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This paper offers a critical review and summary of the results of previous interdisciplinary studies of the pillar from Donja Zgošća near Kakanj. Comparative examples of the decorative motifs on stecaks and other relevant artistic material were consulted for this new iconographical analysis and interpretation of the reliefs on this fine tombstone. The shape and original position of the pillar, selection of motifs and its relationship with the large gabled tombstone from the same necropolis, point to a single iconographic programme which sought to contextualise the role of patrons as well as the teleological ductus of that time. The presentations of the Four Gospels within the arch of the church portal, the unique scene of an altar, and the two tau crosses on sun discs over a Calvary base, are directly associated with the epitaph on the pillar and the iconographic content of the gabled tombstone. A review of the reading of the epitaph on the plaster cast of the pillar in the Glyptotheque in Zagreb revealed three names - Dragiša, Batalo and Tvrtko - and it can also be read as a reference to two brothers at the beginning of the inscription. This is the context for the attempt to reconstruct the original relationship between the patrons and the three deceased. The pillar and the gabled tombstone both date from the very early 15th century, which once again raises the possibility that the monument was erected posthumously to two members of the Kotromanić dynasty.
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The paper discusses pilot empirical studies focused on the impact of family ownership on the course and strategies of internationalization of family business groups on the example of LPP. LPP is one of the largest family business groups in Poland and one of the bigger family business groups in Europe dealing with clothes designing and distribution. Internationalization strategy of LPP was assessed based on the analyses of activities on each geographical market and financial indicators generated by LPP from foreign markets. Obtained results have allowed us to clearly state that: LPP internationalization strategy fits the Uppsala model and in the case of the LPP internationalization is a valid growth strategy because positive correlation between the strategy and financial performance of the company has been confirmed. The main research methods used for this article are a literature study and a case study.
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This paper examines the new forms and genres of storytelling in India with an emphasis on the visual aspect of the literary narration. It begins with a remark on the literary and performing tradition of India, where stories were told with an accompaniment of visuals: single or sequential images, scroll paintings, acting etc. With time, storytellers and poets started including modern-day, contemporary themes and problems into their narratives, which not only brought changes in the repertoire of stories, but also, quite naturally, caused development in terms of genres and ways of expression. The present study is based on graphic novels by Sarnath Banerjee and Vishwajyoti Ghosh, with reference to contemporary Hindi literature and some examples from visual art. The author seeks to answer the following questions: 1) what is the “new language” of a literary work in relation to the visual, 2) how – and by which means – does the literature reflect the reality of the new generations, 3) how is a story narrated through images. In conclusion, some observations are made on mutual influences between literature and audio-visual arts.
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In my text I refer to contemporary art practices, including my own artistic investigations and intuitions; questioning creative powers of the human brain-mind system in the world increasingly dependent on and transformed by Big Data. Currently, with the global revolution of knowledge, driven by scientific and technological progress, creativity and innovation acquire special economic and social values. Research on biochemical processes accompanying creative behaviour stimulates the synergy between artistic, scientific and engineering communities. The acquired knowledge is used in medicine, biotechnology and various types of therapies as well as in deep learning methods. Increasing the efficiency of artificial intelligence systems that quickly take control over all areas of our lives. Will the nascent Internet-of-all-Things transform itself into the Internet-of-all Minds? As an artist, I pose myself a question, which artistic practices may emerge from the marriage of biological and digital algorithms? The future has many scenarios and shades…
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According to Thomas Elsaesser, Julia Kristeva’s theoretical concept of abjection has extended beyond the psychoanalytical realm, receiving critical support in social and cultural studies, as a mode of defiance beyond victimhood. The author of the article chose Andrea Arnold’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights (2011) to probe the applicability of Kristeva’s concept for the purpose of film analysis. The film text is positioned in the wider context of the heritage film tradition (dark heritage), in the paradigm of Elsaesser’s cinema of abjection (haunted by traumatic history) and in Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality (disturbance of the political/social/cultural order). Arnold’s version of the classical Gothic novel accentuates the abjection of the “monstrous Other” through the issues of body, race and ethnicity. The article examines to what extent film can confront us with three fundamental modes of abjection: abject terror, abject language and the abject self.
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Are there any parallels between the life in the Weimar Republic and in present-day Germany? Is the fate of a labourer living in Berlin at the end of the 1920s comparable to the existence of an African refugee in the German capital today? And finally, is it possible to contemporize and to re-mediatize the story so that the time difference (almost a hundred years) and the media difference (book vs film) between its versions would not purge it of its charm and wisdom – in short, its significance? The answer to all these questions is: yes. The author of the article analyses similarities and differences between the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin (1929) and the film Berlin Alexanderplatz by Burhan Qurbani (2020) in the context of postcolonial theory, social determinism, and the categories of the abject and victim introduced by Thomas Elsaesser.
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The perspective of new animism offers an approach to the subjectivity and the relation between nature and culture, the human and non-human, as well as the animate and the inanimate, that differs from the one founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Marginal in Polish culture, this current can be found in film representations of paganism that nevertheless lend it the status of a repressed phenomenon or one tamed by the context of Christianity. The authors of contemporary Polish films that refer to this tradition look for an alternative to a world that is hierarchical, dualistic and based on an anthropocentric model. They connect with paganism though their egalitarian attitude towards animals (Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor), respect for the agency of plants (Agnieszka Holland’s Charlatan), belief in spirits beyond the Christian context (Małgorzata Szumowska’s Never Gonna Snow Again and Body), awareness of the natural environment (Katarzyna Klimkiewicz and Dominga Sotomayor Castillos’s La Isla) or reference to tribal cultures (Zbigniew Libera’s Walser). At the same time, these works re-evaluate said tradition, treating it as a “rescue perspective” in the face of the current civilizational crisis.
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At the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of Andrzej Munk’s The Passenger, Tadeusz Lubelski said that for Jean-Luc Godard, this was the best war film ever directed. Although it would be difficult to find documents confirming these words, the author of the article decided to rethink this statement and answer the question why The Passenger could be considered as the best war film. In so doing, the author attempts to perform the “work of imagination” which Didi-Huberman proposed as a method of fight against “the unimaginable”, a fight which is always undertaken “in spite of all”. In this article, the premises of Didi-Huberman’s method and Benjamin’s historical materialism are used to rethink montage in The Passenger. This work is a unique example of a film finished after the death of its author. The unusual montage used in The Passenger invites reflection about the trauma of image. At the same time, it is an exceptional testimony of image extracted from the mud of “the unimaginable”, an image saved from oblivion.
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Alan Clarke’s later films – like Made in Britain (1983), Christine (1987), Elephant (1989) – reveal a fully crystalized, mature creative strategy of the director. This strategy is defined by extreme reduction and repetitiveness of the narrative, emphasis on the compulsiveness of the characters’ actions, concentration on behavioural aspects combined with a radical rejection of psychology. It is realized primarily through long “walking” shots, and it results in a corporeal, trans-like experience of the film, in a specific relationship of the viewer with the characters and also, consequently, with the body of the film itself. Clarke forces on the viewer the constant contact with the human figure on the screen, while methodically depriving him or her of the possibility of identification. The author problematizes this disturbed identification by analyzing Alan Clarke’s films and by situating them in the context of Robert Bresson’s Notes on Cinematography, which in a way anticipate Clarke’s style, and also in relation to the theoretical concepts of bodily perception of the cinema developed by Jennifer M. Barker.
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The premise of the text is to look at Hashima as an island that generates a double crack. It is both a crack in the seascape and an imperfection which the island-ruin constitutes in itself. The reflection takes into account historical conditions of the island, the time of its development, and the contemporaneity of the city of ruins. Abandonment of huge buildings and “orphaned” everyday objects, as well as rapid displacement of the island’s inhabitants, condemned the place to disappearance. This is countered by creative activities in which artists try to call for Hashima’s past and present, using the ruins as part of the discourse of memory, trace, disappearance, and re-presentation of former inhabitants. Accumulated images, tropes actualized by artists and perpetuated in media clearly indicate the need to deal with this space of emptiness, ruins, and specific embalming of bygone times.
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The article discusses the films addressing the effects of radioactive contamination that occurred in March 2011 as a result of an accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Starting from the concept of disaster as perceived by French philosophers – Jacques Derrida, Maurice Blanchot, and Jean-Luc Nancy – the author focuses on how this topic has been presented in Japanese documentaries and feature films, whose makers tried to deal with the unimaginable, confronted various ethical dilemmas, and reflected on the issue of human responsibility for the surrounding world and natural disasters caused by our activities.
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The conventions of the post-apocalyptic cinema enforce a specific aesthetics, and its visual dominant is often dirt. This element is usually contrasted with the alleged purity of the world before a catastrophe. Mad Max: Fury Road (dir. George Miller, 2015) seems to be an example of this strategy. However, the article shows that Miller’s work reveals an interesting ambivalence: suggesting the legitimacy of the dirt-purity opposition typical of the convention, the film simultaneously undermines it. Therefore, in Mad Max: Fury Road we can see three different systems of meaning based on these categories. The first one is a consequence of the accepted convention, the next two show the original author’s vision and represent a successful artistic attempt to overcome the typical perception of some features of the post-apocalyptic world. The article uses elements of Roland Barthes’s semiotic analysis of film, as well as Mary Douglas’s findings on the category of dirt and purity in culture.
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An interview with Krzysztof Ostrowski, a comics artist, director of music videos, and author of a documentary film with animated parts: Łódź 1993-2001. Ostrowski comments on the artistic shape of his music videos and comics. He derives it from avant-garde comics. In his opinion, comics and animation – as a medium based on keyframes – are close to each other.
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Filmic biography enjoys continued popularity among viewers. Its status, however, remains paradoxical. Filmmakers make biopics while openly distancing themselves from the formula, researchers, in turn, avoid theorizing about them. The article identifies and discusses a number of issues related to biopic as a genre that are overlooked or ignored in critical reflection. It focuses on the definition, characteristics, internal differentiation of the formula, cycles that evolved out of it, references to other genres and the cultivation of the idea of the Great Man. Recalling and highlighting those issues allows to address less know contexts of the functioning of film biography.
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Images that we know from the media of a mob attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021 revoke scenes from films about revolutions, like La Marseillaise (1938) by Jean Renoir, La Révolution française (1989) by Robert Enrico and Richard T. Heffron, or Reds (1981) by Warren Beatty. None of these scenes has the power of Sergei Eisenstein’s October (1928). As we know, the way the attack on the Winter Palace is depicted by Eisenstein has little to do with real events, but it has shaped the collective vision of the October Revolution for decades. It also became a simulacrum for what happened in Washington, DC.
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The article discusses the presentations of Stanisław Barańczak and his poetry in Poznań’s urban space. The poet’s presentification is exemplified by the murals that have been created on the walls of buildings in Poznań after the writer’s death.
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The article presents the experiences of loss, grief, and mourning endured by Josef Váchal and described by him in his book In memoriam Marie Váchalové (1923). Josef Váchal, who was one of the leading artists of the Czech art in the twentieth century, was a pioneer of printmaking in Czechia, famous for his woodcuts. He was also an interesting painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. While reading, the reader turns from the verbal description to the visual one and back again, since the book combines words and images. It contains 45 colour and 25 black-and-white woodcuts. This is a very personal and intimate confession of pain after the death of the artist’s wife, but also the record of his remorse and guilt for the romance he had in the last years of her life. However, the book also raises important metaphysical questions. Standing watch over the coffin and catafalque, Váchal photographed the dead woman for two days. The photographs became the basis for his woodcuts included in the book. The aim of this activity was not so much to commemorate his wife as to tell the story of the posthumous fate of the soul, which fascinated the artist as a mystic, interested also in the esoteric knowledge and spiritualism. The article deals with questions about the relationship between demonism and holiness, as shown and experienced by Váchal, and about his understanding of death and God.
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Conference Report: Sprawozdanie z międzynarodowej konferencji naukowej „Filozofi a bycia i przetrwania w ego-dokumentach pisarzy, malarzy i filmowców ukraińskich (od czasów Orlika do współczesnych)”. (Filip Świerczyński)
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