The Question of Cinema: Myth, Prophecy and Technology
This essay uses the method of Tensegrity – a means of dynamic methodological triangulation that allows for open threads and poetic interventions.
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This essay uses the method of Tensegrity – a means of dynamic methodological triangulation that allows for open threads and poetic interventions.
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The Theatrical Potential in David Foenkinos’ Work. Analysis of the Novel, the Scenario and the Film “La Délicatesse”. Our interest, especially when it comes to the subject of literature, is to show the manner in which the text processing done by the author (script writer/director) brings to light the guidelines of the novelistic text’s semantics, which under careful analysis reveals a kind of personal myth of the novelist. The skewed, syncopated, interrupted writing which disrupts the chronotope serves the needs of the script as well as the director’s selective vision. Unconsciously, the novel seems to follow the structure of the theatrical model. These traits can also be found in the cinematographic structure of the film.
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This article proposes eco-intermediality as a cross fertilization between what has been the hitherto predominantly thematic orientation of ecocriticism and the more form-oriented concerns of intermediality studies. To explore the transformative potential of this eco-intermedial conceptual framework, I focus on the 2013 manga adaptation of Hōjōki by the Japanese visual artist Mizuki Shigeru. Hōjōki (1212)is a medieval essay written by the Japanese poet-monk Kamo no Chōmei and bearing witness to a string of environmental disasters that overtook Kyoto at around the end of the twelfth century. The combination of a poignant environmental theme with a long history of translations and adaptations makes this work particularly amenable to an eco-intermedial approach. My main argument is that the post-Fukushima adaptation by Mizuki is a game-changer in such history, inasmuch as the artist brings his unique environmental imaginary and the distinctive formal affordances of manga to bear on Chōmei’ s text, so as to convey the sense of a world where objects and phenomena are endowed with agency and thus outside full human control. The ultimate aim of the present article is to highlight the far-reaching ecological implications of the intermedial textures that Mizuki creates in his manga Hōjōki to express an environmental imaginary hinged on material agency and empathy.
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This article presents a comparative analysis of HBO’s mini-series Chernobyl (2019) and Svetlana Alexievich’s literary testimonies Voices of Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (1997) – both of which represent the events and the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. As a case study in intermedial ecocriticism, the comparative study investigates the ability of each media product to make perceptible the forces of radiation, focusing in particular on what it feels like to inhabit the atmospheres of contamination that the two media products invite their viewers and readers to enter. The article proposes the neologism ‘spectral toxicity’ as a means to describe these atmospheres in which the presence of a threatening nonhuman force feels immanent and impending while also remaining imperceptible. Methodologically, the article is situated in the intersection of ecocriticism and intermedial studies, as it seeks to elucidate the phenomenologically distinct ways in which Voices of Chernobyl, as a literary work, and Chernobyl, as an audio-visual work, employ different aesthetic strategies to represent radiation and to mobilize affective experiences. The article argues that both works employ a type of indexical aesthetics, but that the choice of index differs depending on the modality of the media product. Whereas the mini-series constructs a rich soundscape and striking images of bodily decay, Voices of Chernobyl provides a polyphony of first person testimonies about the dehumanizing experience of radiation exposure. By comparing the two media products in terms of the experiences they create, the study illustrates the varying affordances of literary and audio-visual media for representing the phenomenon of radiation and the consequences of nuclear disaster.
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This article analyzes creation works of Wladyslaw Starewich (1882-1965), who is pioneer of puppet (also known as spatial, volumetric) animation. Filmmaker’s works cover even several countries. W. Starewich personality as a creator was formed in Lithuania (in that historical period as part of the Russian Empire), first documentary and entomological films and first spatial animation film were created. The artist continued his animation film creation in Russia, but feature films are the major part of films created here, which have a lot of mysticism, mystery, fabulosity. Creative period in France is the longest and often seen as the most successful. W. Starewich films frequently were created based on motives of fairy-tales or fables, although the artist has created and completely original script. For animation pioneer always since the beginning of his career it was important to experiment with film technical solutions, to improve them, to create new effects. Animation creator designed all his movies by himself from the beginning to the end (only family members, wife and daughter helped him) and he never intended to work in film companies. Maybe perhaps this is why he created peculiar, well-recognizable style which fascinated and influenced other filmmakers at that time.
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This paper is analysing the relationship between totalitarianism (particularly in its Nazi form) and art. The following questions are being thematised: whether totalitarianism and art can actually coexist and whether their conflict is truly inevitable, whether and what kind of art can exist within the totalitarian framework, and, in line with the basic concept of this paper, whether any significant artwork was produced during the Nazism era. This paper also considers the attitude of Nazi ideology towards certain forms of art, such as sculpture, film, literature and painting, as well as the segments of Nazi repression in terms of artistic expression.
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Realnost poratnog postjugoslovenskog društva dominantno je oblikovana etnonacionalističkom ideologijom koja u ratu 90‑ih pronalazi izvor formiranja kolektivnog identiteta. Jedno od fundamentalnih toposa (po)ratnog narativa i njegovih medijskih reprezentacija jeste samoviktimizacija, odnosno autoreprezentacija žrtve. Kao identitarno obilježje kolektiva, pozicija žrtve (etnije ili nacije kao žrtve) osigurava moralnu superiornost etnije ili nacije, homogenizira, unificira, mobilizira zajednicu polarizacijom ratnog sukoba na odnos žrtva‑zločinac koji implicira svijest: ako sam žrtva, ne mogu biti zločinac. Eksplicitna etnonacionalistička ideologija postjugoslovenskog društva, a time, kao njen dio, i diskurzivna borba za status žrtve, određuje značajan dio poetike postjugoslovenskog igranog filma. Nakon prvog dijela rada u kojem razmatram važnost samoviktimizacije za etnonacionalističku ideologiju, u drugom dijelu analiziram uticaj takve ideologije na filmsku produkciju, uticaj koji je rezultirao nastansku tzv. filma samoviktimizacije kao posebnog žanra unutar postjugoslovenskog igranog filma. Film samoviktimizacije analiziram unutar tri postjugoslovenske kinematografije: srpske (Nož), hrvatske (Bogorodica i Četverored) i bosanskohercegovačke (Go West). U radu se ne bavim historiografskim, faktografskim, statističkim podacima, niti uzrocima, razlozima, krivcima, već autoreprezentacijom žrtve putem analitičkog metoda razumijevanja logike i mahanizama samoviktimizacije i njenog značaja za oblikovanje nacionalnog poratnog identiteta.
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Franczak surveys the vast cultural phenomenon called the post-apocalypse. The selection of texts and practices, based on formal criteria, is treated from various perspectives: as a late-modern refiguration of the apocalyptic imaginary, as an epochal adaptation of the main themes of catastrophism, as a substitute expression of traumatic historical experiences, and as a unique philosophical and anthropological laboratory. Franczak concludes by suggesting ways to identify the collective phantasms that shape the postapocalypse and to consider its ambivalent political nature.
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Leśniak presents an interpretation of selected works and texts by contemporary German artist Hito Steyerl. Drawing on Nicolas Bourriaud’s version of the concept of digital realism and the notion of enrichment proposed by Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre, Leśniak demonstrates that Steyerl’s practice is characterised by an exceptional ability to thematise current problems. Her works are not only extremely relevant in the way they refer to problems related to the mechanisms of visuality in the digital age, but also in the way they tackle the functioning of institutions – museums and galleries – as a process of enrichment that is key to the logic of capitalism in the post-industrial era.
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The article analyses Bernardo Bertolucci’s screen adaptation (1970) of Alberto Moravia’s novel “The Conformist” in comparison with the censored version of the film released in the Soviet Union in 1976. Attention is paid foremost to the dubbed Russian version’s visual cuts and translation shifts, which amount to the creation of a new, castrated version that is approximately 30 minutes shorter than the original film and that ideologically corresponds to the then-dominant Soviet discourse of representing fascism. The article demonstrates how in this new, censored version where Bertolucci’s complex narrative is transformed into a linear narrative (that surprisingly makes it closer to the original novel by Moravia), the characters’ psychological inner worlds and Bertolucci’s storyworld conveyed through images, sounds and language have become lost in translation.
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The dominance of excessive eroticism, which is being used as a culture over our mentality and is being given high priority to social networks, is described in this paper. Another phenomenon is the approach of adolescents to this phenomenon who through social networks encounter “cultural” portals, different newspapers, which are the first news of provocative images. What results does this education bring to us in Kosovo? Some regional and international comparisons have been made with portals, media that “bombard” the site with erotic images. The paper also discusses why this phenomenon is used, its impact on massive scale? To what extent has our consciousness provoked and this phenomenon is growing massively, while it is known that actors, singers and, more generally, more artists are exposing body to values than values. In the paper, it is also about how to get out of this phenomenon.
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The article reveals the imperfection of ways to use existing approaches to the study of the cultural infrastructure in Ukraine, in particular when we apply methods offered by the UN and the EU as well. The research evidences that both foreign and Ukrainian experts are taking the first steps to ascertain the condition of cultural infrastructure in Ukraine and currently there is no objective complete database. Positive characteristics of different ways of measuring the state of cultural infrastructure are proposed to unite and Ukraine should be considered as the base country for testing scientific research methods, which will facilitate the establishment of scientific cooperation in the field of cultural policy and the coordination of joint decisions for cross-border partnership. One of the additional important parameters for the study of cultural infrastructure is its relevance to the overall political plans for the development of culture in the European community.
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Playful anthropomorphic animals are probably one of the most recognizable traits of the animated features produced by the Walt Disney Animation Studio. In addition to its eponymous heroes and heroine, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Disney’s first full-length animated feature, included a group of benevolent forest animals which helped the heroine by protecting her and doing household chores. Given the immense success of Snow White, the motif of animal helpers/companions was used in the films that followed, eventually becoming a permanent feature of Disney’s repertoire. This paper focuses on animal (i.e. non-human animal) characters in Disney’s full-length animated feature films. The research corpus encompasses 48 films released between 1937 and 2019. Situated within the frameworks of Disney studies and cultural animal studies, the paper analyses the representation of animal characters, especially their anthropomorphisation and the way their protagonist/antagonist status is visually coded, as well as the relationship between human and animal characters. The research results point to a predominantly anthropocentric perspective of the analysed films.
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In this theoretical context offered by Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory, the article analyze how the male gaze theory applies to the movies of the 70s in general, with a special emphasis on the Romanian movies of that period. Womenʹ representation in the movies directed by Mircea Veroiu, Dan Pița, Alexandru Tatos, Mircea Daneliuc, Stere Gulea will be discussed from the perspective of the construction of femininity, with a special emphasis of motherhood models.
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When it comes to communicative functions of the media, nowadays it is almost impossible to investigate such functions in a globally connected society without taking into further account their transmedial nature. Drawing from the sociosemiotic analysis this paper investigates some functions of lexical aberrations in both Croatian and English, as well as in television and film. The aim of the paper is primarily to show how lexical aberrations in English (slang) in Jim Jarmusch’s film Night on Earth (1991) establish cultural concepts and point towards the acknowledgement of intercultural competences. Also, the analysis encompasses the role of Anglicisms in the Croatian language in both public and commercial televisions. Joint analyses point towards a further sociolinguistic argument about linguistic literacy in the media, but also towards a fact that the lexical aberrations are of extreme importance regarding visual and media literacy in a global culture. The relationship between mass media and language is not only the reference to their intrinsic communicative traits but also a vivid reminder of constant intertwining of the humanistic and social area.
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Niniejszy artykuł jest próbą usystematyzowania metod stosowanych w filmowym tłumaczeniu wulgaryzmów z języka angielskiego na język polski. Przedstawione metody zostały wyodrębnione w toku szeroko zakrojonego badania, którego celem był opis praktyk translatorskich w dobie przemian językowych i socjolingwistycznych związanych ze wzrostem częstotliwości stosowania jednostek nacechowanych wulgarnie nie tylko w codziennej komunikacji, ale również w filmie. W poniższym artykule zaprezentowano badania ilościowe dotyczące przemian w zakresie częstotliwości występowania wulgaryzmów w komunikacji w języku polskim i angielskim, ponieważ stanowią one podstawę do rozważań nad tym, czy zmiany w języku wpływają na decyzje translatorskie w przypadku przekładu wulgaryzmów. // The article is an attempt at systematizing methods used in film translation of swearwords / (vulgarisms) from English into Polish. The methods presented in the study were arrived at through extensive research, which aimed at describing translation practices in the age of linguistic and sociolinguistic changes involving the increase in the frequency of usage of swearwords not only in every-day communication but also in film. The article presents quantitative research concerning the changes in the frequency of using vulgarisms in communication in Polish and English. The results constitute the basis for considering whether the changes a given language is undergoing can influence the translator’s decisions with regard to vulgarisms.
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Кино, существовавшее в СССР как инструмент идеологии, долгие годы оставалось таковым и в Казахской ССР. Многие советские идеологемы были опробованы в казахском кино: «национальное по форме, социалистическое по содержанию», «русский — старший брат», «Казахстан — кузница дружбы народов» и т.д., поэтому в пятидесятые годы практически не было возможностей для появления собственно национального кино. На киностудии «Казахфильм» в основном снимались историко-революционные фильмы и советские комедии. Только в шестидесятые годы, с наступлением «оттепели» стало появляться по-настоящему национальное кино. После короткого взлета в эпоху «оттепели» наступил «застой», во время которого снимались преимущественно фильмы на производственную тематику и о Целине. Новый расцвет национального кино обеспечил приход «Казахской новой волны», ставшей своеобразной предвестницей конца советской эпохи. В данной статье предпринята попытка дать краткий обзор советского казахского кино, опираясь на визуализируемые в фильмах советские идеологемы, так как именно они во многом являлись причиной появления того или иного фильма, оформляющего идеологический заказ. Анализ соответствия или несоответствия фильма той или иной идеологеме дает возможность проследить появление самобытных черт, позднее сложившихся в казахстанскую национальную школу кино.
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Language is a powerful communication tool. A skilful person uses words and manipulates them for different purposes; be that for persuading clients in buying different products or joining a congregation; soothing aggravated patients and consoling people who lost their loved ones. Language is used for teaching, informing, entertaining and making people laugh. Many public speakers, teachers, politicians and leaders use humour for breaking the ice and engaging the audience into listening. Moreover, nowadays a vast number of sitcoms are popular among different age groups based on the topics, genre and the audience’s field of interest. One such series which has caught the interest of a broader audience on Netflix is The Big Bang Theory. The usage of idioms, wordplays, puns, rhyming structures, pop culture language and scientific jargon, permeated with humour, are widely spread into the characters’ daily conversations through entire episodes. From the linguistic point of view, the corpus of The Big Bang Theory episodes will be thoroughly analysed for finding the relevance of using idioms, wordplays, puns and other structures in transmitting humorous messages to the audience.
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While the film’s title might suggest otherwise, Annihilation (Garland, 2018) is not about the nullification of existence. Rather, it deals with a refractory re-creation of reality, in which colour plays a pivotal part. The manner in which this film creates a novel kind of being (not only) human presents rich avenues for exploring how colour is deployed in imagining ‘the posthuman.’ Annihilation’s iridescent ‘Shimmer’ envisions a life-altering alien force which seems to devour the world as we know it. This article analyses how Annihilation’s hallucinatory, weird colour-scapes conceptualise a posthuman state of existence which relentlessly refracts each and every aspect of life, calling into question what it means to be human or nonhuman, animate or inanimate, dead or alive. In investigating how Annihilation’s peculiar use of ‘prismatic’ colour functions within David Batchelor’s concepts of ‘chromophobia/-philia,’ while analysing the film’s chromatic alien refraction in light of the new materialist theories of Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, this article fashions a protraction of the notion of chromophilia in which the ontology of colour itself gains a posthuman connotation. In Batchelor’s argument about chromophobia, colour is delineated as dangerously ‘other,’ and even as alien. This rationale is aligned with the ‘enlightened’ humanist discourse which values shape over colour, integrity over chaos. Yet, it is also intimately connected to its counterpart—chromophilia—a discourse that revels in colour’s refractory qualities and can be linked to the ‘digital.’ To illuminate the thus far unexplored topic of‘ posthuman colour,’ the article argues that Annihilation demonstrates how chromophilia can encompass an inherently posthuman and new materialist ‘essence.’
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Audiovisual productions are increasingly featuring multi-ethnic communities which also reflect today’s globalised world. Characters in both films and TV series are often depicted as having a bilingual background and heavily relying on code-switching to express their bicultural identity (Monti 2016: 69). As such, this phenomenon poses important challenges for its translation, especially when dubbing is involved. Using this audiovisual translation (AVT) mode involves a necessary technical manipulation (Díaz-Cintas 2012: 284–285). As for Italian dubbing, multilingualism has often undergone a process of neutralization (Pavesi 2005: 56) or local standardization (Ulrych 2000: 410), although recent dubbed films have proved to be geared towards a more faithful rendering of this important feature of the source text (Monti 2016: 90). It should be borne in mind that contextual factors, such as genres, may play a fundamental role in deciding whether to retain or neutralise multilingualism in AVT, especially when it is used for humorous purposes. In those cases, the perlocutionary function of the ST should be considered (Hickey 1998; cf. also Zabalbeascoa 2012: 322). Comedy can make use of multilingualism to entertain and the American mockumentary (or docucomedy) Modern Family (Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan, 2009–2019), is a striking example in this sense. It follows the lives of Jay Pritchett and his family in suburban Los Angeles. Linguistically speaking, the most interesting character is Jay’s second wife Gloria Delgado, a young and beautiful Colombian woman who often code-switches or code-mixes English and Spanish (with a marked Colombian accent), thus creating moments of pure comedy. Hence, this study investigates how Gloria’s humorous and multilingual persona has been transferred into Italian. The analysis confirms the current tendency of Italian dubbing to render otherness in the TT (Monti 2016: 89). This may be justified by the genre and scope of the programme, that allow for a more innovative transfer of vehicular matching via what I propose to call functional manipulation.
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