Brama łez. Filmowe topografie Ellis Island
Georges Perec perceives the Island of Immigrants at the banks of the Hudson River as a non--place, a place which does not exist. It is a space which can be associated with many differentmeanings, referring to memory, identity, hope and despair of millions of people who camethrough it in order to find themselves in the dream world. The experiences of passengers whoafter travelling by ship were cast into the unknown world of immigrants from all over theworld are still used as themes of films whose action partly takes place on the Oyster Island.The paper is an attempt at ordering the specific topography of the island and confrontingit with film images. On the one hand, the island is identified with a diversity of people,languages and cultures. On the other hand, it is a locality resulting from the size and locationof the island in relation to the mainland (Manhattan), and builds a kind of temporary localityof people from different parts of the world. Reference to Perec and Bober’s film Recit d’EllisIsland constructs a kind of theoretical framework for the proposed considerations of thetopography of the island, being supplemented by the film Ellis by JR, as well as feature films(The Godfather 2 by Francis Ford Coppola, Brooklyn by John Crowley, and other).
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