Marilyn’s Dyptich: The Evolution of the Image from Pop Art to Thrash Art (to the 95th Anniversary of the Birth of the Actress)

Marilyn Monroe is already a mass culture personage. Andy Warhol created an image that removes us from the original source, on the basis of impressions associated with the life of a real person. The diptych has turned into a kind of template that can be easily filled with different meanings. The author of the article reflects on the characteristic features of this template, which is often used by contemporary artists to reproduce. The question of the citation of this diptych in the culture of the second half of the 20th century is quite well studied. But the experience of a specific kind of appropriation of this image by artists of the new millennium has already accumulated. Among them, the masters of thrash art are of particular interest: Vik Muniz and Jane Perkins. It is significant that they do not refer to the numerous photographic and film images of Marilyn Monroe. They refer specifically to the template created by Andy Warhol. They play with it, translating the substantive problems of this famous diptych into the plane of design.

Restoring scratched cine-film via reducing light scattering

Scratches on cine-film significantly affect the quality of projected film images forming blackness or brightness. Only blackness can be restored by restoration dispersion. However, why the scratches can or can not be restored is unknown. Herein, unscratched and scratched films were selected, treated with restoration dispersion and investigated from composition and microstructure and its interaction with light. Both superficial and penetrating scratches make film rough and the applying of restoration dispersion decreases the roughness. The darkness in the projected film image resulted by superficial scratch can be restored by restoration dispersion through reducing light scattering, while the brightness induced by penetrating scratch can not be restored by restoration dispersion due to the removal of emulsion layer. This investigation is beneficial for developing new restoration dispersion to improve the quality of projected film images.

Symbolika pejzażu (wewnętrznego) w filmach Carlosa Reygadasa

The article describes the representations of landscapes in the films by Carlos Reygadas, whose role is to evoke the transcendental film style (as understood by Paul Schrader), and to express the experiences, thoughts and action of the screen protagonists. Landscapes perform various functions in Reygadas’s films. They are not only a background for film events or emphasize the mood and aura of contemplation of film images, but also a symbolic representation of emotions and experiences of the film’s heroes, and evoke the sphere of transcendence and sacrum, important for spiritual dilemmas and searches of protagonists. The article cites and discusses all of Reygadas’s fictional films made so far, which gives us the opportunity to compare them and demonstrate their mutual inspiration, and to continue the proprietary workshop, stylistic and thematic solutions. The research method in the article is analytical description of selected landscapes that play an important role in Carlos Reygadas’ films and the interpretation of the symbols contained in them, in accordance with the phenomenological and hermeneutic perspective. Interpretative phenomenological analysis enables, as the research tool used in the article, both the description of images (landscapes) appearing in Reygadas’ films and the presentation of their symbolic meanings. The subject of interest in interpretative phenomenological analysis is the life situation of film heroes, entangled in a chaos of various events and forced to make various choices. In accordance with the attitude adopted by the director, which can be described Katarzyna Citko as the syllaptic ‘I’ (a term used in the meaning given to him by Ryszard Nycz), they are also an exemplification of the worldview and the essence of the artistic creation by the author: Carlos Reygadas himself.

Między minimalizmem a melodramatem. Przestrzeń filmowa w kinie rumuńskiej nowej fali

The starting point for considering the means of creating and designing a film space in Romanian New Wave cinema is the thesis that Romanian film art in the 21st century is an artistic response to the times of communism and that images of the post-socialist architectural space – their multi-faceted functionalization in film mise-en-scéne – are the key method of evoking memories of the past. The article discusses, via the example of movies by Crisitian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Cristi Puiu, (1) ways of depicting the “closing” of film characters in the cramped interiors of their apartments and (2) film images of individuals’ alienation in public spaces, both of them allusively referring to the times of the oppressive Nicolae Ceaușescu regime. The most important cinematographic devices used bythe authors of the Romanian New Wave cinema include: seemingly static shots, which, however, are filmed with a camera that is constantly gently moving and observing, and tableau shots. A common feature of all the considered works is the panopticism of the film world: the private and public spaces designed in them easily become a place of constant, panoptical observation. In the summary, theauthor remarks on and briefly discusses the coexistence of the aesthetics of minimalism / realism with the melodramatic elements in the cinematic structure of Romanian New Wave films.

Przestrzeń poza kadrem – o sensualnym wymiarze zdjęć filmowych Emmanuela Lubezkiego

The article presents an analysis of the sensual potential of film images via the example of cooperation between operator Emmanuel Lubezki and three directors: Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Terrence Malick. The impact of reconstruction of film space on the sensual impressions of viewers in the context of the American theory of somatic cinema was also analyzed. What influence does the dimension of cinematographic cooperation have on the concept of authorial cinema?

Argentina y España: representaciones de la juventud y la cultura física argentinas en imágenes del NO-DO español

The aim of this article is to analyze the uses of documentary informative cinema as a cultural artifact which was employed as a pedagogical device. To do so, we studied motion pictures filmed in Argentina and shown in Spain in the second quarter of the 20th century, in an attempt to understand how a symmetrical aesthetic is shaped to narrate the bodily practices of youth. Informative documentary cinema, especially newsreels, constituted a resource for mass communications. A familiarity can be observed between the Argentinean images analyzed between 1938-1955 in Sucesos Argentinos, with others made in the second quarter of the 20th century in Spain, through No-Do. In addition to economic, political and cultural influences, Argentina imported into Spain ways of narrating state-organized physical culture. Sheltered in a nationalist rhetoric characteristic of the interwar period and the Second World War, it can be affirmed that there was a transnational aesthetic of how to narrate correct corporal and cultural comportment. Through images that were projected in theaters in these countries, newsreel broadcasts simultaneously and homogeneously transmitted the same discourse –everything, to everyone, at the same time–, resulting in a true transnational pedagogy. In short, a pedagogy outside the school walls is studied through informative documentary film images from the second quarter of the 20th century that aimed to form bodies and sensibilities.

Possible future options in the Russian modern cinematography

The subject of this research is ten Russian science-fiction films released over the period from 2013 to 2020. The goal of this article consists in examination of scenarios of seeing the future presented in the Russian modern cinematography. An overview of approaches towards studying visual images is provided, based on which the author offers a new strategy for studying film images of the future that demarcates three groups of elements in the film – cognitive, visual, and emotional-modal, and four thematic components that correspond to the spheres of social life. As a result of implementation of the aforementioned method, the author determines four underlying themes in cinematographic representation of the future – space, armed conflicts, entertainment industry and drastic changes of human personality. It is established that the visual representation of the future is resembled in the four groups of images – universal images, images of the present, images of the past, and images unfamiliar to the audience that imply something unprecedented that makes the future attractive. It is acknowledged that in most films the future is presented as unfair, wrong, which causes moral discord. It is not the world we would like to live in. Most of the Russian films are dedicated to the local future for approximately 50 years from now. This approach engages the audience in the events, and conveys an pessimistic spirit about tomorrow, which is traced not only in the plot, but also in visual imagery of most films. Holistic mages of the future, functioning in a certain culture, can be determined based on the comparison of various sources, where cinematography is just one of such sources. Therefore, the conclusions on perception of the future by our contemporaries should not be made based on this alone. However, films are a valuable source of information on visualization of the future and transmission of general moods associated with it.

Introduction to Part III

Andrei Tarkovsky may be more of a “great practitioner” than a “great thinker,” as the prominent Russian auteur Alexei German skeptically observed. Yet the aesthetic power of his film images only intensifies their thought-provoking impact on the viewer. This section aims to demonstrate how theoretical discussions generated by his films can helpfully contribute to a deeper understanding of their meaning. The section opens with Slavoj Žižek’s chapter, which offers a Lacanian reading of Tarkovsky’s films in terms of an encounter with the radical otherness of the Kantian thing-in-itself, illustrated by the planet Solaris or Stalker’s Zone, which is structurally quite similar to more commercial horror movies dramatizing an encounter with the unknown....

Haptic Visuality and Film Narration. Mapping New Women’s Cinema in Spain

There is a trend in female film production in the 21st century in the context of Spain towards a type of cinema that we could classify as haptic. It is a mode of representation concerned with multisensory expression in film images. In this article, we shall study this haptic visuality in the works of four filmmakers: Isabel Coixet, Paula Ortiz, Mar Coll and Carla Simón, whose films in this century exemplify the trend. The method chosen is textual analysis, which will provide us with the necessary tools to study matters concerning representation (framing), narration (nuclei and catalysis) and communication (spectatorial subject). These three analytical categories together will enable us to set out the representational parameters of haptic cinema in filmic texts. The results obtained reveal that the elements related to framing (handheld camera usage, grainy images, and the recurrent presence of close-ups) help to express the characters’ subjective, sensory world. As for the narrative model, a prevalence of catalysis and descriptive function can be seen, which helps the characters’ affections and emotions to be widely expressed. Likewise, inferences and ellipsis help weave filmic discourses that involve the audience cognitively, constructing a communicative model that fosters interpretational openness and a kind of interpellation that seeks affective and intellectual communion with the spectatorial subject.