Feminist Worlding and World Cinema: The Case of Małgorzata Szumowska

Aga Skrodzka

doi:10.1163/26659891-bja10007

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses the concept of worlding in the cinema of Małgorzata Szumowska. Informed by philosophical theory of worlding and worldliness, by thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Gayatri Spivak, and the film theory of cinematic worlds, proposed by Daniel Yacavone, the project examines the function of cinematic world building and its potential connection to World Cinema and feminist filmmaking. Close analysis of Szumowska’s film The Other Lamb (2019) traces the role of monstration and mise en scène in creating emancipatory cinema.

Highlights

E “In return, a World eats back at Reality, arms us with perspective, furnishes us with meaning, and gives us some measure of agency to expressively deal with new surprises from Reality.”
In one of her early films, Stranger (Ono, 2004), the Polish director Małgorzata Szumowska presents the plight of a nineteen-year-old girl, Ewa (Małgorzata Bela), who faces the dilemma of an unwanted pregnancy as her access to abortion is sabotaged
To stake out my inquiry broadly, I posit the following set of questions: How does the concept of worlding inform the idea of World Cinema? To what degree is the active operation of worlding already present in the existing definitions of World Cinema? What do we gain, theoretically and politically, if we refashion World Cinema into Worlding Cinema? Can the worlding of World Cinema provide the much-needed positive extension to the idea of a cinema formulated, historically, in negation to Hollywood cinema (Nagib, 2006)? I use Szumowska’s worlding practice and her films’ self-reflexive preoccupation with female worlding in my attempt to begin to address these questions

Summary

Introduction

E “In return, a World eats back at Reality, arms us with perspective, furnishes us with meaning, and gives us some measure of agency to expressively deal with new surprises from Reality.”. In light of this theory, the mise en scène and metteur en scène gain singular importance as the aspects of filmmaking responsible for converting writing (fiction) into a simulated world (fact), summoned in live action film via a specific construction of a profilmic reality, organized according to a stylistic principle, and released, or set free through projection (is this Heidegger’s poetic projection?), for the embodied viewer to engage with.

Results

Conclusion