Film Culture Research Articles

Almost as good as Soviet cinema: Reception of Italian neorealism in Poland: 1946–56

With the onset of the Cold War, the cinema culture in the People’s Republic of Poland underwent rigorous transformation. One of its aspects was the new film import schema: most of the international sources dried up to be replaced, for the most part, by films from the Communist Bloc. However, Italian films constituted an important exception. This article investigates the critical reception of Italian neorealist films in Poland in the first decade after the war, focusing mainly on reviews published in Film, the most relevant Polish magazine dedicated to cinema culture. The first part of the article outlines critical debates on differences and similarities between neorealism and socialist realism. The latter part of the article focuses on the critical reception of Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) and Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan), as evaluations of the Italian director’s cinema fluctuated during the Stalinist period and after the thaw.

Listening to Metal

Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal (2020) is a film about many things: severe hearing loss, grief, community, and sound itself. These themes cohere through its narrative but find even fuller expression in the film’s sound design, as FQ columnist Benson-Allott argues in this article. Unlike most films with Deaf or deafened protagonists, Sound of Metal makes frequent use of subjective sound mixes that represent the protagonist’s sonic perceptions. By contrasting subjective and hearing-normative sound in their design, Marder and sound supervisor Nicolas Becker demonstrate how sound’s power exceeds its auditory range and social uses in hearing culture. They show their audience that, as neglected as sound may be in contemporary film culture, it still contains cultural biases that audiences must learn to hear. In doing so, they encourage viewers to reconceptualize themselves as auditors and reappraise sound’s role in their personal cinephilia and within the cinematic experience more broadly.

The Peripheralization of East-Central European Film Cultures on VOD Platforms

The Peripheralization of East-Central European Film Cultures on VOD Platforms

The Origins of Recycled Films

At the beginning of cinema, in his early twentieth-century research the Soviet director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein developed his theory of associative montage “1+1=3.” Nowadays, new methods have been added to this theory. These variables include the creative re-use of allusions to film history. In contemporary cinema, when a new archive film uses sequences from cinema heritage, it quotes from the past and can activate visually and content-wise complex cultural memories. In these films, the successive placement of two sequences, beyond their association, creates new associative meaning, thus, it calls forth metacinematic associations. This additional meaning is the imprint of cinematic heritage. Final Cut by György Pálfi and Péter Lichter’s works make use of the archives of cinematic heritage through a reinterpreted film language, attempting to create independent, innovative works of art. They use the same starting point, based on a directorial concept, but the two attempts resulted in completely different motion pictures. Due to the approach at the basis of their conception, these films illustrate both the linear, i.e., the archetypal narrative film representation and the nonlinear narration. However, these films are not only defined by the scenes they are compiled of, but also bear the particularities of the original motion pictures, referring to and going far beyond the individual characteristics of the scenes themselves. Despite being linear narrative films, the cinematic rhetoric of neither motion picture is continuous but associative - they bring into play layers of film culture. Overall, Eisenstein’s formula can be extended in the following way: 1 afs (archive film sequence) + 1 afs (archive film sequence) = 3 mca (metacinematic associations).

Screen culture, online auctions, and art market spectacle

This article examines the symbolic, financial, and visual qualities of spectacular, multi-site, online art auctions staged by Sotheby’s and Christie’s during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is argued that these events adopted visual techniques drawn from television gameshows and popular cinema culture to create a distinctive screen-based reality for the transaction of art assets. Much of the rhetoric employed by the auction houses to publicise online auctions suggested a utopian conception of technology capable of encouraging artistic innovation and broadening access to art markets. In contrast to the idea that these online formats constitute democratic change in the artworld, this article argues that the control of new technological infrastructures represents an extension of institutional power and maintains the socio-cultural elitism of urban centres in which physical art auctions at the top end of the market have traditionally been conducted.

Queer Film Culture in the Covid-19 Era

Queer Film Culture in the Covid-19 Era

The everyman cinema, hampstead: film, art and community in the 1930s

This article examines the role of one of the first arthouse cinemas in London, the Everyman in Hampstead. A detailed local study, it also explores the wider context of cinema in Britain in the 1930s when an art film culture was being formed and developed. It argues that the Everyman, albeit one small cinema, was a significant agent in the creation of this new culture. It argues that the particularities of place contributed to the distinctive identity of the cinema. Hampstead in the 1930s, with the influx of modernist and avant-garde artists, many of them exiles from Fascist Europe, became the centre of a vibrant artistic community. And the Everyman, with its programme of independent and foreign language films, along with art exhibitions, was an integral part of this community. A detailed analysis of the enterprising programming strategies of the Everyman will explore differences and similarities with other art cinemas and will examine how its repertory programming, which included revivals and seasons from a broad range of world cinema, contributed to its success.

Things in cinema as a phenomenon of cultural reality

The objects, items, things that are most often used in the film texts of modern Russian cinema require close attention from the film culture point of view. The material world helps to realize the value of an object and its influence on the subject. The attitude to things and objects characterizes modern society from the point of view of order-chaos. Contemporary domestic film texts are interpreted by specialists and spectators, intended for a wide audience of the audience. A person is immersed in a system of symbols, and in cinema he seeks confirmation of this or that stable element of the virtual world, which he correlates with his real experience. Things, objects and objects can tell about the main thing, so they cannot be ignored, pass by this or that symbolic object.

What Is a Videogame Movie?

Cinematic adaptations of videogames are an increasingly common feature of film culture, and the adaptive relationship between these mediums is an increasingly common subject of film and videogame studies. However, our ability to historicize and theorize that relationship is hampered by a failure to fully define the generic character of our object of study. This essay asks, what is a videogame movie? It argues that film scholars (1) have not considered the full range of ways videogames have been represented in film; (2) have not attended fully to the historical, technological, figurative, and social dimensions of videogames; and therefore (3) have limited the set of possible texts that comprise the genre “videogame cinema.” The essay recommends a tropological approach to the problem, defining six tropes that comprise the “videogame movie” as a genre, and applying them to two films, Her and 1917, neither of them a direct adaptation of a videogame, the latter not “about” or referencing videogames in any way, yet both exemplary of a broadened concept of “videogame cinema”.

Nollywood and the National Question

Unlike the other well known and established film cultures such as America’s Hollywood, and India’s Bollywood, Nigeria’s Nollywood, has no physical or geographical associations except in the pages o...

Petromodernity, the environment and historical film culture

Petromodernity, the environment and historical film culture

The Mythical Courtesan

Abstract This article interrogates how and why courtesan identities are simultaneously embraced and disavowed by Brahman dancers. Using a combination of ethnographic and critical feminist methods, which allow the author to toggle between the past and the present, between India and the United States, and between film analysis and the dance studio, the author examines the cultural politics of the romanticized and historical Indian dancer—the mythical courtesan. The author argues that the mythical courtesan was called into existence through film cultures in the early twentieth century to provide a counterpoint against which a modern and national Brahmanical womanhood could be articulated. The author brings together a constellation of events that participated in the construction of Indian womanhood, especially the rise of sound film against the backdrop of growing anticolonial and nationalist sentiments in early twentieth-century South India. The author focuses on films that featured an early twentieth-century dancer-singer-actress, Sundaramma. In following her career through Telugu film and connecting it to broader conversations about Indian womanhood in the 1930s and 1940s, the author traces the contours of an affective triangle between three mutually constituting emotional points: pleasure, shame, and disgust.

Black Study @ GSU

AbstractTasked with the mandate to “set the record straight” about the beginning of the liquid blackness research group and journal and to explicate the theoretical and conceptual parameters of the idea of black liquidity, this introduction negotiates the irreconcilable tension between keeping record and record keeping as a way to maintain the anaoriginarity of black study as an ensemblic and jurisgenerative practice. To do so, it draws inspiration from one of its objects of study, Larry Clark's 1977 cult film Passing Through, and specifically from the way the film's formal structure and historical existence as a withdrawing object mirror the elusiveness of the album that the musicians it depicts were never able to record. This introduction is divided into “tracks” to reproduce the same withdrawing effect, trigger a similar ensemblic gathering, and in the process, honor the object-oriented and immanent methodology developed by the liquid blackness project.

Post Covid-19 Comparison between Chinese and North American Film Industry: A Systematic Review of the Year 2020 Cinema

This article analyzes the Chinese post-Covid-19 cinema and compares it with the developments in North American Cinema. Coronavirus disease has significant detrimental effects on the worldwide film industry, and the annual box office of major film industries has seen a severe decline. This study presents the systematic review of the comparison of Chinese and North American Cinema during the year 2020. In this study, researchers have opted for the deductive approach on secondary source data with the keywords “Post Covid-19 Cinema”, “Chinese Film Culture Industry”, “Hollywood”, “Box Office”, and “Film Academy” on google search and consider all the significant sources in this systematic review. The Findings of the study reveal that China has already overtaken North America as the global most extensive box office crown for the first time, showing that in the post-COVID-19 era, the Chinese film industry is indeed among the first to get back on its feet.

RETRACTED: A contrastive study of Chinese and English values in English film teaching

It is of great value to strengthen the comparative study of value in film English teaching. This reflects that “value education” is the core of quality education. The core of intercultural communication is “value distribution,” and “value identity” is identity. The main aspects of learning linguistics. From the perspective of film culture, it is necessary to reduce the “Chinese and English value” of English film education. Among these representative forces, film culture is mainly concentrated in the core of Chinese and English. On the radio, “British film culture” became English. The field of knowledge teaching is much larger. Based on the positive and positive English movies, this paper adopts the teaching method of Chinese and English double subtitle music to capture the words and sentences in the film, and uses the combination of image and sound to improve the perception of English. The difference between Chinese application and English application lies in the embodiment of traditional thinking mode in different countries. It is proved by experiments that there are great differences in application value. However, due to the iconicity and randomness of language symbols, the application of Chinese has some value in English. Students who adopt English film teaching method have advantages in shaping values and accepting foreign values. With the passage of time, the application of English film teaching will continue to deepen.

Festivales de cine en Chile: Configuración de campo y comunidades cinéfilas

Este artículo analiza el rol que han tenido los festivales de cine en Chile en la construcción de un campo cinematográfico chileno y nuevas formas de cinefilia, considerando su desarrollo histórico. Se discute cómo los festivales chilenos han facilitado la emergencia de comunidades cinéfilas, articulando la creación, reproducción y difusión de una cultura cinematográfica nacional. Basado en una investigación etnográfica y de archivo, el artículo se refiere específicamente a dos festivales de modelo cinéfilo que han contribuido a la conformación histórica del campo local, el Festival Internacional de Cine de Viña del Mar (FICViña) y el Festival Internacional de Cine de Valdivia (FICValdivia) en distintos momentos históricos (durante los sesenta, los noventa y los años 2000). En ambos casos, los festivales han sido espacios vitales para la construcción de la experiencia cinematográfica local, tanto para los realizadores como para sus públicos, funcionado como nodos de producción de culturas cinematográficas y de formación de una actitud específica hacia lo fílmico, que conlleva modos de particulares de ver y de hacer en torno al cine. En los festivales se conjugan prácticas de encuentro, programación y visionado compartido que han permitido el desarrollo del campo y la codificación de conocomientos sobre cine chileno, difundido y articulado con la emergencia de comunidades cinéfilas particulares asociadas a dichos eventos. Palabras clave: cine chileno, festivales de cine, campo cinematográfico, cinefilia

A Contribuição do Festival É Tudo Verdade ao Cânone do Documentário Brasileiro

O presente artigo integra um conjunto de pesquisas que têm repensado o lugar dos festivais na cultura cinematográfica. Nossa análise se volta para o É Tudo Verdade – Festival Internacional de Documentários, propondo um debate sobre o cânone cinematográfico mobilizado pelo evento. Dirigimos especial atenção às mostras retrospectivas do documentário brasileiro e às publicações apoiadas pelo festival. Buscamos, ainda, colocar as propostas do evento em diálogo com outras leituras do cânone elaboradas por festivais brasileiros de filme documentário. Esperamos, assim, oferecer uma contribuição inicial para um debate sobre os festivais audiovisuais e a história do cinema brasileiro.

‘If I forget anything at all, it’s unlikely the stars will accept us … ’: sci-fi fan communities, post-Soviet nostalgia and contemporary cinematic experience

ABSTRACT Reception studies is an important trend in contemporary film studies, especially in the current situation, which is characterised by media convergence and audience differentiation. One area of such research, which has not yet developed concerning Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, is the study of fandom. In this paper, I explore post-Soviet fan communities, which play a significant role in the re-appropriation of Soviet sci-fi films and the establishment of a cult aura around science-fiction films. The article seeks not only to outline the emergence of these communities in the 1990–2000s, but also to show their contribution to the formation of a post-Soviet cinematic culture. Moreover, I show how the experience of these communities sheds light on the nature of post-Soviet nostalgia as one of the key impulses of cinematic consumption in post-Soviet culture.

Funds associated with film festivals: Supporting filmmaking in the Global South

The functions festivals fulfill within contemporary film culture extend beyond the exhibition of completed films; many festivals have attained the role of a producer in recent years. The Berlin International Film Festival launched the World Cinema Fund (WCF) in 2005 to financially support film production in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. This study provides a first-hand glimpse into the process of realizing feature film projects under restrictive conditions by utilizing interviews with directors whose films have received funding from WCF. The interviews the author conducted with directors Alain Gomis, Julia Murat, and John Trengove form the data set analyzed in this article. He argues that one of the most critical points of contention about the practice of allocating public money from European countries to projects hailing from developing regions which were formerly colonized by the very same nations, is its potentially neocolonialist impact through the cultural domain.

Politics of Fear and Solidarity. Mechanisms in Documentary Theatre. Staging Asylum: Žiga Divjak's 6

In the context of the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, contemporary documentary theatre still has a potential to serve as a sophisticated political agon for an in-depth analysis of structural injustice and its causalities. Through the comparative analysis of the performance 6 by the Slovenian director Žiga Divjak and the cult film by Lars von Trier, Dogville, I examine the motive of a refugee in two different media by juxtaposing emotions of fear and solidarity. Both phenomena are ideologically highly potent: the first contributes to the rise of racism, xenophobia and restrictive politics, the latter however, if not precisely conceptualized, can further reinforce the neoliberal spectacle of suffering. The aim of this research paper was to provide theoretical framework for the use of solidarity and reflexivity when staging and dramatizing political narratives.