This article examines how Rafiki (2018) articulates love, surveillance and violence in its representation of lesbian experience. Drawing on a lesbian feminist reading of Wanuri Kahiu’s film, inspired by Monica Arac de Nyeko’s short story “Jambula Tree,” the study argues that the film constructs the bond between Kena and Ziki as a force of mutual recognition while exposing the familial, social, and institutional mechanisms mobilized to discipline dissident desire. Methodologically, the discussion focuses on two sequences, read through the concepts of compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormativity, intersectionality, and lesbophobia in dialogue with formal elements of film language such as framing, lighting, color, and point of view. The analysis shows that Rafiki juxtaposes scenes of reciprocity, chromatic warmth, and affective openness with scenes of public exposure, humiliation, and coercion, thereby revealing that violence against lesbian women operates in both physical and symbolic registers. The article concludes that the film performs an aesthetically and politically significant intervention by affirming the legitimacy of desire between women and by making visible the social costs imposed on its existence.

The cinematic triptych is a form that has recurred throughout the history of film. Its heyday took place in Europe during the 1960s when directors such as De Sica, Fellini, Godard, Pasolini and Visconti created short ‘films within a film’ connected visually and thematically to produce a feature-length anthology and this tradition later migrated to the United States. However, nowhere did the triptych receive such a vital and lasting treatment as in Yugoslav cinema. This paper systematises the history of the triptych in Yugoslav cinema and examines the ways in which Yugoslav triptychs diversified the possibilities of episodic narration, articulated radical socio-political critiques, and burst into free-form poems, sometimes all within one film. By drawing upon historiography, archival research and film analysis and examining movements from the classical studio system across the Black Wave and Prague School to popular comedy and a plethora of directors including Igor Pretnar, Aleksandar Petrović, Živojin Pavlović, Lordan Zafranović and Srđan Karanović, this paper shows the ways in which Yugoslav filmmakers enabled distinctive collaboration that transcended the single auteur and produced new avenues for film language, nuancing composition, character building and dramaturgy in groundbreaking ways.

This paper critically examines the historical and sociocultural factors that contribute to the marginalization of rural Amazigh women in Morocco. It traces the evolution of Moroccan cinema from portraying women as objects to depicting them as subjects, using a qualitative methodology grounded in deconstructive and decolonial readings of two visual narratives: Nabil Ayouch's Razzia (2017) and Sanae Akroud's Myopia (2018). Alongside critical discourse analysis, this study draws on Walter Mignolo’s theory of decoloniality and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of subalternity to interpret the filmic language and decode the key signifiers deployed in both works. The findings reveal that the marginalization of rural Amazigh women persists through multiple intersecting forces. These include the enduring impacts of colonialism, which have contributed to the erosion and devaluation of the Amazigh language and identity, as well as the persistence of patriarchal orientations that continue to shape social life in remote Atlas communities. The analysis also highlights the cinematic reconstruction of religious discourse. In this context, Islam is at times framed through reductive and stereotypical representations as inherently gender-oppressive. Such portrayals, however, do not reflect the Islamic theology in its pure religious principles and divine precepts. Instead, they are mediated through a narrative and visual framework which may reproduce colonial and orientalist trajectories while engaging with lived socio-cultural realities. It is argued that both filmmakers employ distinct cinematic techniques and visual strategies to navigate these tensions. In doing so, they aim to challenge male-centered perspectives while exploring the ideological and political shortcomings embedded in both local patriarchal systems and broader postcolonial cultural formations that continue to shape North African visual culture.

This article uses close textual and visual analysis to examine Pema Tseden’s film Tharlo (2015) as an adaptation from fiction to film, reading this transformation as a response to the burden of representation often placed on the renowned Tibetan filmmaker. Although Pema Tseden’s earlier works were praised for their realist portrayals of Tibetan life, he expressed frustration at being categorized primarily as an ethnic film director. Adapted from his own short story, Tharlo marks a shift towards a new cinematic language that opens his work to interpretations beyond realism. By comparing the short story and its film adaptation, this article analyses how specific creative choices expand the narrative scope, develop more complex supporting characters and engage real-world events. Through this process, the characters in Tharlo emerge not as emblems of collective struggle but as individuals shaped by contradictions and desires, gesturing towards the filmmaker’s right to tell stories on his own terms.

ABSTRACT Virtual Reality (VR) is a rapidly evolving medium within the film industry with the ability to engage viewers in an immersive storytelling experience that transcends traditional 2D film techniques. This research is developed from a student internship program to explore the transformative potential of VR180 and the use of 3D imaging in the realm of cinematic storytelling, focusing on the reimagining of traditional 2D cinema conventions for immersive films. The project experiments with innovative ways of conveying narrative elements, such as framing, pacing, and visual composition. This paper details techniques filmmakers can use to adapt traditional cinema language for immersive VR works. The short VR180 documentary film, A Love Letter to Skating, allows viewers to view a story in the VR environment. Utilising recent technology that combines Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a mobile application that captures a 3D render, a static immersive VR scene was created for viewers to step inside the film for a multisensory experience. The project contributes to the evolving discourse on the intersection of traditional filmmaking and VR, paving the way for a new era in immersive storytelling where the boundaries between audience and narrative are blurred, and the cinematic experience is redefined for the VR generation.

When translating films and series, I have often experienced how complex and difficult my work is, especially when translating from Japanese. Translating an original English film is like performing an incredible balancing act, e.g., tightrope walking. Translating a Japanese text is, by contrast, like tightrope walking with an umbrella in one hand (with a ball rolling on the umbrella), and the original Kojiki text in the other hand as one tries to verbally adapt it to the modern Japanese language. In my article, I would like to offer a glimpse into the background of this almost absurd performance through my work, and briefly show what an audiovisual translator, more commonly known as a dubbing scriptwriter, can do with sign language, lyrics, dialects, and other Japanese-specific themes in films and series as he or she adapts all these to the world of subtitles.

One of the most relevant issues in linguistics is the study of the language of films at the present time. This issue is being extensively reseached by scientists. However, the issue of including the film discourse in a multimedia corpus based on children's films has not been considered at its own level yet. Researches on film discourses are reviewed, the concept of the term “the film discourse” is explained in the proposed article and the lexical selection of film discourses that can be included in the multimedia corpus has been analyzed by using such methods as grouping and description to fill this gap. The lexical selection of the film discourse was compiled based on materials of the film “Alty jasar Alpamys” (“Six-Year-Old Alpamys”) (dir. A. Karsakbayev, 1977). The lexical material was divided into five groups that represent the national identity and cultural values. Causes, for choosing words included in each group, were explained and they were presented as material examples that could be included in a multimedia corpus in this selection.

Historical cinema in India frequently transcends mere amusement, serving as a conduit for the formation of cultural memory, political identity, and social values. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Bajirao Mastani (2015) and Padmaavat (2018) are two great instances of films where visual grandeur is interwoven with ideological narratives. The significance of this study lies in its focus on color as a cinematic language that both preserves and reimagines history. This study examines the impact of chromatic choices on the portrayal of cultural dualities, thereby contributing to broader discussions regarding politics, religion, and identity in Indian cinema. The study is based on Postcolonial Theory, which looks at how the self and other are made in cultural texts, and Social Semiotics, which examines color as a way of communicating that has many meanings. The study aims to examine how Bhansali uses color to depict ideological conflicts, to analyze how visual palettes create cultural dualities, and to evaluate the influence of clothing and set design on the construction of historical narratives. The method uses both descriptive analysis and discourse analysis. The results show that color in Bhansali's films is more than just decoration; it is a political and cultural code that reinterprets history, shapes identities, and embeds ideological stances in spectacle.

The present article offers a theoretically grounded third-wave feminist reading of Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993), arguing that the film anticipates and articulates key principles associated with third-wave feminism, particularly autonomy, embodied subjectivity, sexual self-determination, and the political significance of personal choice. While previous scholarship has examined the work through psychoanalytic, second-wave feminist, and postcolonial frameworks, its resonance with third-wave feminist thought has remained underexplored. Addressing this gap, the study adopts a qualitative, feminist-hermeneutic methodology informed by feminist theory, psychoanalytic critique, and intersectional feminism. The analysis focuses on three interrelated dimensions of agency: Ada’s strategic silence, her negotiated sexual autonomy, and her climatic decision to choose life. Rather than interpreting these elements as signs of victimhood or ideological ambivalence, the article reads them as complex negotiations of power within intersecting patriarchal and colonial structures. Particular attention is given to the film’s non-verbal semiotic register—Ada’s embodied gestures and musical expression—which functions as an alternative mode of signification that destabilizes phallocentric discourse, and its established signifying systems, and reconfigures not only signification but also cinematic spectatorship. By situating The Piano within the conceptual terrain of third-wave feminism, this study re-evaluates Campion’s work not merely as a critique of patriarchal authority but as a complex text that foregrounds multiplicity, contradiction, and embodied negotiation and choice as constitutive elements of feminine agency. The article contends that The Piano formulates a distinct cinematic language that dismantles reductive binaries of victimhood and resistance. Ultimately, the film articulates a vision of female subjectivity that is fluid, self-determined, and politically resonant, thereby reaffirming the film’s continuing relevance within contemporary feminist debates.

This article examines a significant era in the development of Soviet cinema during the 1920s and 1930s, a period that coincided with the emergence of national cinematography in the USSR. The development of national film studios during this period occurred in parallel with the conceptual development of ideological and artistic tasks for creating films based on local ethnocultural material. One of the key figures who consistently advocated the idea of creating national cinematography in the USSR and developed the concept of a new cinematic language in the 1920s and 1930s was Nikolai Mikhailovich Iezuitov (1899–1941), a film historian and one of the founders of Russian film studies, who turned his attention to the development of the Belgoskino film organisation. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, it aims to analyse Iezuitov’s views, which are not widely known in scholarly literature, on determining the form of artistic and ideological development and the cultural and political tasks of Soviet cinema in the 1920s and 1930s. Secondly, it will evaluate the film historian’s view of the development of national cinematography with reference to the Belgoskino film studio. A conceptual analysis of the problem is carried out based on the works of N. M. Iezuitov, scholarly literature about him, data from Soviet periodicals and publications of the 1920s and 1930s, and archival sources from the State Archives of the Arkhangelsk Region (Materials for the Party Conference on Cinema for 1926). The authors conclude that in the early stages of its development, the history of Belgoskino generally corresponded to the principles and ideas formulated by Iezuitov in a number of his works and included the following principles: the rejection of entertainment and clichés, the search for new techniques, the mastery of the method of socialist realism and Marxist-Leninist philosophy, the proclamation of the socialist growth of the Soviet national republic as the central theme, the cinematic representation of the village, the widespread use of newsreels, and the ideological and creative quality of the films produced are all important aspects to consider.

Drawing Nostalgia – Memory, Displacement and the Cinematic Language of Longing Author: Tasos Giapoutzis Format: Essay Film Duration: 16′ 08″ Published: February 2026 https://doi.org/10.37186/swrks/16.1/7

This paper examines the cinematic portrayals of ascetic women within contemporary film. Historically, the early desert fathers and mothers are venerated figures who embody a life of ascesis—spiritual discipline amidst the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Renowned as spiritual mentors and referred to as Abba (father) for men and Amma (mother) for women, they exemplify a way of Christian life rooted in ascetic practice. Their teachings, preserved in texts such as The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, offer profound insights into Christian spiritual praxis. This spiritual praxis has been vividly depicted through iconography and asceticism continues to hold reverence, particularly within Eastern Orthodox Christianity, where it serves as the basis of spiritual–liturgical life. While the core goal and meanings of asceticism have been conveyed through ascetic iconography and aesthetics, cinematic portrayals of ascetic life and ethos remain a relatively under-researched area. The focus of this study is on the film A Cross in the Desert, adapted from a literary source, which dramatises the hagiography of St. Paraksevi the New, also known as Sveta Petka and St. Paraskevi of the Balkans (Epivates 944–1012). Through the analysis of film language, this paper aims to shed new light on the ways in which iconographic language has been translated into cinematic language, assessing the ways in which women ascetics have been depicted from a contemporary perspective. The film’s representation of a woman ascetic offers valuable insights into the conceptualisations of the notion of gender as a virtue—embodying sanctity—and potential site of desecration—representing iniquity—as these are experienced as both embodied and spiritual realities. The study offers an analysis of how cinematic language operates, focusing on the visual techniques used to depict the intersection of gender, holiness, and spiritual discipline, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of how film functions as a medium for engaging with complex religious and gendered identities. The analysis of film will provide novel understandings of how cinema depicts and challenges gender within the context of asceticism, exploring how these representations influence contemporary perceptions of women’s spirituality.

ABSTRACT This paper explores how Chloé Zhao employs adaptation strategies to construct her transnational identity in her film Nomadland (2020). Through two significant adaptations, Zhao replaces the real protagonist, Linda May, in the original with the fictional middle-aged white woman, Fern. This intervention allows Zhao to project her authorship shaped by mobility, outsiderhood, and personal cinematic aesthetics into an easily understood role from an American left-wing liberal perspective. Through Fern’s persistent loneliness and repeated farewells, Zhao maintains low political visibility, transforming the instability of American society into a personalized, “safe” narrative space. Meanwhile, the film’s poetic reconstruction of the vans and the American West transforms spacesshaped by colonial history, labor exploitation and the instability of late capitalism, into heterotopias, facilitating personal healing and identity. Through these strategies, Zhao reconstructs these spaces as an aesthetic sanctuarywhere she can reconcile her outsider identity. This aestheticization constitutes a creative mode of low political visibility, allowing Zhao to participate in American mainstream film industry without directly confronting ideological tensions. Together, these adaptive strategies collectively reveal how Zhao uses fiction and landscape to negotiate transnational identity through a personalized and politically cautious cinematic languages.

The subject of the study is the role of the doll in cinema as an element of a visual-symbolic artistic system. The goal of the work is to identify the mechanisms of the doll's inclusion in the system of expressive means of fictional film and to determine its role in shaping the visual-symbolic structure of the frame. The paper examines the peculiarities of the interaction between the doll and the film's material environment, its participation in the formation of associative cinematic imagery, and the symbolic structure of the frame. It is shown that the inclusion of the doll in the cinematic image enhances the expressiveness of the visual series, actualizes hidden cultural codes, and deepens the visual perception of characters and events. It is specified that the doll functions as an object of dual nature – both material and symbolic, which allows it to serve as a mediator between different levels of artistic expression. The methodological foundation of the study consists of a semiotic approach, visual series analysis, comparative film studies methods, and the interpretation of artistic imagery. The relevance of the research is due to the insufficient study of the role of the doll in the structure of cinematic imagery: its visual function, symbolic potential, and mechanisms of inclusion in the artistic system of fictional cinema. It is noted that addressing the image of the doll expands the toolkit for analyzing visual structures and contributes to a fuller disclosure of the possibilities of cinematic language. The obtained results can be used in studies of visual semiotics, film language theory, and synthetic artistic systems. In conclusion, it is stated that the doll in cinema represents a stable expressive element that establishes additional levels of interpretation and meaning depth. It has been established that the doll, included in the structure of the fictional film, functions not only as an object but also as a sign, expanding the semantic field of the frame, enhancing the associative nature of the cinematic image, and allowing for non-verbal expression, which is particularly important for cinema as a visual art, of the metaphorical and philosophical depth of the work.

This paper explores the narrative function of choreography in Indian cinema through the collaborative works of choreographer V. Sheshu Parupalli and filmmaker K. Vishwanath.Renowned for his mastery in Kcipui, Sheshu introduced classical dance vocabulary into mainstream Telugu films, particularly in six iconic collaborations with Vishwanath: akarbharaam (1980), Saptapad (1981), ubhalkha (1982), Sgara Sagamam (1983), rutilayalu (1987), Svarakamalam (1988).The study examines how Sheshu's choreography moves beyond aesthetic presentation, functioning instead as a vital narrative tool that shapes character development, emotional arcs, and thematic expression.Through a qualitative analysis of dance sequences across these films, this research identifies how movement replaces dialogue, symbolizing internal struggles, relationships, and transformations.For instance, in Sgara Sagamam, the protagonist's journey of rise, fall, and redemption is conveyed through the language of dance.Similarly, in Svarakamalam, dance becomes a metaphor for personal growth and self-realization.The research also highlights the integral synergy between classical music and movement, as seen in the guru-iya dynamic of Sankarabharanam, where choreography reinforces the film's devotional and pedagogical themes.By focusing on this specific collaboration, the paper contributes to the underexplored area of choreographic storytelling in Indian cinema, positioning dance as a central, rather than supplementary, cinematic language.

The article examines the features characterizing the screen versions of the works by Amirkhan Eniki (1909–2000), the national writer of Tatarstan and winner of the G. Tukay State Prize. The writer's prose has been presented twice to film connoisseurs. The director Akhtyam Zaripov was the first person who turned to the prose of A. Eniki. In the period of 2000–2001, “Ilhamiyat” Film Studio produced the television film “Full of Danger and Memory” (“Khətər həm khəter”), directed and staged by A. Zaripov who translated the writer's short stories “Only for One Hour” (“Ber genə səgat'kə”) (1944), “The Hospitable Enemy” (“Kunakchyl doshman”) (1945), “Looking into the Mountains” (“Taularga karap”) (1948) into the language of cinema. In 2014, based on the A. Eniki's stories “Beauty” (“Maturlyk”), “Only for One Hour” (“Ber gene segat'ke”), and “Who sang?” (“Kem dzhyrlady?”), the movie “The 823 rd Kilometre” was shot (written by Valeria Baykeeva, directed by Irek Khafizov and Amir Galiaskarov). In this scientific article, the object of evaluation is Akhtyam Zaripov's television film “Full of Danger and Memory”, based on the stories “Beauty”, “Only for One Hour”, “The Hospitable Enemy”, “Looking at the Mountains” and the screenplay by A. Eniki “Only for One Hour”. The subject of our research is the ideological and aesthetic qualities of the texts by the writer and the director, the features of this production, the ways used to convey to the viewer deep philosophical and moral ideas found in the works.

This article examines the linguistic and cultural politics surrounding New Nollywood’s pursuit of global recognition through the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (AABIFF). Using the disqualification of Nigeria’s first ever submission and the rejection of three Yoruba-language films by the Nigerian Official Selection Committee (NOSC) as case studies, the article explores how language, the question of authenticity and institutional gatekeeping intersect in shaping the international trajectories of Nigerian cinema. The analysis situates these controversies within broader debates about the dominance of English in African cultural productions, the legacy of colonialism and the ongoing efforts to valorize indigenous languages in cinema. Through historical contexts, the article argues that while economic motivations and the desire for wider circulation partly drive the preference for English, indigenous linguistic endowments remain central to how authenticity in cinematic representations is constructed and interpreted. Using examples from Old Nollywood, the article ultimately calls for a renewed investment in Indigenous language films. It argues that this is both an aesthetic and a strategic choice, not just for AABIFF but also for repositioning Nigerian cinema within global circuits.

This study examines how the emotion of fear is characterized and constructed through cinematic language in animation cinema, focusing on the animated film adapted from Francesca Sanna's book "My Friend Fear." Building upon Gilles Deleuze's concepts of time-image and sensory-motor narrative, alongside David Bordwell's theories of classical narrative structure, this research analyzes the role of animation's unique modes of expression in visualizing fear and anxiety. Through Paul Wells and Maureen Furniss's framework of animation ontology, the study discusses how fear is materialized through movement, rhythm, mise-en-scène, and visual abstraction techniques. The article problematizes how psychological transformations and internal conflicts experienced by a migrant child are represented within animation's plastic language, evaluating the treatment of fear not merely as a negative emotion but as a transformable and integrable experience. Through detailed analysis of 28 scenes from the animated film, the research reveals how animation's capacity for abstraction translates psychological concepts into visual language and how this process transforms traditional codes of cinematic language. The study also addresses the role of animation techniques produced with Adobe After Effects, including Puppet Position Pin Tool, Wave effect, masking, and keyframe animation, in conveying emotions. Keywords: Animation narrative, time-image, fear representation, cinematic language, emotional characterization, childhood fears, migration psychology

Social deixis is a key part of pragmatics that shows how language expresses respect, authority, and social ties in different cultures. Although deixis has been studied a lot, there is still not much research on how social deixis can show both authority and emotional bonds in stories with strong cultural and family themes, such as the animated film Coco. This study examines how social deixis is used in Coco (2017), focusing on how it reflects respect, authority, and emotional closeness between characters in Mexican culture. Using a qualitative descriptive method, the study reviews and analyzes all film dialogues with social deixis, sorting them into relational and absolute types based on Levinson’s theory. The findings show that relational social deixis, especially kinship terms and informal address, is most common, highlighting the importance of family ties and solidarity. Absolute deixis, though less common, points to respect and power differences. The study concludes that social deixis in Coco helps build cultural identity and share moral values, showing how film language connects cultural and emotional understanding. Future research could compare how social deixis appears in different cultures and media to deepen our understanding of language, culture, and communication.

This study aims to describe the forms and functions of sarcastic language style used by the characters in the film Rumah untuk Alie through a stylistic approach based on Keraf’s (2006) theory of language style. This research employs a qualitative method with listening and note-taking techniques to collect data in the form of utterances containing sarcasm. The data were analyzed using the referential identity method (metode padan) to interpret meanings, contexts, and rhetorical functions of sarcasm in shaping characters and conflicts. The findings reveal three main forms of sarcastic language style: mocking sarcasm, cursing sarcasm, and ironic sarcasm. Each form serves different rhetorical purposes, such as expressing emotions, channeling anger, and asserting social dominance within conflictual interactions. Stylistically, the use of sarcasm in the film demonstrates how diction, intonation, and context create emotional and aesthetic effects while reflecting the characters’ social dynamics and power relations. This study concludes that language in film functions not merely as a medium of communication but also as a means of psychological expression and social representation.