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The broader structural and organisational changes associated with the global expansion of Internet-distributed television have changed the ways in which we perceive the qualitative level and socio-cultural significance of television dramas. Individual transformations can be perceived in connection with the hybridisation of genres, the thematic variability of individual works, the number of episodes and their average length, or relevant considerations about the need to better understand TV dramas as products that are qualitatively equal to ambitious film production and in many respects even overshadow it. A currently resonating area of interest are mini-serials/ limited series, which target audiences often prefer over other types of episodic works with a significant number of seasons and instalments, emphasising their high-end quality and refined production value. The popularity of this type of content results from engaging and complex narrative structures, which often include explicit depiction of taboo topics, such as stories and plotlines related to death (or old age and/or dying), sexual behaviour, various deviations, extreme violence or self-harm. The presentation of these publicly suppressed topics in limited series is the focus of our interest. The main goal of the study is to reflect on the current popularity of television mini-serials in the environment of Internet-distributed television, taking into account the taboo topics that are portrayed in them. We achieve this goal on the basis of theoretical reflection on the issue, analysis of the thematic specifics of selected television works and subsequent synthesis of acquired knowledge.
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During the Cold War exporting films was not only a means of obtaining commercial benefits from distribution in foreign countries, but also an important instrument of ideological influence. In the USSR, the AllUnion Association “Sovexportfilm” served these functions selling Soviet film products as well as purchasing foreign films. The purpose of the article is to study the methods and principles of propaganda of “Sovexportfilm” in its work with foreign states within the framework of the foreign policy pursued by the USSR. The article examines the main aspects of the organizational activities of “Sovexportfilm”, the history of the creation and reorganization of the association, the mechanisms and efficiency of its work. The specifics of the export of products to the countries of Western Europe, the USA, Latin America, the countries of Asia and Africa are determined. The article pays particular attention to a comparative analysis of the principles of conducting propaganda aimed at foreign countries employed by the USSR and the United States as far as a number of aspects are concerned, including organizational activity, production capacity, and repertoire policy. The analysis of the sources enables to trace the main stages of the development of “Sovexportfilm” as an agent of foreign policy influence, to identify the shortcomings in the system of export of film, and also to highlight the reasons for the failure of the association’s activities in the last stages of the Cold War. Based on the results of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that “Sovexportfilm”, initially possessing a powerful starting potential for promoting Soviet films abroad, due to a number of objective factors and mistakes in organization of its work by the 1980s, ceased to perform the function of spreading ideological influence through the Soviet cinema.
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In the study examining the representation of women in the context of feminist ideology; In order to understand the conceptual framework and the ideological and sociological structure of the period, first of all, Georgian history is explained and then information on Georgian cinema is given. In order to make the study understandable, Georgian films from the Soviet Union period and the Post-Soviet period were chosen as samples.The films selected and included in the sample were examined within the framework of feminist theory, adhering to the descriptive analysis method, and ideological analysis in terms of social dynamics was also included in the films discussed from time to time. In the analyzed works, descriptive analysis was used to reveal how women are represented within the framework of feminist theory. In the five Georgian films included in the sample, the representation of female characters on the screen was examined with the descriptive analysis method within the framework of feminist theory. By ex amining the patriarchal view in the films that were shot in two different periods historically, the representation of women in the patriarchal Georgian society was tried to be determined by film analysis. It has been determined that the representation of women in Georgian cinema has undergone changes in parallel with political and social events.
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The aim of this study was to analyze the movie "Hachiko: A Dog's Story" in terms of empathy and solidarity with animals. For this purpose, the scenes in the movie were interpreted on the basis of empathic reactions towards animals (cognitive and affective; self/other-oriented) and solidarity with animals (emotions and behaviors such as attachment, belonging, intimacy, and cooperation). The movie is about the attachment between a dog and a human, and it encourages the viewers to understand this attachment. In order for this to happen, audiences should be able to empathize with the protagonist of the movie, Hachi. Through the analysis of the movie, it becomes clear that empathy with animals is depicted in scenes where efforts are made to understand the protagonist's fear, joy, or expectations (self/other-oriented cognitive empathic responses) as well as in scenes where the desire to do something for the protagonist is shown (other-oriented emotional empathic responses). Solidarity with animals is depicted in scenes that include emotions and behaviors such as sharing (time, happiness, sorrow, “bread”), support (helping, assuming care, etc.), and intimacy (desire to be together). Additionally, the movie directs viewers towards a dog's emotions such as joy, loyalty, sorrow, separation, and longing in many scenes.
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Review of: SUNE BECHMANN PEDERSEN, Reel Socialism. Making Sense of History in Czech and German cinema since 1989, Lund 2015, Lund University Press, 326 s., ISBN (neuvedeno).
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The film A Hidden Life, dating from the year 2019, directed by Terrence Malick, has the following subject: Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, married to Franziska, with whom he has three children, refuses to fight under the Nazi command, during the Second World War. Franz’s role becomes significant and harrowing, as he has no choice, but following and watching, like a spectator, his own end. Franz’s decision functions the same as a faustic pact, which he dignifiedly refuses to sign. The plot unleashes in the moment when the German army calls Franz to start his preparation for war. Franz represents the prototype of the hard-working peasant, close to the land and devoted to his work, a person who belongs to a coagulated society, to whom he dedicates himself, with complete confidence. The motif of the land becomes a leitmotif in the literary work, as well as in the movie, reiterated and described several times. The time and the space of the movie are settled even from the beginning, as it follows: the German village Ragegund, Austria, the year 1939. The action of the movie is linear, without obeying a presettled scenario, but only following the plot of the novel, entitled Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison, written by the author Erna Putz. The central character’s positive thoughts determine the movie fans to meditate over the existence, that is the present situation and what could generate his drama, by disturbing the other characters, even the opponent ones. The force of the narration, full of dramatism, generates characters described almost identically with those in the novel.
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The article reveals a lesser-known role of the great playwright Teodor Mazilu, that of a screenwriter. Although he has several collaborations with cinematography, the making of the film "Bariera" is representative. We analyzed the motivations that were the basis of the collaboration with the director Mircea Mureșan, possible satisfactions and regrets, the value of the screening, the similarities and differences between the book and the film, the message and the atmosphere created by the film.
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The aim of the article is to describe the contemporary Russian society, identifying the directions its future development might take, on the basis of a critical analysis of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s fi lms Elena and Loveless. The image of the Russian society with its predominant attitudes towards life, its morality and values conveyed by the fi lms scrutinized in the paper is one of a society demonstrating the logic of war. Adopted as a lifestyle and a philosophy of daily existence, the logic of war is manifested in private lives of individuals, in the functioning of the society as a whole and of its institutions, as well as in the power structures of the Russian state. Such a logic permits unethical behavior and makes it possible for individuals to evade responsibility for their actions justifying them by their personal welfare or an absolute necessity. In the context of the war ongoing in Ukraine, the attitudes adopted by Zvyagintsev’s characters, take on symbolic and prophetic aspects.
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Artificial intelligence is more and more present into all areas of human activity. Art, and music in particular, is no exception to this trend. In the field of sound engineering, there are numerous activities where AI can assist the human sound engineer with great success. For some sound engineering tasks, AI applications are very useful and have great practical positives. In sound processing, analysis and decomposition of a stereophonic mix into its component parts, AI has had considerable success. Cleaning up certain elements of the phonogram is also an area of enviable achievement for AI applications. In a process such as music mastering, AI is again doing quite well (though not perfectly) insofar as its functions consist of application of detailed analytical operations, established algorithms, extrapolation, and synthesis. In more complex tasks such as mixing, for example, where different approaches make the possible variations immeasurably more numerous, AI still has relatively modest success.
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The essay is dedicated to Bogomil Raynov's story Roads to Nowhere and the script of the film “The White Room” based on it. Through parallels with examples of existentialist literature and authors such as J.-P. Sartre and A. Camus, it is shown that the work bears the marks of a literary work created with the pathos of existentialism, which encodes the main stages and dimensions of rebellion (metaphysical, political, artistic). The role of the color white, internal monologue, movement, detail, and the convergent-divergent effect obtained from the use of the second person in the narrative is emphasized. The external signs of chaos and awareness of the absurd are sought. The thesis is defended that with the story Raynov in his way reaches the idea of the conscious choice of responsibility and human solidarity of Je me révolte, donc nous sommes (I rebel, therefore we are!) of Camus.
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For a long time, the Indian subcontinent was under British rule, but more and more Indians fought for independence in the twentieth century, and the British were forced to renounce their rule. In 1947, the British offered independence to two different states, Pakistan and India, which provoked only violence, as the two peoples had lived together for a long period of time and were suddenly being made to choose a side according to their religion; thus began a time of death and sorrow. The traumatic experience of the partition of India from Pakistan is not only recorded by historians, but also by writers, and the current paper will present both the way in which this event is reflected by history and in novels.
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The work of Gustave Flaubert, ”Madame Bovary”, has acquired an international character, under the dome of globalization that has captured artistic fields, such as literature or cinema. Bovarism in the aforementioned novel has been the subject of no less than 18 films made for cinema, from Europe to America and for many other television films. He was also the subject of plays, one of which was performed on the stage of the National Theater in Bucharest in 1941. I considered necessary to make a foray into the performing arts, having as reference the literary work signed by Gustave Flaubert, studing interferences, differences reflection of reality, peculiarities. In the context of the third millennium, an inter-/ trans disciplinary approach can validate a concept specific to the third millennium - complex knowledge.
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The article examines the globalization of the 21st century, which is driven by the postmodernist processes of decanonization that create a hybrid cultural environment in the present. The main focus of the text is the film-literature relationship, which is both synergistic and competitive in the market of cultural products. The article presents key postmodern novels from the 80s and 90s of the last century and their film adaptations, which even in the 21st century reproduce with the techniques of cinema a common, archetypal, futuristic, fictional model. Cinema and literature in the third millennium are subordinated to corporate interests and media giants, and the rhizomatic interface between the arts argues for the ubiquitous hybridization of culture. In conclusion, the dialogical modes between world literature, world cinema, and world media are highlighted.
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Theater is not only a place where one can admire artistic craftsmanship - it is also an institution that can act as a moral compass. Acting was a form of art, therefore, actors influenced the way the society perceived reality. One of the most famous actors in the history of Polish film and theater is Aleksander Bożydar Żabczyński. He was also one of the artists that were very much a subject of interest of the security services of the Polish People’s Republic. The security services wanted to infiltrate the artistic circles, which included surveillance of Żabczyński himself. Thanks to the obtained information, the authorities wanted to prevent the groups from undertaking any anti-government actions.
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The article analyses painter, graphic artist and stage designer Ilmārs Blumbergs’ (1943–2016) artworks in which he thematises the body as his intimate space subject to finality and death. Besides existential and intellectual issues, Blumbergs has always been interested in human physical existence in art. Searches for the meaning of the body and bodily states are an important theme in Blumbergs’ art. The author interprets Blumbergs’ self-portraits as imprints of his individual experience. They embody the transformations of the portrait genre in Latvian art since the 1980s; thus in his case, the traditional boundaries of the genre are significantly expanded. Affect theory as a critical discourse in the social sciences and humanities surged in the mid-1990s. This article deals with affect theory and the possibilities of using it in the interpretation of artworks. The author provides a brief insight into the history of studying affect, the meaning of the terms affectus and affectio in the shaping of two paradigms in this theory: affect as an elementary state and affect as an intensive power. The article emphasises those facets of the theory which relate to the body, bodily reactions as well as aspects of the artwork’s creation and perception. Several theoretical approaches of how to view an artwork through the prism of affect theory have been examined in the article. Focusing on the aspect of the affect’s working and influence, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995), in collaboration with the philosopher and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari (1939–1992), developed the theoretical trend of affect as an intensive force, and this perspective seems to be the most appropriate for the research of art. According to Deleuze’s and Guattari’s philosophical stance, affect is a result of the clash between organic or inorganic bodies; it is also present in the artwork as a peculiar aesthetics of materials and forms where colouring, surface texture, mass and volume are significant. Considering the mutual connection between affect and body, the article outlines several conceptions of the body identifiable in Blumbergs’ art, including body as a space where the battle for survival takes place, and the performative body as a constituent part of the artwork. The author takes up the interpretation of works titled “Me Myself in Strontium Radiation” (2010–2012) and “My Head in Strontium Radiation”, concluding that Blumbergs’ body in “Strontium” works is real, corporeal and affected by external conditions, while at the same time being abstract too. Material and abstract features are united in the context of affect studies. In other words, the body depicted in the artwork and related to the affect can be viewed as an indivisible unity embracing both spiritual and material substances. From the perspective of Deleuze’s affect theory defining affect as an intensive force, the idea of active matter comes to the fore. Strontium radiation depicted in Blumbergs’ paintings is a representation of “expressive” matter. The author invites viewers to spot connotations of affect and bodily reactions in several of Blumbergs’ works. In the performance “The Drawings are in the Box” (2003), the artist has used his body as a part of the artwork. Equipped with sheets of paper, charcoal sticks and loose charcoal, the artist drew lines and scratches with his naked body, leaving traces on the plane of the paper. Creating a soundtrack was important for this performance. Alongside other associations, emotions and reflection possibly caused by this artwork, the viewer (listener) could have quite an affective reaction of goosebumps caused by such a sound. In the series of photographic portraits “House-Keeping” (2002) Blumbergs has captured himself and his closest associates, emphasising the process of aging. In these photographic works he stresses the biological nature of the human body, its inescapable finality that is the main bodily limitation experienced by everyone. Body and ash as a metaphor or tangible matter is revealed in ten large-sized photographs, portraying a man’s body and skin that was part of the multi-media exposition in the exhibition “A Prayer for Seeing” in the Riga Gallery in 2004. The motif of ashes has a special place in Blumbergs’ art as a connection with his friend Imants Tilbergs (1939–2023) who was Blumbergs’ model or alter ego in most photographs as well as in the short films “Man” (2004), “Room” (2007) and “Ashes” (2010). In the film “Man”, Blumbergs created a peculiar human portrait in the interior. Blumbergs himself and Tilbergs are doing performative actions but the shabby room with dusty furniture and a rundown sofa serve as a static background for naked male figures, briefly entering the shot in a disorderly and unexpected manner. The film lasts no more than a few minutes but its viewing demands concentration from the spectator who is confronted with a rapid change of shots and a sudden noise able to cause anxiety by the means of image and sound. Therefore, besides the thematisation of the body, one can speak about yet another point of intersection between affect and art in the context of this video – the artwork’s ability to cause not only certain emotional states but also to affect the viewer directly. The author concludes the article with at least three conceptions of the body emerging in Blumbergs’ art. Firstly, this is the body as an inner, closed space where the ongoing processes are captured. Secondly, representation of the body as it interacts and connects with other bodies, with space and the outer world. Thirdly, the body as a constituent part of the artwork, meaning its direct involvement in the artwork as a performative act. Discussion about affect in the context of Blumbergs’ art is significant because spiritual and bodily dimensions, the latter unfortunately and inevitably encountering illness, are equally manifested in his art.
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The oneiric universe is present in almost all of Samuel Beckettʼs work, if only in the aspect of a form of reverie as found in modified states of consciousness, distinct from the usual states of mind, and which are often quite closeto trance or hypnotic states, or even, sometimes, to quite problematic psychologicalstates. At first glance, all of Beckettʼs characters are dreamers, but by dint offollowing them in their inner turmoil, we may discover the signs of a deeper if notfunding activity of the spirit. Oneirism in Beckett, when it is not the simplerepresentation of its phenomenality, can be part of an articulatory strategy ofsimulacra of deep experiences of the psyche, most of the time in connection withexistential questions which are neatly brought into the spectatorʼs field ofconsciousness, so that, with the guard down or in no way forced to “connect” to the genre of discourse, (s)he finally lets her/ himself be experientially inhabited by it.In the opening of this article, I will present a brief overview of the formal, aspectualdiversity of oneirism in a few short pieces by Samuel Beckett: …but the clouds…,Nacht und Träume, What Where and Ghost Trio. Then, most of the development isdedicated to the descriptive analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Film, which will highlightthe richness of dreamlike forms and contents from his uniquely non-verbaldiscourse. Its aspectual diversity ranges from philosophy with phenomenologicaland existential tints, to the anthropology of rites and popular beliefs, and even topsychoanalysis, for the sharpness of the figures of the work of the dream which relate to it, as surprised in the field of manifestations of this unique cinematographic work.
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While going through some cultural expressions in texts and images, this article proposes reflections on ways in which the practice of poetics, in the sense of creative making, needs to encounter, address, and overcome difficulty in order to facilitate the contribution of the imagination and the acts of “imaging” it allows, to the figuration of the new. Encounter is the key word, indicating plurality and process. Nothing is fixed; hence, not “identity” as something permanent, but instead, in the encounter, identification with others, other fields, other ideas, other images becomes appealing and possible.In the painstaking attempts to think up new ideas, one encounters difficulty, which needs to be overcome. Only through encounters this becomes thinkable, and that makes imaging something so far unheard of, possible. The ‘poetic’ side of psychopoetics, making through (as traversing) and with (as its material) the reflections emanating from the unconscious as they appear at the edge of consciousness, is what binds together the different disciplines as we know them, in a knot of creativity, imagining, and thinking what we did not know.
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After World War II, culture became a tool that the communist authorities used to take over the so-called government of souls in Poland. Therefore, they introduced revolutionary changes in that field to bring it in line with the Soviet models. The state was to be the sole patron, setting the directions for artists to follow, and the relevant party bodies or institutions were to control creative processes to ensure that they did not become distorted in a way inconsistent with the prevailing ideology. According to the theorists, this was the only way to ensure more efficient management of culture and a better understanding of its needs. The communists used creators for their own purposes in a utilitarian way and, at the same time, they pushed those who refused to comply to the margins of social life. The article is an attempt to describe the state of research in the period from the publication of the 2014 issue of “Memory and Justice” dedicated to the subject in question until today. For over a dozen years, scientific research has been conducted in that field, the purpose of which is to explain and describe the mechanisms of the authorities’ influence on creative circles in the period from 1944 to 1989. The progress made is noticeable, although the degree to which individual environments are described greatly varies. The best results have been achieved in the field of writers or filmmakers, though a lot of work still needs to be done when it comes to musicians or visual artists.
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In Art History, the representation of the female figure has an important role, since as early as the prehistoric period and the Venus figurines and is respective to the social and cultural conditions that differ from era to era and place to place. As these data are linked to social stereotypes and the construction of the social gender, the woman as an object of representation is transformed according to her role as a social subject. The artists derive their themes from both myth and reality regarding how the female identity is transformed. This research proposal focuses on a comparative analysis of the works of two contemporary artists who draw their themes from Jewish religious tradition and women’s lives in the Middle East. These are the sculpture Lot’s Wife, by the Greek sculptor Froso Efthymiadi-Menegaki, and the film Turbulent, by the Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat. The research is based on the theory of social gender, as formulated by the Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell, and the theory of social representations, introduced by the French social psychologist Serge Moscovici.
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