CEEOL - Search Result

Preparing The Work on Dealing With the Past in a Community

Author(s): Emina Bužinkić / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: civil society; dealing with the past; community; war; peace-building; Croatia; peace activism; MIRamiDA; mediation; intervention; education;

Dealing with visible and invisible consequences of the war puts in front of us a long-term and difficult task of establishing sustainable peace, peace which creates a possibility of deconstruction of power, building equality and establishing the culture of respect and non-violence. Peace does not merely mean the absence of war, but establishment of lost trust with the creation of just socio-economic and political conditions for life in a community. Visible consequences of the war are images of severe human suffering and losses, mine fields and echoes of explosions even after the war, severe poverty, material devastations with completely or partially ruined cities, villages and infrastructures, as well as lower possibilities of quality education, work and continuation of life. There are also invisible, deep consequences which often, years after the war, escalate into another, renewed conflict. They are hidden in people’s attitudes and views which are often transferred from one family generation to another, so that new generations grow up with messages of violence, pressure for revenge and further deepening of trauma, which can also be reflected in social structures, legal hierarchy and human rights.

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Dialogue on War Legacy

Author(s): Ana Bitoljanu,Goran Božičević / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: civil society; war legacy; dealing with the past; remembrance; dialogue; education; workshops;

I remember how it all started and how people were reluctant to mention the very topic during dealing with the past workshops. When we said “today’s topic is dealing with the past”, some kind of heavy silence would fall over the room. In the beginning, we didn’t even use that phrase, dealing with the past. We tried to introduce conversations about the past into various workshops, we did a lot of different things, aware of the fact that we have no chance of a joint future, without discussions about what had happened, how we deal with it today and whether we are at all ready to hear different views on what had happened. Sometimes, we called this work on dealing with the past “inter-ethnic dialogue”, sometimes we called it “opening communication in divided communities and groups”, sometimes it was an integral part of non-violent transformation of conflicts, but one way or another, we always talked about the past. In the meantime, we have reached a point when, at trainings that we organize today, we spend most of the time working on dealing with the past. And this is neither unpleasant nor unfamiliar any more. It has not become easy, far from it, but the phrase “dealing with the past” is no longer so scary and unknown. We have slowly reached the point at which people have trust in us and perceive the workshops as safe space in which they can talk about what had happened, what they had been through and survived. It has even happened that participants said: “OK, this communication, non-violence, gender, all this is great, but when are we going to talk about the past? It was because of dealing with the past that we applied for this training in the first place”.

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Education of the Youth Grounded in Experience-Based Learning as Part of the Dealing With the Past Process

Author(s): Emina Bužinkić / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: civil society; dealing with the past; remembrance; youth; education; experience-based learning;

One of the most important guarantees of dealing with the past process is the guarantee of non-repetition of a violent past, which included intolerance, inequality, human rights violations and war crimes. These guarantees are mostly connected to institutional and legal measures of protection and they are rarely discussed in wider, social and cultural frameworks, such as educational, cultural, economic and other policies and social practices, which could, in the long-term, prevent the violent past from repeating. As a particular form of social and political reparation, but also as a role in the lives of younger generations, education of the young about the past is undoubtedly a quality and long-term guarantee of non-repetition of violence and a step towards a more responsible society.

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(Un)culture of Remembrance: The Role of Memorials and Commemorative Practices in Post-Conflict Social Recovery

Author(s): Tamara Banjeglav / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: civil society; culture of remembrance; heritage; memorials; commemorative practices; social recovery;

In each post-conflict society which comes into existence and develops after traumatic events, such as wars and other forms of physical violence, there are attempts to suppress the memory of those events in order to “move on” and to “leave the past behind us”. However, memory is instinctive and cannot be suppressed just like that. It will, inevitably, occur, come to the surface in one form or another. For this reason, in an attempt to master the violent past, we are often faced with a challenge how to best use our memory with the aim of learning from past events so that they would never be repeated again.

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Why the Documenting Approach?

Author(s): Živana Heđbeli / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: civil society; Croatia; Jasenovac; document approach; information; remembrance;

I went to Jasenovac this spring. I talked to my fellow travellers, mostly older than 80, victims or family members of victims. Their main question, almost seven decades since the suffering, is: why? “Why have my relatives, all tall and strong men, been killed?” “Why grandchildren of my relative, who was killed in Jasenovac, never came to Jasenovac?”

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Archives in a Non-institutional Environment: Documenting, Organization and Preservation

Author(s): Nikola Mokrović / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: civil society; documenting; archives; non-institutional environment; organization and preservation; Documenta, Croatia; Anti-war campaign; information system; OCR;

Documenting is a kind of relationship towards all documents or, in a wider sense, towards all artefacts created as a result of human action. Today there are three recognizable types of institutions which work on preserving memory: archives, libraries and museums. Although the principal difference in types of objects that these three institutions possess is clear and well-defined, what connects them is inheriting and preserving values which were created through human action. As such, these institutions are institutions of memory, as much as they are institutions of documenting. Documenting is mediation of human action, of each individual human act and its trace which connects it, in a meaningful way, with other acts. Acts and their traces are in a constant interplay of connecting, interpretation, change of shapes and media which constitute the overall record of human action. Although acting necessarily produces documented consequences, here we are particularly interested in its specific form as a conscious and subsequent, re-constructive establishment of previous practices and past actions, as well as in reconstruction of past documenting in the sphere of civil society and human rights protection. However, subsequent reconstruction does not only constitute a new order of documents or enable an overview with the aim of remembering or working with finished and established facts. It includes, from the starting motivation, through entire process to the end product, confirmation, realization and enrichment of certain values, which gain new meaning in new circumstances.

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Documenting Human Losses in Croatia

Author(s): Slaven Rašković / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: civil society; Croatia; human losses; documentation process; Documenta;

Since its establishment, Documenta has viewed establishing facts about war events as one of necessary steps towards the process of dealing with the past. Due to the fact that human losses are the hardest consequence of armed conflicts, we expected that state institutions would do everything in their power to list, by their name, all victims of war, regardless of their ethnic, religious, political or social background, and that the list would also include key identification information and circumstances of their death. However, even 18 years after the war in Croatia ended, there is still no unique, publicly accessible and verifiable list of Croatian citizens who were either killed or went missing during the war. Such a situation still enables ideological and political manipulation of the number of victims and, for sure, neither contributes to easing the effects of the war nor does it enable opening of the space for building trust and sustainable peace. This was exactly the reason why Documenta, at the beginning of 2009, started a research on human losses in Croatia. This research aims to pay respects to victims of war by making their names and circumstances of their death publicly known. We believe that it is an obligation of every society to raise awareness of the fact that victims of war are not just mere numbers, but people with first and last name. For this reason, Documenta was one of the first organizations to be included in an international initiative for advocating the Charter for acknowledging every casualty of armed violence, which was started in London in 2011 and which has, by now, been adopted by more than 40 humanitarian and human rights organizations from all over the world.

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4.50 €

The Others in America. Discovering the Landscape of the New World

Inni w Ameryce. Odkrywanie pejzażu Nowego Świata – wprowadzenie

Author(s): Magdalena Kempna-Pieniążek / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: landscape of the New World in cinema; films on discovering America; pre‐Columbian America in cinema

Discovering America was, to a point, concurrent with both: the development of the modern landscape painting theory and recognising the issue of the Other. The author of the article undertakes an analysis of various films with their story set in pre‐Columbian America or at the times of the first encounters of America’s native peoples with Europeans, from Christopher Columbus, John Smith, and Pocahontas biographies that explore the paradisical topos, through dark tales of Viking expeditions to America, to cinematic attempts at reconstructing perception of landscape by native Americans of the time. What constitutes an essential context for the films in question, aside from encountering the Others, often symbolically represented by the constructed space – is the stereotype of an American Indian thriving in harmony with nature, who does not transform it in any way. Depicting native Americans as “spirits melted into the landscape” is a strategy quite frequently devised not only in historical, but also contemporary cinema.

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4.50 €

John Ford and the Frontier of American Borderlands. The Cases of “Stagecoach”, “The Searchers”, and “How the West Was Won”

John Ford i pejzaż amerykańskiego pogranicza. Przypadek „Dyliżansu”, „Poszukiwaczy” i „Jak zdobyto Dziki Zachód”

Author(s): Aleksandra Krajewska / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: landscapes in films by John Ford; frontier landscape; American landscape paintings vs cinema

In the history of the United States a prominent place is occupied by the frontier (the frontier) as a meeting point of the white settlers and what were to them virgin lands. The legendary tales of settling the West, in particular their visual depictions, have become – with the passage of time – an important part of the American Founding Myth. Their traces are found in Hudson River paintings and in those produced by Rocky Mountain School, but also in the Western films aesthetics that drew upon the former. Based on the example of John Ford’s westerns’ aesthetics, the author of the article conducts an analysis of cinematic depictions of American frontier land melted into the landscapes featured in classical Hollywood productions about the Wild West. The departure point for her considerations is the overview of the New World’s basic institutions in Stagecoach. In The Searchers, in turn, what comes to the foreground are Ford’s interests in the art of painting, for he transform Monument Valley into nothing short of a mythical land. A kind of summation of the path traversed by the American Landschaft, from the realm of nature to the centre of western civilisation, is the blockbuster How the West Was Won, being both an apogee and the twilight of the narrative on the United States’ divinely‐given mission.

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4.50 €

Alfred Hitchcock’s Film Geographies

Geografie filmowe Alfreda Hitchcocka

Author(s): Ilona Copik / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Alfred Hitchcock; studio‐made landscapes in classical cinema; city landscape in classical cinema

The article’s aim is to reflect upon the role and place of natural landscape in Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography. Its pivotal thesis sums up in a view that spatial issues (regarding objects, locations, real places) were of keen interest to the director while film geography constituted to him a kind of creative method. Some of Hitchcock’s works of the Hollywood period are subject to analysis herein, which concentrates upon recognising the essence of those films’ relationships to the city, the ways of seeing natural, urbanistic, and national landscape, as well as deciphering the cultural code of the post‐war America while using both the ideological and quotidian key.

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4.50 €

A Make-Believe Empire Built Out of Plywood. On American Studio-Made Landscapes in Musicals

Imperium z dykty. O amerykańskich pejzażach studyjnych w musicalu

Author(s): Patrycja Mucha / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: studio‐made landscape in classical cinema; musical in classical cinema; “American Dream” in Hollywood

In the classical period, Hollywood studios were able to use their wizardly to create a marvellous world that would present the vision of fulfilling life, unattainable to the viewers. Not a thing experienced by them in their mundane lives was able to come close to the said silver‐screen, utopian vision of America aligned with the viewers desires. Back then, Hollywood was in fact a factory of mock cities – the ones that were better, more glamorous, and well‐lit, often also mobile, shielded from sun rays by factory walls. The author of the article analyses the way in which spaces reconstructed to be used as settings for Hollywood musicals created the foundation for thinking of America through the “American Dream” prism, that is, as a quasi‐real place that allows for utopia to be realised and any kind of dreams to be fulfilled.

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Images of Capitalism, Images of Terror: On Patricio Guzmán’s Films

Obrazy kapitalizmu, obrazy terroru – kino Patricia Guzmána

Author(s): Katarzyna Warmuz / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Patricio Guzmán; Chilean documentary cinema; Chilean political Cinema

This article’s aim is to present the characteristics of Patricio Guzman’s documentary films. In his works, the Chilean director goes back to the times of Pinochet dictatorship. While narrating his account of the crimes perpetrated by the said regime, he endeavours to preserve memory of the events and, at the same time, wonders why the contemporary Chileans discard the memories of the terror years. The author of the article analyses such films as Nostalgia for the Light (2010) and The Pearl Button (2015), underscoring both their social message and, what is peculiar to them, interweaving of the nature images with tales about bloody reign of the Junta.

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In the Edifice of Consumption. The Miami Landscape in Michael Mann’s Television Works and Feature Films

W świątyni konsumpcji. Pejzaż Miami w twórczości telewizyjnej i filmowej Michaela Manna

Author(s): Wojciech Sitek / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Michael Mann; Miami landscape in cinema and television; consumerism as a motif in cinema and television

The landscape of Miami shaped by Michael Mann is dotted by hundreds of metaphorical storefronts. In terms of ideological attitude, both television and feature‐film versions of Miami Vice constitute an American hyper‐consumerist manifesto which praises the purchasing powers and encourages one to seek unusual experiences. In such a Miami, the late‐capitalist dreams prove to be compelling not only to criminals, but also to the officers of the title law enforcement division, as well as to other officials representing social institutions, so to the presumable guardians of the democratic foundations of the United States. Behind the alluring audio‐visual facade Mann smuggles a reflection on the society that answers the call to participate in a consumerist celebration.

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4.50 €

Fissures in Reality. The Dramatic Aspect of Space in John Carpenter’s Film Works

Pęknięcia w rzeczywistości. Dramaturgiczny aspekt przestrzeni w twórczości Johna Carpentera

Author(s): Przemysław Pieniążek / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: John Carpenter; space in horror film; American horror film

The opulent cinematic oeuvre of John Carpenter – an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, and composer – serves here as a basis for reflection on the role and ways of building the dramatic aspect of space in horror films. Amongst the key themes of the present article are: places that are besieged, the problem of trespassing a forbidden border, and a thread concerning protagonists entering a territory where normal laws do not apply. The author undertakes the analysis of such films as: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Prince of Darkness (1987), and In the Mouth of Madness (1995).

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Growing Up in Detroit Is Dreadful. An American Nightmare Landscape in “It Follows”

Dorastanie w Detroit jest straszne. Krajobraz amerykańskiego koszmaru w „Coś za mną chodzi”

Author(s): Karolina Kostyra / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: David Robert Mitchell; landscape of Detroit in cinema; space in horror films

Detroit has been recently dubbed “the new city of American horror.” The landscape of abandoned, derelict industrial buildings and desolate streets was already utilised in such landmark horror‐genre film productions as: Lost River (2014), Don’t Breath (2016), or Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). In David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014) urban spaces of Detroit are set in contrast with the city’s suburban areas. The latter sphere is, according to the words of teenage characters’ parents – friendly, as opposed to the dangerous city centre. However, the borders between both the worlds become blurred as a result of curse placed on the said teenagers. Dread apparitions emerge out of the neat alleys of suburbia. The well‐trimmed lawns and shapely houses induce anxiety even when no one is looming on the horizon. The director, by arranging the sphere of horror that way, takes advantage of American horror tradition of the 1970s and 1980s, in particular referring to the depiction of suburbia in John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Yet, whereas in majority of horror films landscape remains merely a more or less conspicuous backdrop, in It Follows it emphatically comes to the fore. The visual code used by Mitchell refers to the post‐crisis landscape of America, where de‐industrialised setting of “Rust Belt” appears to yield quite literal monsters.

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The Metaphorical Take on Places in Contemporary American Zombie-Themed Films and Series

Metaforyczne ujęcia miejsc we współczesnych filmach oraz serialach amerykańskich o zombie

Author(s): Rafał Strózik / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: zombie‐themed films; zombie‐themed series; space in horror films

The aim of the article is to provide the pop‐culture zombie phenomenon with a broader context. Having acknowledged that the zombie‐films’ “patient zero” was recorded in the American continent, and then the epidemic spread out globally, the author describes audio‐visual productions whose plot takes places in the United States and were produced therein. In this day and age, the figure of zombie may be treated as a form of American public’s dissent against the disappointing and unreliable political and economic system. Setting the plot of the said films outside the urbanised areas or at their frontiers, metaphorically depicts an attempt to defend, presently dwindling, traditional values.

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Wes Anderson’s Alternate Worlds

Alternatywne światy Wesa Andersona

Author(s): Piotr Aptacy / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Wes Anderson; American independent cinema; New Sincerity in film

The article aims at characterising the style of one of the American independent cinema’s most prominent representatives, that is, Wes Anderson – the forerunner of New Sincerity in film. While carrying out a systematic overview of Anderson’s hitherto completed works, the author points to both, key leitmotifs (e.g. childhood, family relations) and the formal measures devised by him (e.g. his use of colour). What proves to be especially important in this context is the manner in which cinematic space is utilised by the director, whose use thereof follows the principles of theatrical exposition.

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4.50 €

Undomesticated Places. Landscapes of Peru in Claudia Llosa’s films

Miejsca nieoswojone. Krajobrazy Peru w filmach Claudii Llosy

Author(s): Joanna Aleksandrowicz / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Claudia Llosa; Peruvian landscapes in cinema; desolate landscapes in cinema

Landscapes in films directed by Claudia Llosa come to signify strangeness and isolation. In her debut Madeinusa (2006) the Peruvian filmmaker depicts a secluded village in the Andes, whose name Manayaycuna means a place one must not enter, which indeed proves to be quite accurate for an accidental stranger arriving from Lima. The clash of cultures theme returns in The Milk of Sorrow (2009), which in turn is set in unfriendly landscape of the capital’s suburbia, where migrants try to start their lives anew by leaving behind the traumatic memories of armed conflict taking place in their home villages. Other districts of Lima, which are equally strange and unwelcoming, serve as a setting for Lllosa’s short film entitled Loxoro (2011), telling a story of a desperate search for a missing daughter. The claustrophobic confinement of urban mazes and forbidden villages, however, is counterpointed in Llosa’s films by the hope‐inducing open spaces of mountain ranges and ocean waters.

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At the “Rivers of Grass”. The Anti-western-ness of Kelly Reichardt’s Films

Nad Rzeką Traw. Antywesternowość filmów Kelly Reichardt

Author(s): Natalia Grabka / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: Kelly Reichardt; borderland landscape in contemporary cinema; American independent film

Kelly Reichardt is an American independent director, who shoots most of her films in the far West. Yet, her kind of west may not be associated with the American dream fulfilled, or the Gold Rush. The landscapes discussed in the present article, which represent crucial symbols of the western United States of America, are depicted in her films in accordance with realistic principles. Not only does she demythologise the Wild West, but also indicates in hindsight the ramifications of the infamous colonisation inflicted upon the American frontier, whereby nature and culture are still axiologically opposed. While criticising the contemporary West, she draws the map of birthplaces of the American civilisation. Her characters, however, not only seize land on which to settle, but more often than not lose it, and so, when they attempt to find river, they often reach highway, railway, landfill, or a shopping mall. According to ecofeminist theory, the planet Earth is also a home, yet contrary to a literal home (or: a household), where the pater reigns, the new home is centred around caring for and tending to the Mother, that is, both the environment and the Nature epitomised. The anti‐western‐ness of Kelly Reichardt’s films is, therefore, concentrated on the criticism of patriarchal system, capitalism, or consumerism, so the interpretations presented in the article are simultaneously social and environmentalist in their character.

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4.50 €

Far from the Others… A Landscape on the Road

Z dala od innych… Pejzaż w drodze

Author(s): Barbara Kita / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Keywords: desert landscape in cinema; desolation as film motif; film theory on landscape

The author proposes a way of interpreting desert landscapes and other desolate places of North America. For years now they have constituted areas considered attractive as film settings (especially for westerns), by meeting the ideas of wild nature unspoilt by human activity. The fundamental role in shaping this wild desert landscape is played by the following cinematographic techniques: tracking/travelling shots, panoramas, long shots, high‐angle shots, as well as silence. Three (feature) films are analysed in the article, whose protagonists journey for hundreds of miles, often on their own, and in silence, struggling with the inconveniences of the journey, thinking their lives through, which is sometimes enabled by the desert surroundings. Due to this specific type of narration and peculiarity in terms of landscape, both the characters and viewers have a chance to experience nothing short of immersion into the images presented. They become autonomous particles making up the landscape, releasing memory and oblivion, and assisting the characters on their path to self‐identification.

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