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Otakar Vávra is one of the most interesting directors of the European cinema, and not only because of his perennial professional activity that lasted over 80 ears. His formula for creativity consisted in adapting the native literature, in using films to artistically comment on the world, in treating the cinema as a segment of the whole culture, and not as its exclusive centre. The director’s project had to include the 20th-century politics, which tossed Czechoslovakia back and forth from democracy to totalitarianism. After the Munich Agreement or Munich Diktat (September, 1938) Czechoslovakia broke up and what was left was transformed into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. The Czech cinematography became then a kind of chessboard, a confrontation area for various film directors’ and producers’ ambitions, for directives of the Protector’s Office (Reichsprotektor), for the expectations of the Czechs who collaborated with the Germans, for the courage and meanness of different people. Such were the circumstances under which Otakar Vávra made 12 films; and he was in touch both with conspiring professionals who were building the foundations for the future post-war cinematography (Vladislav Vančura) and with collaborating Barandov dictators (Miloš Havel). In his films appeared German dignitaries’ favourites (Lída Baarová, Adina Mandlová) and victims of the Nazi terror (Anna Letenská). Vávra’s films made during the Protectorate (and all of them have survived) and watched now may be interpreted in numerous ways; one of them is the biographical perspective.
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Recenzja: Rafał Syska, Filmowy neomodernizm, Wydawnictwo Avalon, Kraków 2014, ss. 594
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The theme of this paper is the relationship to "others" – other civilizations and cultures in the history of Earth, and other species and different forms of life in science fiction. The analysis of Star Trek series and films shows that, despite considerable endeavor to adopt "multiculturalism" as a principle, and despite a conscious effort to respect and celebrate diversity, "colonial narrative" remains in force in the popular science fiction visions of the future. Fear and/or violence are typical reactions that (un)hiddenly repeats the pattern of our thinking of otherness and treatment of different ones whenever it comes to aliens, whether they are foreigners or extraterrestrials.
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Fantasies about clones, cyborgs and androids have become part and parcel of the mythology of modern times – the mythologies of the biotechnological era in which the achievements of genetic engineering have inflamed fears of possible abuse of scientific knowledge and the consequences of such abuse. The paper considers the phenomenon of reproductive cloning of human beings as it is represented in popular culture, especially film as it is one of the most important sources of representations and constructions of ideas about clones. After the introductory consideration of this phenomenon in scientific, ethical and media debates which are imbued with rejection of reproductive cloning, I have analyzed the different uses of the clone motif in selected movies. I have examined the structure and content of the genre formula of "social melodrama" which is present in films about clones, and have analyzed the mythical patterns pertaining to the topic of cloning, such as the myth of immortality, the myth of twins, the myth of the uniqueness of human kind etc. Ultimately, the nature and origins of the fear of clones and disgust that clones cause have been examined, and it has been shown that they mostly boil down to the fear of the dehumanization of human beings, the fear of the loss of difference and the transgression of biological, sociocultural and metaphysical boundaries.
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The paper considers cultural ideas about food and nutrition in movies depicting a post-apocalyptic world. Food/nutrition in these movies functions as a metaphor which is used to depict the future regression of human civilization to a hypothetical previous stage of development. Food also becomes a powerful symbol in these movies, it is used to outline the boundary (but is also a mediator) between order (civilization) and chaos (the post-apocalyptic society of the future), to underline the contrast between us (we, humans) and others (them, non-humans). The questions posed in this paper are concerned with the kind of food which is described utilizing the language of the end of the world, and the social relations, established through the use of food, between people in such environments, the fears about contemporary food fictionally shaped and expressed through science fiction movies etc. By examining scenes of food consumption in the chosen films, certain recurrent themes pertaining to food will be isolated, and models of nutrition which post-apocalyptic movies have in common will be considered as ways to denote the "otherness" of the future.
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In this paper we have analyzed the ideal-type model of the story which represents the basic framework of action in Manhunt category pornographic internet video clips, using narrative analysis methods of Claude Bremond. The results have shown that it is possible to apply the theoretical model to elements of visual and mass culture, with certain modifications and taking into account the wider context of the narrative itself. The narrative analysis indicated the significance of researching categories of pornography on the internet, because it leads to a deep analysis of the distribution of power in relations between the categories of heterosexual and homosexual within a virtual environment.
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Разговор о визуелној антхропологији са Питером Јаном Крофордом, вођен у оквиру 9. НАФА Конференције и 29. НАФА Фестивала етнографског филма, са темом "Визуелна антропологија у разноликој Европи", који су од 7. до 11. септембра одржани у Копру, Словенија. Видео разговор водио и снимио др. Слободан Наумовић из Одељења за етнологију и антропологију Филозофског факултета Универзитета у Београду, 11. септембра 2010. године у Копру.
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In 1962, 26 full feature films (one in co-production) and 259 shorts, including documentaries, were produced. 32 services were rendered to foreign customers to a value of about 3.2 million dollars. The decrease in the number of full feature films in comparison with 1961 was a result of more realistic financial policies pursued by film enterprises. There was a considerable rise in exports of films to East European countries and conditions for shipments to Middle East countries were improved. Efforts were continued to market Yugoslav films in Far East countries and the new African states. The over-all value of film exports amounted to about 600,000 dollars, which, together with the value of services rendered, brought the total sum to 3.8 million dollars. A number of films were also exchanged.
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In the period from 2004. to 2007. three films belonging to two different genres were complete in the American production-a horror and a comedy. These being, Hostel (I and II) and Euro Trip. The only similarity found in these films is the same stimulus that motivates the horror and the humor segment in them. That stimulus was identifies where all three films are placed, and that is Eastern Europe, more precisely Slovakia. This phenomenon was considered in Noel Carroll’s theory concerning the relationship of horror and humor in order to explain and understand their existence.
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U filmu Odisejev pogled Teodora Angelopulosa, grčkog režisera koji je na festivalu u Kanu pre dvadesetak godine izgubio nagradu pred bučnijim, glupljim i površnijim filmom Emira Kusturice Underground, glavni junak (igra ga Harvey Keitel) putuje po Balkanu prošlosti i sadašnjosti, u potrazi za prvim balkanskim filmom, i posvuda sreće jednu ženu – u Makedoniji, Bugarskoj, Beogradu, Albaniji, Sarajevu. Ta žena ima isto lice, ali svaki put govori drugim balkanskim jezikom
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The article is an overview of film media phenomenon in the context of the 21st century. Film, media, childhood, fairy tale, animation, art are commonly heard concepts. However, it is rarely realized what the meaning of these concepts is and who they are addressed to. The 21st century is the age of technology and images which witnesses the visual world simulacrum carried over into the movie screen and which makes us feel the impossibility of the world. Today the film has become the synthesis of all media and it is impossible to detect a single media in each divided unit of this whole. One does not have to be scared of the concept of media because today it is part of children cultural education and part of the fairy-tale continuation. When speaking about film media environment it is worth to analyze the phenomena of art and technology, their link to the past, because they are becoming a key part of our world and the culture.
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This article investigates the contradictory information about the Estonian identity of the filmmaker Dimitri Kirsanoff (1899–1957) and examines the archival material that provides final confirmation of his birth and childhood in Tartu. In addition, Kirsanoff’s substantial contribution to silent cinema and his significance in the context of French avant-garde impressionism are discussed. Kirsanoff’s most acclaimed film Ménilmontant (France, 1926) was released 90 years ago. It is still frequently screened all over the world, due to its experimental montage techniques, the early use of handheld cameras, its innovative use of actual locations and the actors’ performances that still resonate with contemporary audiences. Ménilmontant is also influential because of its elliptical narrative style. However, with the advent of sound film, Kirsanoff’s career declined because the reorganisation of the film industry limited the creative freedom he enjoyed in the 1920s. This article attempts to contribute to a wider acknowledgement of Dimitri Kirsanoff’s Estonian origins, his films and his important place in the world cinema.
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This article provides a survey of Soviet animation and analyses the thematic and stylistic course of its development. Soviet animated film emerged and materialised in synch with the fluctuations of the region’s political climate and was directly shaped by it. A number of trends and currents of Soviet animation also pertain to other Eastern European countries. After all, Eastern Europe constituted an integrated cultural space that functioned as a single market for the films produced across it by filmmakers who interacted in a professional regional network of film education, events, festivals, publications etc. Initially experimental, post-revolutionary Russian animation soon fell under the sway of the Socialist Realist discourse, along with the rest of Soviet art, and quickly crystallised as a didactic genre for children. Disney’s paradigm became its major source of inspiration both in terms of visual style and thematic scope, despite the fact that Soviet Union was regarded as the ideological opposite of the Western way of life and mindset. The Soviet animation industry was spread across different studios and republics that adopted slightly varied production practices and tolerated different degrees of artistic freedom. Studios in the smaller republics, such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in particular, stood out for making films that were more ideologically complicated than those produced in Moscow.
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This article examines five films by Veiko Õunpuu, Estonia’s most renowned contemporary director – Empty (Tühirand, Estonia, 2006), Autumn Ball (Sügisball, Estonia, 2007), Temptations of St Tony (Püha Tõnu kiusamine, Estonia/Finland/Sweden, 2009), Free Range: Ballad on Approving of the World (Free Range: ballaad maailma heakskiitmisest, Estonia, 2013) and Roukli (Estonia, 2015), focusing on his representations of neoliberalism and especially its effect on the emotional and intimate lives of the characters. We argue that the characters of his films typically reject the conventional romance promoted by neoliberal discourses, including Hollywood cinema, yet this does not make them happy, but disoriented and restless. The repudiation of ‘emotional capitalism’ also pertains to the way Õunpuu’s films are conceived and executed. Most importantly, he resists the conventions of Hollywood cinema, including a classical script and happy ending, and also sets and shoots his films in peripheral places. Our main theoretical framework is the concept of ‘emotional capitalism’ as elaborated by Eva Illouz.
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This paper examines the development of neorealist tendencies in the oeuvre of contemporary Latvian filmmaker Laila Pakalnina. Her work is positioned within the global dissemination of cinematic neorealism, and its local manifestations, which, it is argued, develop in specific national contexts in reaction to dramatic societal and political changes. Pakalniņa’s films are examined as a documentation of the change from a communist satellite state to an independent democratic, capitalist country. Heavily influenced by the Riga School of Poetic Documentary, a movement in Latvian cinema that adhered to the conventions of poetic documentary filmmaking, the article analyses how her films replicate and further develop the stylistic and aesthetic devices of the Italian neorealists and the succeeding cinematic new waves. In doing so the argument is put forth that Pakalnina has developed neorealism Latvian style.
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U ovom radu ću istražiti “politiku temporalnosti” koja se, verujem, uz pomoć Delezove (Gilles Deleuze) flozofje i kvir teorije, može naći u horor flmovima. Pod “politikom temporalnosti” podrazumevam različite strategije u razgradnji reprezentacije i, delezovski rečeno, “molarnih formacija”,1 kao i istraživanje mnoštvenih aspekata posthumanizma i kvir modaliteta postajanja. U tu svrhu, upotrebiću Delezovu teoriju flma kako ju je izložio u svoje dve knjige Cinema 1 i Cinema 2, delezovsku teoriju horora Ane Pauel (Anna Powell), teoriju savremenog francuskog flma, takozvanog novog francuskog ekstremizma, Martine Benje (Martine Beugnet) i određene kvir teorije temporalnosti i postajanja kvir.
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This article presents arguments against some of the ideas presented in Marek Hendrykowski’s paper Adaptacja jako przekład intersemiotyczny [Adaptation as intersemiotic translation] („Przestrzenie Teorii” [Space of Theory] no. 20 (2013). The author challenges two assumptions: 1) the list of translation operations which was proposed by Hendrykowski and which she considers to be heterogeneous: these operations are performed either on a text’s surface (rhetorical operations) or in its deep structure (transaccentuation, compression and amplification); and 2) the concept of adaptation which is understood as montage, since the idea of montage restricts the issue of translation to compositional activities and isolates it from sources of hermeneutic and cognitive inspiration.
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This article presents the influence that Witold Gombrowicz’s work has had on Polish cinema. It covers several generations of directors, for example, Andrzej Munk (born in the 1920s), Roman Polański and Jerzy Skolimowski (born in the 1930) as well as Agnieszka Holland, Piotr Szulkin and Marek Koterski (born in the 1940s and 1950s), and discusses the topic of film adaptations of his books (Jerzy Skolimowski’s Ferdydurke and Jan Jakub Kolski’s Pornografia [Pornography]). The article shows that Polish cinema uses Gombrowicz’s works most of all by taking up the issue of life’s authenticity and inauthenticity as well as to demythologize Polish tradition and history. As for esthetics, it employs Gombrowicz’s favorite style, i.e. the grotesque.
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Is filmography a personal hobby of archivists or an integral part of film history? Based on the analysis of the achievements in this field from the last two decades, Marek Hendrykowski interprets filmography as an important part of contemporary film studies. Filmographic research shows at a glance what was precisely happening in the film world. This kind of knowledge and important information based on various authentic sources is something absolutely necessary in the scientific procedures of film research. Film history needs authentic facts as its basis and source of constant inspiration. This is why catalogues, registers, indexes and books including filmographic information are called indispensable companions in archival film research and standard works of reference in the world’s film archives and all film libraries.
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