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The health care reform, and the decentralization of the health system are perceived, understood and accepted in different ways, by the different social actors involved. This paper takes a close look to these two processes that Romania underwent in the last years, from two perspectives: the human resources in the medical system (physicians) and the system’s beneficiaries (patients). Two levels of analysis are pursued, with a quantitative approach (secondary analysis on Opinion barometer of Health Care Services, considering data between 2002 and 2008). The longitudinal analysis is focused on very recent changes in Romanian health system, initiated by the hospitals decentralization process announced since 2009, started in June 2010 and completed by the end of 2010. All these changes are analysed in the broader context of health care reform.
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Last years trends, particularly in the developed countries, of increasing energy demand, car using and urban garbage disposal, bear an adverse impact on the environment and the quality of life, becoming a high concern for the whole society. Therefore, many international, European and national organizations plead for the implementation of some more sustainable practices of production and consumption. In this direction, the increased utilization of the renewable energy sources, practicing ecological agriculture on larger areas and a smarter urban garbage management are major goals, not only for environmental policies, but also for increasing the quality of life.
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This paper is the result of a research that investigates how the accessibility of higher education is perceived by people with visual impairments, without disabilities. The first chapter introduces the reader to the main topic of this research. The next chapter includes the research approach and results. The research investigates two groups of students with visual impairments, without disabilities from “BabesBolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca. The research-tools are two questionaires with open questions. In analyzing the collected data is used the software for qualitative data Atlasti, and the results are presented through a comparative approach. Generally, there aren’t major difficulties identified in the accessibility of higher education, and positive attitudes mark the behavior towards people with visual impairments. With few exceptions, students with visual impairments do not face big problems and attitudinal barriers in their acces to university. The nature of this phenomenological research has it epistemological limits, requiring a more in-depth and extended analysis.
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Austrian director Ulrich Seidl says that all his films are physical, because – in his opinion – it is important to make films physical and attract viewers to characters as close as possible. Kosińska-Krippner follows in his work various ways in which issues of corporeality and sexuality are grasped – including the use of an image of body as a tool of provocation or making the image of corporeality a specific medium of expressing reflection on man and the world, which he creates around himself. The director shows the body in its various facets and aspects, sometimes running away from its visual presentation, limiting himself to the verbal sphere and sometimes he dazzles us with physicality, nudity, debauchery and perversion, in order to tell us more about the human nature. Seidl shows his characters in the most intimate of situations, he looks at society without compassion, and leaves the evaluation to the viewers. He mercilessly exposes the ugliness of human existence, diagnoses the psyche (soul) of the modern man and the condition of his world and human relationships, showing what humans do with their own bodies and how they treat the bodies of others. The director robs the viewer of the illusion that normalised (prosperous) society and the dregs of society are distant and separate worlds.
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In the article an attempt is made to adapt the modern idea of a cabinet of art and curiosities to the need of locating the achievements of art cinema in the context of a widely understood cultural tradition. Parallel to the relation between the phenomenon of still life paintings and the film phenomenon of object animation, Zmudziński discovers connections between the idea of a cabinet of art and curiosities in the work of mannerist Giuseppe Arcimboldi, in the context of a collector’s passion of the emperor Rudolf the 2 nd , and the way this idea functioned in the work of the surrealist Jan Švankmajer, in the context of contemporary collections of curios. The author relies on two important, yet culturally and historically very different examples, to make his argument, namely the fate of the relics of St. Louis the 9 th , King of France and the exhibition activities of the controversial anatomist and plastinator Dr. Gunther von Hagens. In his interpretation of the works of Arcimboldi and Švankmajer, the author builds a model of five levels of functioning of the concept of curio in the works of both artists. The starting point of this model is the adoption of so called objective interpretation when considering the relationship between humans and reality. In conclusion, the author argues that the central area of contemporary film collection of curiosities is filled with on the one hand animated films made with the object animation technique, and on the other hand feature films with peculiar protagonists who lose their subjectivity (and thus also their freedom), becoming puppets in the hands of fate, powerful and independent forces, or – at the most drastic – other people.
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In Todd Haynes’ films corporeality of the characters takes center-stage. The body is an area on which one’s identity is built, and is the carrier of that identity. However Haynes does not present the body as a sign of psychological depth of the character; it also does not have a pre-discursive character, it is never natural and self-determining. Just like identity, the body is only a construct shaped by the pressure of a given social and cultural order. The author, with the help of the analysis of two of Haynes’ films – "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" (1988) and "I’m Not There" (2007), tries to describe the director’s artistic strategy. In Superstar, a film telling the story of Karen Carpenter, the pop star who died in 1983 as a result of anorexia, all of the roles were given to Barbie dolls. In I’m Not There, an experimental biography of Bob Dylan, the main role was written for six actors, including a woman and a black teenage boy. The body fulfils in these films a function of a sign, it distances the viewer, it makes him interpret rather than identify with the characters. The “body” of the movie also plays here a considerable role: Haynes juggles the conventions and film schemas, refers to film genres, uses clichés and borrowings. Bodies treated in this manner show a remarkable interpretative potential of the films of the American director.
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Human body is an important element of symbolic culture. Its age, appearance, expression combined with the clothes worn, movement, gestures and facial expressions can be a source of aesthetic experience and an effective way of nonverbal communication. youth – age, beauty – ugliness, sexiness – asexuality, elegance – negligence, etc. characterise people in their life, and define them socially and in terms of social class. Internal interactions of a person, his intentions, thoughts and emotions are manifested through the body. It applies in a special way to actors appearing on the stage of a theatre or on the cinema screen. The object of description of Stachówna’s essay are the bodies of actors – “variables”, transforming themselves, means of artistic expression, coming to be a part of the creative effort. In the subchapter Lipstick, wigs and corsets the author writes about the art of characterisation that facilitates a spectacular change of corporeality; the part Wrinkles, scalpel and collagen deals with the bold use of appearance aged by time, and the struggle against advancing biological changes, while the subchapter Benedict Cumberbatch – the Proteus of Acting describes the amazing changes in the image of this English actor in film.
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The article gives an account of the First Congress of Film and Media Scholars that was held in Kamień Śląski in the beginning of June 2013. The congress was organised by the department of Film and Media Studies, of the Institute of Culture and Interdisciplinary Studies, of the University of Silesia, in cooperation with the National Centre for Culture, The “Initiative” Association (Stowarzyszenie Inicjatywa), and the film institution “Silesia Film” from Katowice. It was the first such event in Poland that allowed for an in-depth discussion about the state of film and media studies today. The variety of presentations within six panel sessions (History of film and cinema, Methodologies and theories of audiovisual media today, Moving pictures in anthropological perspective, New media – new research challenges, and varia) confirms the width of issues with which contemporary film and media studies scholars must deal with.
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A book review of Michał Legan’s "Balthasar/Tarkowski. Teodramat w filmie" ["Balthasar/Tarkowski. A Theodrama in Film"] (2012). Legan explores the theological possibilities of film, and tries to find out whether the specific language characteristic for the cinema can carry the formulae of a theological treatise. Legan’s starting point is the assumption that the idea of theodrama, described in great theological detail by a Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, is also present in the films of the Russian director and script writer Andrei Tarkovsky. The reviewer discusses the trigeminal layout of the book, which consists of the first chapter devoted to biographies and works of Balthasar and Tarkovsky, the second chapter which presents collected analysis of Tarkovsky’s films, made through the prism of the ideas of Balthasar’s theodrama, and the third chapter devoted to parallel interpretation of great Christian theological themes present in Tarkovsky’s films. Nadgrodkiewicz thinks highly of Legan’s book and considers it an excellent example of work on theology of the cinema.
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The subject of the article are the changes in the complex relationship between body and identity in the work of David Cronenberg over the last 25 years that passed since he entered mainstream cinema. Using the example of "Scanners", the first film that put the question of identity center-stage, bodily basis of identity typical for the early work of the director is described, as well as the consequences of the blurring of bodily boundaries for the way protagonists perceive their own “I”. "The Dead Zone" and the "Spider" show a gradual shift in the director’s interest, from issues related to the spacial boundaries of the body to the question about the continuity of identity in time and the problem of the body as a carrier of information. These problems are further explored in the two later films of the director: "A History of violence" and "Eastern Promises", which testify to the director’s changing perspective on the question of the body and identity; it is at the same time a change of perspective from an individual to sociopolitical one.
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It is not the first time that Michael Haneke challenges his audience. How are we to understand what the film shows and reveals? What is the meaning of the film’s story? The author of the article tries to pin point the performative nature of the film and the importance of corporeality in the presentation and telling of this story. He claims that the action (performance) is more important than words in the film, which is why this film can have a very strong impact on the viewer. The “performativity” of the film forces onto the viewer a different kind of reflection, one far exceeding easy expressed meaning. The director puts forward very strongly the issue of self determination, the possibility of deciding one’s own fate, even when it is no longer an easy matter to take that fate into one’s own hands. He presents a situation, a “place” where the individual loses out to the organised raison of “society”, which supports “life”. The article also raises the question of the adequacy of the film title. The author comes to the conclusion that Gabriel Marcel’s opinion that to love means to tell the other person: “you are never going to die”, paradoxically, is highly adequate in relation to this film.
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In modern humanities understanding of the body as a substance or being gradually gives way to interest in processes, sensations and affects that pass through and between bodies. The emphasis on intangible and unconscious flows poses a particular kind of challenge to a film analyst, as these are the dimensions of human experience that to a large extent are not subject to verbalisation or visualisation. Szarecki proposes to consider body as a medium between the representation and the materiality of the image, taking into the account both politics of meanings focusing on the representations of the body in film, and the politics of experience associated with the creation of affective relationships. The author demonstrates this approach using the example of the Japanese film "Happy flight" by Shinobu Yaguchi, arguing that although the body images presented in the film bypass the dynamics and movement of affective flows, these might manifest themselves in sensory responses to the developing action and the accompanying changes in sounds and images.
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"Polski film fabularny 1918-1939. Recenzje" ["Polish Feature Films 1918-1939. Reviews"] (2012), an anthology prepared by Barbara Lena Gierszewska, consists of 300 reviews of 200 Polish films shown in cinemas in the interwar period. Despite the ongoing digitalisation of archival material and expanding access to library resources, this kind of work is invaluable as an aid in the study of the history of Polish cinema. The selection allows one to examine not only the development of Polish film art, but above all the history of its reception. The book is also a story of the origins of Polish film criticism, which in the interwar period reached a very high level, and the reviews were written by such notables as Karol Irzykowski, Antoni Słonimski, Anatol Stern, and Marian Hemar. Among the reviews collected in the anthology of great value is the variety of opinions and polemics presented on such films as "Tajemnica przystanku tramwajowego" ("The Mystery of the Streetcar Stop"), or "Pan Tadeusz". The book, unfortunately, does not contain an extensive commentary, which could help readers outside of the film studies circle. Certainly including in the anthology texts with more in depth commentary could reach a group of readers interested in the history of the Second Republic, while the anthology could become a vehicle for imaginary trips to the cinema theatres of the 1920s and 1930s.
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The author addresses the issue of the dark side of mobility and migration, paying particular attention to the phenomenon of human trafficking. Following theoretical work of Arjun Appadurai, Loska accepts the assumption that film as a carrier of ethnoscapes is a cultural text reflecting changes taking place and capable of showing social problems. This does not mean that the artistic fiction is ideologically innocent, as most of the films analysed by the author rely on schemas associated with particular genres of popular cinema. Members of Western cultures (both as script writers and the protagonists) speak in the name of the victims. Most films referred to by Loska confirm the thesis of Gayatri Spivak, that the subaltern are deprived of a voice. They are also not present in the audience, as the films are dedicated to the majority, who are in need of a catharsis. This does not mean however that this perspective should be abandoned as one involved in (neo)colonial ideology. Rather, while remaining aware of its limitations, one should extract from the texts belonging to the popular culture, that which allows one to identify and present the real threat: the problem of trafficking in women and forcing them into prostitution.
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The author using selected films as examples explores the problem of the inner speech in film, in some of its configurations and functions of meaning in relation to the representation of the body in film. The voice in question is a first-person voice, articulated by a character, that is part of the structure of the film, the voice being an introspection leading the viewer to a special insight into a sphere to which other characters in the film do not have access; in this manner the viewer becomes an instance, whose presence has to be taken into account within the discourse of the film. This technique may take a variety of forms, as is shown by examples of such films as Derek Jarman’s "Blue", Dalton Trumbo’s "Johnny Got His Gun", Julian Schnabel’s "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", or "Life Feels Good" by Maciej Pieprzyca, but also Marcel Hanoun’s "Une simple historie" and "Shirley – visions of reality" by Gustav Deutsch. The inner speech is considered not only in terms of a film language, but also in its symbolic and artistic aspects.
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Following Pierre Brossard, Roman Ingarden and his idea of layered film structure as well as Walter Benjamin’s discussion on the status of a film actor, the author reaches for a concept of somatography formulated in her earlier book, which might help to carry out a film analysis focused on the presence of the actor’s body in film. The analysis of the characters created by Lucyna Winnicka in Jerzy Kawalerowicz’ three films (The Train, Mother Joan of the Angels, The Game) allows one to identify the dominant somatographic rhythms that are determined by various methods: the manner of filming, formal, technical, aesthetic decisions, actor’s expression in the film and the frame, the interactions between actors and between the actor and the camera. Ultimately the goal is a reflection upon modernist status of the body in a movie, which body can no longer be treated as a basic obsession of the cinema, nor as something that film has to cross or abandon in order to discover thought.
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The aim of this article is to analyse and interpret the image of male physicality in the film "Khrustalyov, My Car!" (dir. Aleksey yuryevich German /1998/). The starting point of the analysis is a question about the appearance of the socialist realist hero in the cinema of Stalin’s era and in periods when he was critically reinterpreted. Using German’s film as an example, ways in which an individual was subjugated in a totalitarian system are shown using the discourse of corporeality. The fictitious story of a tragic relationship between father and son can be interpreted as a metaphor of the traumatic soviet experience. Like every story about a trauma, inaccessible to the order of consciousness, and therefore also inaccessible to language, also this film makes the body the vessel of painful memory. In this case the body in question is a man’s body at various stages of development. The narrator experiences the terror of growing up in the socialist reality, while his father becomes a victim of a Stalinist purge and terror, whereas Stalin experiences the terror of death. In the film ideologically correct corporeality, imagined through the canon of socialist realism, is deconstructed. The director shows real bodies inhabiting Soviet Union: defiled, suffering and dead.
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