Er(r)go, (paste the English text) Wojciech Kalaga

Alicja Helman

Cinema as a Proposition for Dialogue. A Historical Sketch.

As film has been progressing not only did it absorb everything within its reach but also, relatively soon, it became a focal point for discussions concerning politics, culture, art, entertainment, and business. With time, it entered a dialogue with new media and the entire sphere of new technology which marched into film production and began to control its distribution, availability, advertisement and storage. The author of the article analyzes the communicative potential dwelling in the subsequent phases of cinema’s evolution. The departure point is constituted by the interpretation of the relations between film and other arts from the dialogical perspective. Mutual exchanges are merely one of the main aspects of this phenomenon; of major significance remain analogies and parallel development, all equally significant for every field of art. By extending the field of study from the correspondence between arts to correspondence between cultures one can observe various forms of coexistence between elements that originate in different cultures. They may function together in harmony or collide, overlap or intersect as well as create connections that can be either immediately obvious or require exegesis and interpretation. Today, cinematic dialogues undergo transformations as they exist in an ever-changing social and communicative space. They require new discourses as they are shaped and developed in an interdisciplinary environment.

Andrzej Pitrus

Film—Video—Arts: Bill Viola’s The Passions

The author of the article interprets The Passions cycle by Bill Viola, initiated in 2000 and concluded with a series of exhibitions in 2003 and afterwards. In many projects composing the cycle, though not in all, Viola used film camera only to transfer the recorded material to video later. His inspirations come form medieval and renaissance art which is exemplified through depiction of objects and characters and clear references to the old paintings. The Passions cycle consists of twenty diverse works connected by the theme of human emotions and containing references to traditional painting techniques. The emotions in question are extreme though often remain undefined as if Viola himself contemplated not only the possibility of their representation, allowed for by the painting medium, but also the spectator’s capacity to recognize and experience them. All works follow a similar pattern: the characters are presented in an identical perspective, always against a black background and illuminated in a hyper-real way. The spectator wonders as for the reasons behind the characters‘ unusual reactions but Viola is reluctant to offer hints and in fact does not even encourage speculations. He reaches the very core of representation without the support of an anecdote or a story.

Krzysztof Loska

Avant-Garde Theater and the Japanese New Wave—The Terayama Case

The turn of the 50s in Japan is marked by a debut of a young generationof film and theater directors. Their artistic undertakings voiced an objection to an aesthetic tradition. Stage artists successfully cooperated with film makers as they shared a similar worldview, leftist sensitivity and their stance expressed the protest against political situation in the country. Film, like theatre, was used as a method of dealing with recent past, previous epoch’s militarism, and as a reflective tool, enabling contemplation over individual and national identity. In such a historical context a new kind of theater, called post-shingeki or Small Theaters Movement, rose to the surface. The purpose of this article, however, is not to discuss general characteristics of the then-current stage avant-garde but an analysis of a particular case, i.e. the works of Shūji Terayama whose most famous plays were staged at European festivals and by some were compared to works by Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook. For years Terayama remained a symbol of countercultural resistance as his shocking stagings and films, aroused controversy and outcry. The intention of the article is to present both sources of inspiration and cultural and political contexts that would facilitate a deeper understanding of Tarayama’s hermetic and problematic works whose purpose was to subvert art’s status in middle-class society, abolish constraints, and create a merger of theater and life.

Maciej Stasiowski

Speculating with Nostalgia…
Cinematic Encounters of Literary and Architectural Utopias.

By confronting literary and architectural utopias the article presents the way they entered a dialogue that took place in cinema. Imagination of experimental architects was frequently based on fiction depicting perfect societies and vice-versa—literary utopias speculated on future societies shaped by daring projects of industrial revolution and modernism. The chief problem here is understood as both a specific plan—a vision of a utopian state representing a particular urban plan—and a treatise demonstrating the utopian way of thinking (Thomas Morus, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley.) This ideological machine directs human actions which is exemplified in film history and in the range of Utopian transformations—beginning with class stratification in Metropolis (F. Lang, 1927) which in visual terms refers to Hugh Feriss’ drawings, to ideas proposed by New Urbanism presented in Urbanized (G. Hustwit, 2011), a film demonstrating how a citizen does not have to remain a passive recipient of urban planning and resulting behavioral patterns. The question of whether Utopia anticipates or reminisces a given reality continues to be unanswered and the article explains reasons behind this aporia.

Patrycja Włodek

Journey as Dialogue (in British Heritage Film)

One of the most popular cultural themes—in both literature and cinema—is that of a journey. Moving in space and, sometimes, in time—be it in a literary sense or by means of the protagonists’ memories—facilitates comparison and contrast of different cultures, value systems, and causes and effects of actions and decisions. Journey remained one of the most significant plot-organizing motifs in films belonging to the so called Heritage Films which has been an important and controversial movement in British cinema. In those films, usually set during the glory days of the British Empire, journey in space (to Italy or colonial India) is connected to a journey in time, providing the authors with an opportunity (not always realized) to judge bygone reality and ‘rewrite’ the past. Using representative motion pictures from the Heritage Film movement as examples, the author of the article ponders upon the status of the journey motif in the context of cultural encounters and the degree to which restoration of an intercultural dialogue and the redefinition cultural “Others” was realized in films otherwise undermining so many aspects of the splendor of the British Empire (for instance, patriarchy.)

Bartosz Kazana

Political Dialogues of British Cinema.
Images of Americans and Germans in the English Film
of the WW II Period.

Films from the so called British War Collection, produced in England between 1941 and 1945 present a wide spectrum of propagandist cinema: from information and educational films to motions pictures warming up to fight or shaping political moods of the society. Among those one could find films supposed to ease the tense relations between the English and American soldiers stationed on British Islands. In most cases those films depicted a conventionalized image of both nations’ representatives by referring to obvious cultural and customary differences. However, some eminent productions used the expressive topic as a pretext for artistic experimentation. For obvious reasons during the war the Germans were supporting characters in numerous films. Those movies constitute particularly interesting research material since they contain complex profiles of such characters and are not always limited to depicting a travesty or unambiguous condemnation. More ambitious filmmakers, such as Carol Reed, and, more importantly Michael Powell together with Emeric Pressbugrger, not only problematize various aspects of war but also complicate the Germans’ psychological descriptions by drawing a clear dividing line between a German and a Nazi. The article recalls most representative films for both groups and, by comparing them, aims at demonstrating their ideological and artistic diversity.

Bartosz Hlebowicz

Love and Hate (But Mostly Hate) in the New World.
Vision of English Colonization in North America
in Terence Malick’s Film.

Terence Malick’s The New World retells the story of Pocahontas and John Smith and the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, the latter considered to initiate the period of British colonization of North America. Of the historical Pocahontas, the daughter of Wahunsunacawh (more famous as Powhatan), the chief of the Virginia tribes, we really do not know too much, but the popular image of the “Indian princess” and lover of the soldier-colonist has become all too well known. Malick is not trying to be very original in his version of the Pocahontas myth—it seems that retelling her story is merely a pretext to portray an imagined, almost ideal native community and contrast it with the chaotic and violent world of white settlers. Paradoxically, in this audibly and visually enchanting narration some basic truth about the founding days of the American nation is convincingly transmitted: that the root of the nation’s foundation is to be seen not in the alleged love of two individuals coming from two different cultures, but in the growing misunderstanding, distrust and hatred between the two races.

Żaneta Jamrozik

Facing The Image.
On Theatricality of Space in Michael Haneke’s Hidden

Michael Haneke’s Hidden (2005) became his most discussed film so far. This article summarizes the film’s reception, placing it in the context of theatrical space with its ability to position and immobilize the viewer. Drawing on the theatrical theories of Hans Thies-Lehmann and Maaikee Bleeker, as well as on Richard Schechner’s performance theory and the polemical discussion of the liveness category offered by Philip Auslander, the author argues that Hidden is a film that goes on live, unfolding in the presence of the spectator as it is emphasized by the viewer’s immobilization, which in turn resembles the situation of being in a theatre.

Dorota Brylla's review of "Kabballah Revealed: The Ordinary Person's Guide to a More Peaceful Life" ["Kabała ujawniona. Jak doprowadzić nas do świata pokoju, harmonii i ekorozwoju"] by Michael Laitman (2009).

Mateusz Marecki's review of "Cognitive Poetics in Practice" edited by Joanna Gavins and Gerard Steen (2003).

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