CEEOL - Browse Subjects Result

We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.

Kino gatunków a cykle filmowe

Author(s): Elżbieta Durys / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

Film genres – alongside the star system and classic narration – are one of the pillars of the Hollywood system. Film genres, as well as film cycles, have been and still are one of the key elements of the workings of mainstream American film. In this article the author looks at the concept of film cycles paving its way towards scientific analysis. The problematic nature of the genre approach in the history of film studies is the starting point for incorporating the concept of film cycles into academic research.

More...

Imitacja, rekonstrukcja, propaganda. Zimnowojenne wędrówki europejskiego westernu

Author(s): Michał Bobrowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The article deals with West and East German films about the American Wild West made in the period of 1962-1983. The films from both sides of the Berlin Wall, the majority of which was co-produced with Yugoslavia, are discussed in a broader perspective of the Cold War geopolitical situation, as well as in the context of the changes taking place in American and European western at the time. The West German adaptations of Charles May’s novels are the apotheosis of the conservative and pro-American ideology of the classical western, while the polemical East German Indianerfilme refer to the aesthetics and in some respects to the revisionist world views of American anti-western and Italian spaghetti-western. The context of Yugoslav cinematography, and especially characteristic for the propaganda apparatus tendency to combine Hollywood patterns with socialist ideology, is also an important theme.

More...

Rodzinne podobieństwa. Kino Władysława Pasikowskiego a kilka filmów z półwyspu Koulun

Author(s): Marcin Adamczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The article presents “family similarities” between Władyslaw Pasikowski’s early films and several popular films by John Woo and Ringo Lama made in Hong Kong. The surprising similarity of motifs includes: the image of male friendship together with homoerotic accents, the status of women, the variability of identity and melancholy in the context of the decline of the familiar social order. In spite of lack of direct inspiration, the explanation of this similarity seems to lie in the use of similar aesthetic patterns (mainly American) and some production analogies leading to the simultaneous creation of films characterised by common elements in geographically and culturally distant film cultures. A separate theme is the association of these titles with the VHS culture of the last two decades of the 20th century. Therefore the article ends with a critical fragment on Pasikowski as a director whose work was made most popular through the medium of the VHS.

More...

Niedyskretny urok seriali w epoce streamingu

Author(s): Ewa Mazierska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The author of the article presents the reasons why modern film series are considered to be high quality products surpassing the cinema. Mazierska analyses their textual properties, as well as the typical way of consuming them, referred to as binge watching or feasting. She also tries to assess their value from the perspective of promoting egalitarian values and the ideal of amateurism. The text is based on rich empirical material, but special attention is given to three particular series: “Lost” (2004-2010), “Prison Break” (2005-2009) and “Breaking Bad” (2008-2013).

More...

„Studenta z Pragi” żywot dwudziestodwuletni, czyli o pierwszym w historii kina filmie grozy i jego dwóch remake’ach

Author(s): Piotr Kurpiewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The text presents an analysis of the pioneering horror film “The Student of Prague” (directed by Stellan Rye) and two subsequent screen versions of the story inspired by the Faustian motif of selling one’s soul to the devil. The author considers the changes that took place in the poetics and the way of filmmaking in Germany over the period of just over twenty years. The years 1913-1935 included several periods in the history of German cinematography, which is reflected in the films analysed.

More...

Polskojęzyczne remaki filmów z Hollywood. Powrót do Joinville

Author(s): Paweł Sitkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The article is an attempt at a description of the backstage of the making and the reception of five Polish language films made in the Joinville studio near Paris. Previous publications perpetuated a negative, and even a somewhat satirical view of the cooperation of Polish filmmakers with the Paramount. The author checks whether the black legend of the Babel studios from Joinville, where remakes in numerous languages were made, is confirmed by film historians and periodicals of the time. He also tries to answer the question of the lack of commercial success of any of the Polish “talkies”, and the failure of Adolph Zukor’s initiative.

More...

Od robotnicy do gwiazdy flamenco. Metamorfozy Carmen w kinie hiszpańskim

Author(s): Joanna Aleksandrowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The analysis of five different Spanish screen adaptations of Carmen by Prosper Mérimée reveals how these films, made in different periods, reflect cultural and political changes, dominant ideologies and changing fashions and fantasies. In Spanish film adaptations Carmen has many faces. She is considered to be an icon of españolada, at the same time she is a proud Gypsy pretending to be a Basque, a rebel desiring freedom above all else, yet another incarnation of femme fatale, but also a converted sinner – pious and in love with a soldier, and not with her own independence. On-screen references to Carmen, often dressed in ironic quotation marks and appearing on the margins of – it would appear – unrelated stories are also interesting.

More...

Filmowe igrzyska Sienkiewiczem podszyte, czyli „Quo Vadis” na dużym ekranie

Author(s): Anna Miller-Klejsa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The paper concentrates on feature films based upon “Quo Vadis” by Henryk Sienkiewicz – a novel about ancient Rome which contributed to the writer’s Nobel Prize for literature and has been translated into more than forty languages. These star-studded movies (“Quo Vadis?” dir. E. Guazzoni /1913/, “Quo Vadis?” dir. G. D’Annunzio, G. Jacoby /1925/, “Quo Vadis”, dir. M. LeRoy /1951/, “Quo Vadis”, dir. J. Kawalerowicz /2001/) usually employed standard patterns of historical melodrama: the love story between Roman patrician and young Christian woman named Lygia is set against the broader historical background of early Christianity and its persecution by Nero. Regardless of time period and country of production, each of these films included the climax scene of bloody games – with Christian martyrs dying at the arena theater. The paper focuses on diverse cinematic designs of this bloodshed spectacle; furthermore, it tackles upon the multi-layered contexts of the representations of key historical figures (notably Nero and St. Peter).

More...

Kinowa „mobilność wyobrażeniowa” – „Na Fali” Kathryn Bigelow i remake Ericsona Core’a

Author(s): Małgorzata Radkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The text is an analysis of Kathryn Bigelow’s “Point Break” (1991) and its remake of 2015, directed by Ericson Core. The comparison between the two versions illustrates the differences between narration, style, atmosphere and meaning of each, resulting from different attitudes of the filmmakers to genre formulas and conventions governing the presentation of male characters. The idea of a remake can be considered in terms of the category of “imaginative mobility” created by John Urry, who treats all mobility as the core of social life. In the interpretation of each film, it is necessary to refer to social and cultural contexts, including such phenomena as the new spirituality described by Zbigniew Pasek. The extensive analysis of male characters reflects different attitudes of filmmakers to models of masculinity and related images. That is why the author refers to the concept of John Bly (American specialist in men’s studies) and the critical approach of Pierre Bourdieu.

More...

Tematy wędrowne jako pamięć kina

Author(s): Marek Hendrykowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The article contains a synthesized panorama of means and methods of studying the phenomenon of migratory themes which have been present for longer and shorter periods of time in the context of film art and culture. The author is in favour of an eclectic, interdisciplinary approach to this issue, which will permit one to select the most appropriate discipline and research method depending on the questions asked and ways of approaching the complex subject of migratory themes. The proposed approach does not mean the pursuit of full scientific universality, but enables the synoptic identification of this phenomenon in selected aspects.

More...

Motyw „oblężonego domu” jako topos amerykańskiego kina w kontekście rozważań na temat remake’ów, sequeli, prequeli i hidden-remake’ów

Author(s): Piotr Kletowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

Referring to classical anthropological theories of the symbolic dimension of proxemic relations (S. Kracauer, M. Lurker), the author analyses the motif of the “besieged house” as typical of American cinema since Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” (1915) to this day (modern action cinema, claustrophobic sci-fi thrillers like Cloverfield Lane 10 /2016/ by Don Trachtenberg). The author argues that the films that take up this motif reflect in a direct or metaphorical way the current socio-political situation of American society, which – as a collective – during moments of crisis, perceives itself as a threatened community in a confined space, which space becomes a besieged fortress to be defended at all cost. This motif – used and transformed by directors such as H. Hawks, S. Peckinpah, G. A. Romero, J. Carpenter, J. McTiernan – made many original films dealing with this topic the basis of numerous references, alterations and hidden remakes (that is films, which are obviously new versions of already existing films, but for various reasons, usually connected with copyright, cannot be considered to be true remakes).

More...

Przymus powtarzania i trauma historyczna – filmowe obrazy rzezi nankińskiej

Author(s): Krzysztof Loska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The starting point of the article is the question of the possibility of presenting traumatic events in cinema on the example of Chinese films about the Nanking Massacre. Loska seeks to show that the recreation of historical events on screen takes place in these films in two different ways: some filmmakers highlight the discontinuity and fragmentary nature of the narrative, seeing in this an opportunity to grasp the radical incomprehensibility of traumatic experience; others choose a linear structure, bringing consolation, by “sacramental” trauma. The analysis of films by Luo Guanqun, Mou Dunfei, Wu Ziniu, Deng Jianguo, Lu Chuan and Zhang Yimou leads the author to conclude that in documentary and experimental films dominates the first form, while the second one – in historical feature films, that can be classified as part of cinema of new memory, because of the directors’ efforts to impose a dominant narrative, entanglement in the political context and the desire to shape the national identity.

More...

„Długie ujęcie naszego miasta z tamtego wzgórza”, czyli o władzy spojrzenia w brytyjskich filmach realizmu społecznego lat 60. i 80.

Author(s): Karolina Kosińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

In 1984 Andrew Higson published an article concerning space, landscape and spectacle in British ‘Kitchen Sink’ cinema of the 1960s. Discussing the matter of authority of the look in the context of class, Higson singled out one very expressive and emblematic shot, insistently recurring in almost all these New Wave films: That Long Shot of Our Town from that Hill. This kind of shot – showing characters looking at their town from the nearby hill – seems to be rather controversial in class terms as it problematizes the question of who is looking at whom and, therefore, who is creating the image of the characters and their world. Does the authority of the look belong to the working class characters, or to the middle class filmmakers (and, most likely, viewers)? Kosińska questions Higson’s views by offering her own standpoint and analysing parallel Long Shots of Our Town from that Hill as expressed in 1980s films by Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke.

More...

O zaślepieniu, nieprzejrzystości i reinkarnacji. „Zaćma” Ryszarda Bugajskiego

Author(s): Grzegorz Nadgrodkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

In his article Nadgrodkiewicz presents an analysis of selected scenes from the movie “Blindness” (“Zaćma”, 2016) directed by Ryszard Bugajski. For the author the main interpretative context is the tradition of the passion film – a subgenre within religious film – which is based on reiterated evocation of the archetypical image of the Passion of Jesus Christ that undergoes different artistic transformations in a movie. The author argues that “Blindness” can be perceived as a film that in its deep, oneiric layer of narration reveals itself as a peculiar remake of the passion theme. In order to reinforce the thesis Nadgrodkiewicz proposes a theoretic model of the wandering of the topos of the Way of the Cross and then states that Bugajski’s film in some sense disguises itself in the viewer’s eyes, hiding its status of a remake. The article is recapitulated with the metaphor of the reincarnation as an everlasting wandering of the topoi.

More...

Dyskretny urok „populuxe” – intertekstualne wędrówki scen z „Design for Dreaming”

Author(s): Antoni Michnik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The author examines the inter-textual wanderings of fragments of William H. Beaudine’s “Design for Dreaming” (1964), produced for General Motors. He describes American short industrial films of the 1950s and 1960s, and then – starting with the David Mallet music video for David Bowie’s “Hello Spaceboy” – he traces the scenes from “Design for Dreaming” in various areas of visual culture (commercials, videoclips, series, feature films). The category of “populuxe” aesthetics created by Thomas Hine and Svetlana Boym’s reflections on nostalgia form a theoretical framework for this article.

More...

Sfilmować/opowiedzieć śmierć. „Grabarz” Sándora Kardosa jako film „przyliteracki”

Author(s): Rafał Koschany / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The starting point of this essay is the issue of film adaptations of poetry and poetic prose. They do not happen in the cinema too often, and when they do, it is in the form of animation or experimental work. In this sense, Sándor Kardos’ “Gravedigger” (“A sírásó”) – as a full-length feature film – is a unique work. Koschany, in his interpretation, focuses mainly on the director’s storytelling as a film equivalent of Rainer Maria Rilke’s story. Thanks to the slit camera and further deformation of the image, with the emphasis on the auditory layer (Rilke’s text, with directorial amplifications, was here almost entirely read by the actors), and thanks to numerous similarities of film or film tape to the book, Kardos obtained an “archaic” and “literary-related” effect, while at the same time creating a thoroughly modern work. In this manner the eternal theme of love and death, so important for Rilke, has been told again, but in a form that surpasses the limits of what is usually considered to be a film.

More...

„Czynić widzialnym”. Film jako poszerzone, wirtualne pole dzieła sztuki

Author(s): Filip Lipiński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The article provides an opportunity to reconsider selected Polish films about art (e.g. “Multiple Realities of Leon Chwistek”, dir. R. Waśko; “A Trace”, dir. H. Włodarczyk; “Dream and Image”, dir. B. Dziworski; “Praise the Bull”, dir. A. Papuziński) as a specifically conceived laboratory of the work of art. In the film environment an interpretative visualisation takes place of its expanded, virtual field – that is making visible and “testing” that, which up till now remained in the intuitive responsive sphere, the discursively explicated interpretative projection of the viewer/historian of art, or the imaginary horizon of the artist. In the first part of the article, the author outlines the theoretical basis for thinking about the type of “creative document” in the area of this genre and explains his understanding of the terms “expanded field” and “virtuality”. The next two parts of the text are analyses of selected films with particular focus on two issues: visualisation of “life” and “unconsciousness” of a work of art.

More...

Władysława Szpilmana sygnał czołówki Polskiej Kroniki Filmowej (1951)

Author(s): Maciej Gołąb / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

The subject of the author’s deliberations is the signal for the opening of the Polish Film Chronicle composed by Władysław Szpilman in 1951 – one of the most popular signals in the Polish audiosphere of the time, inseparable from the Polish cinema for four decades of the Polish People’s Republic and at the beginning of the Third Polish Republic. Gołąb cites the composer’s remarks on the circumstances of the creation of the composition. The aim of the article is the critique, analysis and interpretation of sources located in the Documentary and Feature Films Studio in Warsaw. The analysis of the form and the musical content of the mini-polonaise is made first on the basis of a manuscript record of the score, followed by both source phonographic records (1951 and 1970). The author answers questions: what features influenced the mastery of this short composition? What is the difference in performance between the two historical recordings? And why Wojciech Kilar’s polonaise signal for the main news programme of the socialist era does not equal Szpilman’s composition in value?

More...

Dynamika niemieckiej pamięci

Author(s): Marta Brzezińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

Konrad Klejsa in the book “Pamięć lat nazizmu w niemieckim filmie fabularnym lat 1946-1965” [“The Memory of the Nazi Period in the German Feature Film 1946-1965”] (2015) deals with the problems of German post-war cinema confronting Nazism and its contexts. The author takes up the problem in a complex, extended way, going beyond a typical film studies approach, and his thoughts on films are in tune with his historical and political reflection. The connection between multidimensional reflections on the twenty years of German cinema history in the perspective of the Nazi past is the problem of the study of memory, which incorporates Klejsa’s publication into a universal and international research context. His monograph is a reliable, original study of issues so far selectively and insufficiently developed.

More...

Wyprawa kina (i kultury) w stronę wirtualności

Author(s): Kamil Jędrasiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 97-98/2017

Jędrasiak presents the review of Matylda Szewczyk’s book “W stronę wirtualności. Praktyki artystyczne kina współczesnego” [“Towards Virtuality. Artistic Practices of Contemporary Cinema”] (2015). The review includes above all the comments on the structure of the discussed publication, its main themes and how they form a coherent argument. Szewczyk focuses on selected artistic practices of Peter Greenway, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and Mike Figgis, which offer her an opportunity for a broader cultural reflection. Her argument includes reflection on the ambiguous category of virtuality, the ontology of the film image, the meaning of the figure of the artist, cyberculture and the status of cinema in the era of the new media. The author, aware of the semantic difficulties accompanying the use of contemporary and virtual categories, chooses the latter as the key theoretical tool for describing the changes taking place in contemporary culture. Szewczyk’s book is an inspiring, valuable contribution to today’s film, media and cultural studies.

More...