Ksiądz z kobietą w kinie - Życie, śmierć i awatar

Author(s): Katarzyna Jabłońska,Andrzej Luter / Language(s): Polish Issue: 630/2011

Erratum Marka Lechkiego i Sala samobójców Jana Komasy – filmy dwóch młodych reżyserów, całkowicie różne w stylistyce i tematyce – to intensywne, mocne kino wskazujące na talent autorów oraz słuch wyczulony na rzeczywistość, także tę wewnętrzną. Lechki i Komasa wkraczają w wewnętrzne światy swoich bohaterów i jednocześnie przyglądają się rzeczywistości zewnętrznej, w której ci żyją. To nie jest kino społeczne, a jednak oba filmy łączy również to, że ich bohaterowie zahaczeni są w podobnym czasie i miejscu, chociaż Polska Dominika, bohatera Sali samobójców, i Polska Michała, bohatera Erratum, to dwa różne światy.

Przyszpilić prawdę

Author(s): Magdalena Lebecka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 552/2004

From the beginning of film (...), there was a division into the cinema of facts and fiction. (...) However, the notion that only documentaries are able to reproduce the reality and present the truth was a fiction itself.

Pervazul memoriei/ O familie germană (2)

Author(s): Daniela Magiaru,Adriana Cârcu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10/2012

Różyczka i karma dla psów

Author(s): Jerzy Płażewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Płażewski writes that his job is to propose an extreme thesis that the “phenomenon of Welles” was undoubtedly a watershed in the history of film art. Paradoxically, the thesis could not have been proposed by critics in the 1940s because they had no evidence and data supporting the claim that Welles really changed the face of the cinema. On the other hand, young critics have regarded Welles as a genius „for ages” and they don’t think it necessary to revise or analyse this view. Płażewski asserts that only the person who has followed the artistic career of the American master of film from the very beginning can make an observation that hits the nail on the head. Therefore, Płażewski tries to find out the decisive factor behind Welles’s greatness, and goes beyond widely-held opinions that Welles’s major contribution was to modernize means of cinematic expression. Płażewski says that the basic value of his work lies in the way he treated the notion of „truth” and in showing that „truth” doesn’t have to be this o r that but can be this a n d that. Płażewski acknowledges that Welles’s cinema made a breakthrough because it glorified “ambiguity”.

Fotografie w roli głównej. O polskim filmie ikonograficznym ze zdjęć

Author(s): Mikołaj Jazdon / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Short iconographic films made from photos constitute a separate trend of the Polish school of documentary. It has been expanding with new titles over several dozen years. "Fleischer’s Album" (1962) by Janusz Majewski and "The Weekday of Gestapo Policeman Schmidt" (1963) have taught Polish documentary filmmakers how to explore the possibilities of this form of film art. The two documentaries played a pivotal role in paving the way for a whole series of films based on pictures taken by the German troops and officials from WW2, which presented the private look of the Nazis on the war and its victims. The subject matter of films made from pictures was gradually broadening. These films told the story of the Holocaust and of lack of the victims’ look on the Holocaust, embalmed in photography. Films on the Polish resistance movement were also made, with particular emphasis on the Warsaw Uprising. The turn of the 19th and 20th century became the subject of documentaries at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. Pictures used in almost all of Karabasz’s films are regarded as a medium enriching the documentary with a new reality dimension that cannot be captured by the camera. His films, "Summer in Żabno" (1977) and "A Portrait in a Drop" (1997), show that films made from photos are perfectly suitable for depicting the present day.

Ruch i bezruch w obrazie. Relacje między obrazem filmowym Wernera Herzoga a malarstwem barokowym w świetle teorii Andre Bazina.

Author(s): Joanna Sarbiewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Sarbiewska analyses the visual content of Werner Herzog’s "Heart of Glass" on the example of its individual frames. Situating his work within the context of reflections on aesthetics and ontology, she points out that this type of reflection may be the key to grasping the „essence” of Herzog’s films. In line with the central idea of the article, the unique character of the ontology of Herzog’s film resides in the fact that it constitutes a synthesis of the ontology of the film image and Baroque pictures, emphasizing a coincidence of movement and stillness. The represented world of Herzog’s films has the status of a „frozen world” in which “pulsating” expression is hidden under the surface of stillness. Herzog’s shots come into being when oscillating between movement and stillness – the persistent and “non-filmic” emphasis of the moment of transition of one phase of movement into the other one not only expresses a synthesis of the two ontologies (painting and film) but constitutes sui generis the strategy of exposing an illusion of a movement continuity at the expense of presenting its aesthetic quality. Herzog’s filmmaking breaks with Bazin’s vision of the psychological genesis and development of visual arts – the image in his films does not satisfy the need to imitate movement to the extent proper to film realistic tendency. Bazin’s observation that the film delivers Baroque art from its convulsive catalepsy is significantly modified here – in Herzog’s film, the convulsive catalepsy of Baroque art is both maintained and transgressed.

Dialektyka powierzchni i głebi w filmie dokumentalnym

Author(s): Mirosław Przylipiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

The essay deals with a series of problems relating to concepts of surface and depth in the documentary film. The starting point of the essay is the issue of American Direct Cinema, the approach to filmmaking, created by the people who wanted to reflect reality in the cinema and believed that the plan was feasible. In their films, they repeatedly emphasized that they wanted to capture life the way it really is and convey what really happens. Mirosław Przylipiak writes, first and foremost, about the language used in the discourse on documentary filmmaking and the intellectual guidelines manifesting in the language. Citing frequently differing critical points of view and opinions, he focuses on that group of views that translated the discourse on direct cinema into the language and terminology of idealism. Thus, instead of asserting that direct cinema shows (reality) or transports (the viewer to a place of events), the critics say that cinema reveals. The image of reality ceases to be an aim and becomes a vehicle, a sign and a signal leading towards something that is invisible, which needs to be revealed. We no longer speak of reality but of the essence of reality. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s theory, Przylipiak reflects on dualism, so deeply rooted in philosophy: the imitation- prototype dualism, the surface-essence dualism, the idea-reflection dualism. In the end he asserts after Arendt that the two-world theory is a mistake of metaphysics and that the greatest mistake of the mistake lies not in distinguishing an appearance

Konstrukcja - reprodukcja. Grafika, fotografia i film w konstruktywizmie polskim.

Author(s): Marcin Giżycki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Giżycki deals with the problem of an interest in photography and film, shown by Polish avantgarde artists from its beginnings. According to Giżycki, photomontage, film, prints made of typographic elements, and first of all film collage were the means that were perfectly suitable for the realisation of Constructivist ideas. One of the basic aims of Constructivism – to turn towards new materials – could be put in practice through the use of finished and prefabricated elements. Giżycki traces the way in which the artworks were evolving from the “literary quality” of the early photomontages of Mieczysław Szczuka, Teresa Żarnower’s abstract and geometric compositions, Stefan Themerson’s films, inspired by Constructivism "Pharmacy" (1930) and "Europa" (1932) and Jalu Kurek’s ("Rhytmic Calculations", 1932) into typically collage-montage films of Janusz Maria Brzeski ("Sections", 1931; "Concrete", 1933) or his anti-Utopian and anti-industrial series of photomontages "The Robot is Born" (1934). Giżycki also points out that after a period of Utopian projects by artists relishing a regained freedom, the Constructivists expressed through art their, mostly left-wing, political beliefs.

Estetyka mise-en-scene kontra estetyka mise-en-page albo o dwóch estetykach obrazu elektronicznego

Author(s): Konrad Chmielecki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

The question of the film-reality relation was the basic issue of classic film theory. The problem is gradually relativized, as the relation is reversed or cancelled out by digital media used in film production. In this situation, the cinematic image may be understood as an electronic (analogue-digital) one. This assumption made, the aesthetics of the e-image makes use of both the aesthetics of mise–en–scène („put in the scene”) and aesthetics of mise–en–page („put on the page”). The two theoretical perspectives show the opposing sides of the same phenomenon. The aesthetics of mise–en–scène focuses on the issue of “representation” and is discussed as the aesthetics of the analogue image. The aesthetics of mise–en–page uses the term ‘presentation’ and may be treated as the aesthetics of the digital image. In this way, the electronic image takes on a status of an „(inter)medial hybrid”, which largely determines its specificity.

Antoniego Bohdziewicza życie i sprawy

Author(s): Małgorzata Hendrykowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

The following text, containing major facts in the life and work of Antoni Bohdziewicz, has been prepared to mark the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth (September 10th, 2006). Hendrykowska uses the extensive archives containing hundreds of letters, postcards, documents, notes and official letters, compiled by his daughter Anna Beata Bohdziewicz, to introduce us to the life and activity of the artist. The facts show Bohdziewicz as an extremely active artist, a (feature and documentary) film director, a Łódź Film School lecturer, a journalist, a columnist and also a DKF film society activist and author of the book W warsztacie filmowca (Łódź, 1993). Bohdziewicz, who is credited with laying the aesthetic foundations for modern radio drama, showed interest in experimental poetry, cabaret and technological innovations (one of his last articles, written in 1970, is entitled A Cassette Film – Home Cinema).

Życie pośmiertne propagandy nazistowskiej. Powojenne filmy dokumentalne o getcie warszawskim

Author(s): Tomasz Łysak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Nazi archival footage realized in the Warsaw Ghetto has become a staple element of postwar documentary films. The early films relied heavily on editing and voice over commentary in order to lay bare the propagandist angle of the generic material. However, with the passage of time filmmakers started to perceive the fruits of German documentary work as problematic. The article analyzes three films: Jerzy Bossak’s "Requiem for 500 000" (1962), Jolanta Dylewska’s "The Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising According to Marek Edelman" (1993) and "912 Days of the Warsaw Ghetto" (2001) trying to pinpoint the ways of undoing the “evil eye” of the Nazi footage by palimpsest re-editing, individual testimony and recent digital manipulation of found footage. Furthermore, it postulates a quest for an ethics of seeing pertaining to the specificity of the material.

Fragment – fetysz – fotografia

Author(s): Marianna Michałowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Michałowska considers the thesis that an affinity between film and photography should not be sought in the linear order of the technological development of the medium but in the recalling of images by memory. Victor Burgin’s text "The Remembered Film" and Roland Barthes’s "Upon Leaving the Movie Theatre" provide the inspiration for the article. Burgin and Barthes argue that films begin to be regarded not as a coherent narrative continuum but as a „sequence of images”. We are in the process of being “trapped by the image” whereas the viewer begins to perceive a scene recorded by the photographic or cinematic medium as if it were part of his own experience. Michałowska examines the cinematic and photographic realisations of found footage (films by Bill Morisson, Lewis Klahr, photos of Friedl Kubelka and Andrzej P. Bator). A counterpoint for these audiovisual productions is William Gibson’s novel "Pattern Recognition" (2003) about film clips circulating in the Net. Lacking narrative linearity, the video files become the source of search for identity of Net users. These examples lead to the conclusion that in modern culture, photography and film cease to constitute only a component of specific artistic practice. When absorbed by human memory, they serve to express individual experiences.

Filozoficzne okna albo kłopoty z rzeczywistością

Author(s): Sławomir Sikora / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

The author tries to show the evolution (or perhaps the spectrum) of attitudes towards the real in today’s world (in the debate on the media). He challenges the validity of some of Baudrillard’s ideas and shows that in fact in the place of the decline of references appears (at least sometimes) the search of the real, which does not necessarily mean search for representation. One of the most important arguments is Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida; although in the end Barthes does not show the photo of his mother he describes (that would be a poor representation), he constructs a discourse (kind of a theatre), aimed at evoking rather than representing (what is imagined has always been a component of man’s reality). In his discussion the author also makes references to the fetish and relics, the recurring concepts in the debate on culture.

Krytyczne uwagi na temat antropologii wizualnej

Author(s): Barbara Keifenheim / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Keifenheim takes a sensible and critical look on contemporary visual anthropology as a separate discipline and a sub-discipline of general anthropology. She obviously appreciates its individual possibilities connected with audio-visual recording instruments (filmed documentation has no limitations of written documentation), but accuses it of persistently exploring outdated subjects and of avoiding more modern challenges. The issue of the filmer/filmed relation also poses a problem – visual anthropology continues to rely on the equally privileged and distanced observer-expert whose physical presence is the guarantee of the authenticity of transferred content. According to Keifenheim, visual anthropology neither collaborates with general anthropology nor addresses the need for a new research perspective. If anthropological science is to meet the requirements of our time, it has to take into account such phenomena as deterritorialization of culture, community decentralization, polycentric networks, translocation and transnationality, etc. But these issues are hardly existent in visual anthropology. Keifenheim tries to identify the gaps of the science and their consequences. In the end, she tries to defend the science and lists the advantages that – with a more progressive approach – may be used for multi-faceted research in today’s increasingly medialized world.

Nowi Dokumentaliści

Author(s): Adam Mazur / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Among the trends in the Polish art of the beginning of the century - besides young painting and the irony-using “post-critical” art – one can discern the trend, based on the recording of the images of reality, of the new documentalists. Fitting the context of contemporary art, the new documentalists consciously part with the recently dominant tradition of the artistic act in photography as a “visual gesture.” In other words, new document is not about creating alternative, separate spaces. Instead of creating an aesthetic asylum, the artist uses the camera to confront the viewer with the images of the real. The words of Jerzy Busza, written during the martial law when reality yet again proved a challenge for art, sound to-the-point even today and may be addressed to the new documentalists (including A. Bedyńska, A. Brzeżańska, A. Grzeszykowska J. Smaga, Z. Krajewska, I. Omulecki, K. Pijarski, P. Pokrycki, K. Pustoła, S. Rogiński, W. Wilczyk, K. Zieliński, I. Zjeżdżałka and Zorka Project, among others). When artistic tricks have lost their relevance, there comes a time of minimalism and economy of means of expression, reality comes to the fore, and this is where imagination (not in itself) looks for stimuli. This is when the thinking camera steps in. It is no accident that Busza, who felt an affinity to the neo-avantgarde of the 1970s, puts a strong emphasis on thinking as an element of photography. The photographer makes an effort to represent, but also to analyse reality and the ways it is perceived.

Fundament pamięci - o "fotograficznej powieści" Chrisa Markera

Author(s): Andrzej Pitrus / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Pitrus examines the peculiar way in which Chris Marker “is constructing movement” in his La Jetée, the 1962 film telling a fictional science-fiction story. Marker is cited here as saying his film was a „photo roman”, which were to point to the fact that the piece had much in common with literature and photography. Its dialogues are replaced by commentary, and the viewer has the impression that he is not watching a film but looking through a photo album. The story of the hero is made up of photos. The frames with stills - of which only one shot creates the illusion of a continuous movement - cause that the film spectator has the impression that he is watching things in motion. But as a matter of fact, he is only watching artificially „constructed movement”, a dynamic whole the director built solely from stills depicting the successive phases of movement. Pitrus argues that the method allows Marker to perfectly render the condition of the hero who travels in time in his mind. Pitrus says that the represented world is deprived of a kinetic element because Marker wants to point to the literal and metaphorical stillness of the hero and to additionally emphasize the message of the film (the story of a nuclear apocalypse). In his concluding remarks, Pitrus points out that La Jetée is known as the inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s film 12 Monkeys (1995).

Spektakle kina w przestrzeniach architektury

Author(s): Katarzyna Waletko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Waletko examines how film and architecture, coupled with the viewer’s sensitivity, is involved in the building of own time and space, and, similarly, how this interaction helps create a mental (experienced) space despite the essential difference in the way the imagery of film and architecture exists (material in architecture and illusory in film). In Waletko’s view, as far as individual experience is concerned, film theory adds, among other things, a concept of editing to a dictionary of architectural terms. Waletko also touches on the issue of corporeality (of the author and the audience) that determines relations within our visual space, also discussed are the issues of editing in the camera and inter-frame editing. She explains the category of (real/formal) transparency in architecture and film, and compares film-set movement, framing in architecture and film.

Joela Schumachera głos w sprawie "snuff movies"

Author(s): Grzegorz Nadgrodkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Nadgrodkiewicz analyses Joel Schumacher’s movie "Eight Millimeter" (1999) in which the film director makes references to a phenomenon of the so-called snuff movies. Nadgrodkiewicz tries to show how Schumacher convinces the viewer of the existence of the organized industry of films depicting murder scenes. Nadgrodkiewicz claims that Schumacher repeated the most popular stereotypes concerning this ‘urban legend’ but declined to acknowledge the facts contradicting existence of the films. To prove the thesis that snuff movies exist Schumacher attributed to the film such properties (issues of copies, aura and authenticity, contact with anti-pornographic discourses, voyeurism) that allow us to believe that the films are a kind of ‘cultural concept’ rather than authentic crime accounts. The author of this analysis also points out that snuff films in "Eight Millimeter" take on the form of modern trompe l’oeil, which would support their status as the simulacrum with no reference in reality.

Kina w drodze

Author(s): Andrzej Gwóźdź / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Gwóźdź takes us on a nostalgic journey, shows us forgotten and deserted cinemas from different parts of the world. He tries to capture with the photographic picture the essence of the cinema as a building, as a place, as a magical space rooted in the space of the city.

Sny, które można kupić za pieniadze

Author(s): Marcin Giżycki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 54-55/2006

Giżycki writes about the little-known film "Dreams That Money Can Buy", made by Dadaist Hans Richter in the United States in 1944-1946. This experimental exercise, considered Richter’s most important American film, combined six scenarios written - besides Richter - by Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Alexander Calder. Giżycki presents a profile of Richter, his relationships with Expressionists and Futurists and the circumstances behind the making of the film, loaded with absurd humour. Giżycki describes the film’s segments, pointing to numerous inspirations of Richter’s collaborators (Léger’s Mechanical "Ballet", Duchamp’s "Nude Descending a Staircase" and Ernst’s collages). He also remarks that the framing device of the sequences is a parody of film noir. According to Giżycki, although the names of great artists were listed in the opening credits, the film had never been distributed or researched because it wasn’t made at the right time – in the second half of the 1940s Surrealism was already a thing of the past. Today, the film may be interpreted as a kind of a documentary record of actions of the great artists or a little patinated and charming experiment.