectations and needs of the audience be? This study addresses the audience’s role in the Turkish film industry. Following a literature review of the Turkish film industry’s history and current structure, the study interprets the audience profile and box office data using statistical analysis. The study shows that the audience has been influential in almost every period of the Turkish film industry and at every stage of the value chain, from planning to distribution.
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The topic of the fantastic narration is complex and has direct connection with similar domains, such as mythology, psychology, where elements of applied research from the science and technology domains, can also be added. The reiteration of these themes, that are approached in different ways, leads to the conclusion that there are forms of the universality of the fantastic, which refer to the individual or collective plans, as the writer Jean-Luc Steinmetz states, in his study, La littérature fantastique: The fantastic topic can be cultural or individual. Originally, it often belongs to the collective imaginary and it involves a dynamic. This carries the germs of a plot, which will be reshaped according to the writer’s whim and, therefore, he can create a similar fantastic, matching his motifs. The themes of the fantastic narration are the following: the Faustic pact, the troubled soul, the poltergeist, the vampire, who can’t find their peace, because of the death’s absence; the personified death, the undefined and invisible thing, intentionally bad, the statue, the dummy, the vending machine, the armour, all of which enliven; a wizzard’s curse, that can attract a disease or a terrible ordeal; the leader’s influence over the kingdom; the enticing and morbid ghost woman, who comes from the other world; the interference between the dream and the reality; the room, the apartment, the floor, the street, the house, all being eliminated from the space; chronotopic transcedence; the opposition animate-inanimate (the living statues); the slipping in a parallel universe; the multiplication of the personality or the double motif; the breakage of the subject-object limit; other topics are that of the libido, the devil’s identity with the woman, the incest; the foreboding dream, the moral superhuman court and the nefarious human being. All these themes can be classified typopogically in four situations or fantastic categories, which define: all the essential modalities of the fantastic, the most general types of deterioration of the dimensions and of the experience of the real, through breakage and re-composition. The fantastic’s topics can be easily oversized, changed and alternated, due to the permissiveness of the fantastic to be circular, on a single direction, as well as moldable and conventional. The supernatural characters create a surprising effect, especially in the horror movies, through their ambiguous behavior, their binary body language, of the details of normal-abnormal type; there are also situations when the fantastic characters (the ghost which appears and disappears) do not generate any fatality, but they play the role of some tricksters, who amuse us instead; the above-mentioned elements are included in the scripts of some memorable stories, whose effect is that of capturing and of shocking the audience, through a form of artistic syncretism.
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Review of: Jakub Bobrowski, „Staropolszczyzna” filmowa. Osobliwości językowe jako wyznaczniki stylizacji historycznej w dziełach audiowizualnych, Kraków: Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN, 2020, ss. 263.
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The relatively liberal cultural policy in Hungary - in comparison to other Eastern European countries (except Yugoslavia and maybe Poland) - allows Western films to a certain extent. But compared to these Western products, domestic and Soviet films must at least balance each other. The new Hungarian film has made some notable achievements and is internationally acclaimed; consequently, citing Hungarian film in the feuilleton reproduced below as an example of works avoided by Hungarian audiences is not entirely justified. Due to the necessary consideration for the sensitivity of the big brother Soviet Union, this procedure is understandable, even politically necessary: Hungarian films are cited, but every Hungarian knows that it is the Soviet films that find no viewers.
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In this material I intend to explore the human destiny and its limits. Led by a macrocosmic force, the destiny cannot modify its coordinates, which are considered to be presettled. However, in case of some encounters, more or less wanted, the people try to overpass its boundaries and to eliminate them, and thus thwarting the Creator’s will. I have chosen the two film adaptations, entitled ‹‹The Adjustment Bureau›› and ‹‹Before we go››, the former under the direction of George Nolfi (2011) and the latter under Chris Evans’s direction (2014), as a case study, in order to exemplify two situations generated by identical forces and interests, but which have different endings: in the first case, the two human beings get from God a reiteration of their own existence, implicitly of their destiny, through the fact that they manage and are allowed to remain together, while in the second case, they probe the fact they have known each other, at a certain time and space, like an experience that mark them, on one side, and on the other side helps them in their existential itinerary, through taking better decisions, through facing all kinds of trials and last but not least, through overpassing well the ontological proofs, which they are subjected to. Both cinematographic creations analyse the act of predestination or that of the human being’s mission, through finding his soul mate. More than that, we discuss in this abstract about protective divine court, mentioning the fact that every individual receives a guardian angel from God, to guide and protect him/her, a savior and a good advisor regarding the choices that he/she has to make in their lives. Both film adaptations finally convince us, that life hides its intentions, having as a purpose to render an evoluted ego, a balanced individual, even if this one is penetrated by melancholy feelings and regrets. The polyphonies of the encounter of the two people attracted by one to the other, intervene, in this way, with the polyphonies of non-finding, as long as the destiny does fulfill or does not.
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The article is an attempt to outline various ways of constructing worlds in selected literary and film works. Roger Caillois and – a little later – Stanisław Lem made a rather detailed distinction between the ways of creating literary worlds, due to their genre differentiation. The rules governing reality in criminal fiction are constructed differently, as well as they are constructed differently in horror literature and other than in science fiction works. These „ontological strategies” may also be dictated by reasons other than genres differentiation (the so-called practical ontology will be discussed in more detail here).
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The article aims to analyze the ways in which Larissa Lai, in her short story Rachel, appropriates and racializes the figure of the cyborg by re-visioning and retelling the story of one of the most iconic characters in the history of cinema, the android Rachael from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (and, by extension, her literary predecessor).Using postcolonial theory as well as theory of science fiction as the primary methodological frameworks, the article demonstrates how – by infusing the character of Rachael/Rachel with a hybrid identity – Lai engages in a discussion concerning race, belonging, and the power struggle between the central and the peripheral. This struggle, in turn, is embodied by the liminality of the cyborg, who may be interpreted as a metaphor for all that eludes (and actively rejects) the colonial Self–Other binary. This, in turn, highlights the tensions accompanying the intrusion of the peripheral into the hegemonic and allows for a more in-depth discussion of the processes concerning negotiation of identity.Moreover, the paper focuses on the way in which Lai constructs the metaphor of the Othered, racialized cyborg in order to deconstruct the notion of the cyborg perceived as a neutral (i.e. white) entity, writing against the hegemonic canon. In this way, the racialized cyborg stands as the symbol of transgression, rebellion and rejection of the center/periphery dichotomy, one which eschews the (neo)colonial binaries and becomes a source of anxiety for the hegemonic discourse.
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The review is devoted to the book by Małgorzata Radkiewicz Refleksje zza kamery. Reżyserki o kinie i formie filmowej [Reflections from behind the Camera: Women Directors on Cinema and Film Form]. The publication showcases a deeply feminist frame of reference not only in its theme which is women directors’ theoretical oeuvre, from Alice Guy-Blaché to Alexandra Juhasz, but also in its concept. The author presents their reflections on cinema in the broader context of changing social norms, cinematic language, feminist philosophy and other minority discourses. The review highlights the importance of translating and publishing those reflections in Polish, however it pays particular attention to the author’s proposal of alternative form of scientific discourse and historical narrative. Radkiewicz changes traditional structure – which, typically, is linear, final, unified and focus on progress and hierarchization – for more open, horizontal and activating. That approach led to placing the book as a parallel to feminist, avant-garde endeavors of presented women directors. It could be positioned as a new narrative mode in the process of (re)writing film history by women and other minorities and inspire future relocations.
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This article examines how the film Zombie Strippers (2008, dir. Jay Lee) and the first season of the series From Dusk Till Dawn (2014, created by Robert Rodriguez) deploy the Gothic mode to stage monstrous transgressions of commodified females in the American historical and cultural contexts of the home front and the borderlands. By transforming into monsters, the erotic dancers in the two films above challenge the patriarchal foundations of their culture by subverting their objectification, literally consuming the bodies of male consumers. I further explain how their rebellions reference the frontier history of America, which provided Western horror cinema with tropes of evil “otherness” that blend stereotypes of Native Americans with Gothic fantasies of excess. My readings cite canonical theories from the fields of cultural and literary studies, but also more recent scholarship on the philosophical paradoxes of the eternal zombie condition or the sexually transgressive dimension of vampirism.
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The paper draws unusual parallels between a Taiwanese, a Hong Kong and a Bulgarian feature film: ‘Nina Wu’ by Midi Z, ‘Center Stage’ by Stanley Kwan and ‘Scenes from the life of an actress’ by Ivan Vladimirov. Through the unrestful portrait of the actress in cinema these directors explore different tensions in heterogeneous social circles – both close (family and friendship) and professional (in the field of film production). The three directors – Stanley Kwan, Midi Z and Ivan Vladimirov, looking for an appropriate artistic expression in their works and personal style – disintegrate and defragment the fragile actor’s soul. The general dramaturgical model is related to the attempt to create a meta-biographical narrative through the language of the documentary and the subliminal.
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Mushrooms are trending: contemporary cultural theory and philosophy as well as the arts, literature and film sprout the fungal; a figure of thought which seems to be particularly useful to meet the challenges of our Anthropocene present. This contribution traces how and to which intend this figure of thought is used within the frame of New Materialist and Posthumanist thinking, as well as in Merlin Sheldrakes popular science book Entangled Life. It reflects on what this figure of thought can contribute to discourses around posthuman subjectivity and aesthetics. This paper then turns to examples of how a fungally inspired aisthesis is employed as a Posthumanist aesthetics in texts (by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Thomas Melle, Peter Handke, Richard Powers and Martin MacInnes), in a video installation and in the horror film In the Earth. The epistemic, aesthetic and poetological reflections of the fungal at the end of the anthropocene is concludingly discussed as a ‘becoming fungal’, as not only delivering new perspectives on humanity’s role in collaborative, processual ecologies, but also as the beginning of the new understanding of epistemic processes, cognitive phenomena and posthuman entanglement which will not leave human self-esteem untouched.
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Seen from a double de-centering perspective, the posthuman subject is understood as an alternative to the traditional subject theory, which has been defined as the liberal-humanist subject (i.e. rational and autonomous) since the Enlightenment. The posthuman subject not only eliminate anthropocentrism but also liberate itself from the individualized view of the subject, which is centered on consciousness. In the two selected dystopian science fiction films Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), the cyborg figure, which originates from Donna Haraway’s manifesto, is treated and considered as a new interpretative possibility of human existence. The media adaptation of the posthuman motif makes the body itself a border crosser and enables the dissolution of boundaries. Focusing on the cinematic version of human machines and machine men, the intertwining of human, technology and gender, as well as the dilemma of existence will be analyzed, as the question ultimately recurs to a cinematic representation of the dualism between the immortal soul and the infertile body (reproduction of the cyborg body)
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Regardless of the increasingly frequent hybridization processes of fiction andnonfiction, and of the analysis of medial propaganda, the function of nonfiction ordocumentary films as epistemic media is still dominant. What is mostly emphasized,however, is the learning function of nonfiction for the viewers. The fact that documentary films are always mainly subjective testimonies about this reality howeverhard they try to act from the position of an epistemic authority, is mostly forgotten.Yet, the responsibility for the statement and for the dedication to the subject of thefilmed research is where the subjectivity of the testimony of the documentary makerlies. This responsibility is also projected into the forms in which the documentaryfilmmakers create an archive of the present for the future. This study deals with thereflection of the post-November history of Slovakia as the latest layer of communication memory, closely tied to the formation of the modern identity of the country.Its goal is to examine what image of the present is created by nonfiction films forthe future. In other words, what rhetoric and narrative tropes, or what conspirationstructures, are used by the documentary makers to construct knowledge about thesocio-political reality.
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Polish film for children and young adults has not often drawn the interest of film researchers. Issues related to its production, distribution, and promotion have been addressed even less frequently. This article is an attempt to fill this gap. It discusses the marketing public relations activities undertaken to promote In Desert and Wilderness (W pustyni i w puszczy, dir. Gavin Hood, 2001). The au- thor examines to what extent the PR strategy was based on a formula that worked well in the case of With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem, dir. Jerzy Hoffman, 1999), as well as whether the publicists were inspired by activities under- taken during the promotion of the first adaptation of Hen- ryk Sienkiewicz’s novel – In Desert and Wilderness (1973), directed by Władysław Ślesicki. In this analysis, the author also examines the impact of PR activities on the critical re- ception of the film, drawing on archival press articles.
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The article is a study of the Polish-Canadian co-produc- tion The Young Magician (Cudowne dziecko, 1987), directed by Waldemar Dziki. The author focuses on reconstructing the Polish filmmakers’ reasons for undertaking a collabo- ration with the Western contractor and reflects on the pro- duction process, tracing how it influenced the shape of the film work. In this way, he describes the specificity of Polish cinematography of the declining period of the Polish Peo- ple’s Republic – both in economic terms and in terms of changes in the mentality of artists and decision-makers. The background circumstances in which the agreement was signed reveal the values that proved to be crucial for Polish cinematography to enter the international film mar- ket. The case of production cooperation between countries from both sides of the Iron Curtain is examined in the per- spective of a critical reflection on transnational cinema, using the concept of power relations – both soft and hard – proposed by Joseph Nye. However, the example of The Young Magician above all points to the role of negotiation in international co-productions, which leads to hybrid film forms.
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