Contemporary Cinema Research Articles

On the specifics of a contemporary film interpretation of village prose: Brothers and Sisters by F.А.Abramov — Two Winters and Three Summers by T.R.Esadze

The author focuses on the recent film adaptation of the iconic work of village prose — the novel tetralogy Brothers and Sisters by Fyodor Abramov. Teimuraz Esadze’s TV series Two Winters and Three Summers (2014), which was shown on Russia 1, is considered as a part of a large-scale process that sociologist Boris Dubin has called reconciliation with the Soviet past (an important symptom of this process was a wave of film adaptations of Soviet classics in the second half of the 2000–2010s). Insisting that Abramov’s novels are classics of Russian litera ture, Esadze sought to extract from them, first, relevant formulas of collective identity, and second, explanatory models capable of shedding light on social processes in late- and post Soviet society. In the article, the way the director uses the conceptual apparatus and imagina tive and rhetorical system of village prose is interpreted as an attempt to reanimate the critical discourse of late-Soviet neopochvennichestvo in new conditions. The article examines the am bivalent strategy of Esadze’s TV series, on the one hand, oriented toward a precise reproduc tion of Abramov’s text, and on the other hand, taking into account the narrative and figurative logic of the TV series, usually addressed to a mass audience. The article concludes that such a strategy has a low analytical and reflexive potential, depending on the generalized media image of a Russian village, internalized through literary, film- and television representations, collective (family) or personal memories.

Differences in Cross-cultural Communication of Chinese Contemporary Films

Films in recent years, the Japanese swelled as an important culture dissemination way, in the people suffering from love, is also the important communication forms of cultural exchanges with other countries, is in cross-cultural communication in their cultural symbols of the output of the indispensable cultural carrier, is the national output channels, and vigorously support the development of the culture with people s living standards continue to improve, the film also gradually become the important way of entertainment, it not only has the function of education and entertainment, is unparalleled in raising cultural cohesion, under the process of globalization, culture is increasingly widespread foreign, thriving in Hollywood today, Film is in a booming development situation in our country, the film culture industry has gradually occupied the cultural industry in our country more and more important position, and in the process of external communication, to reflect the market and the audience feedback, and word-of-mouth are the different foreign culture for the acceptance and recognition of Chinese traditional culture, in the Chinese domestic market and foreign market different culture communication effect is the so-called cross-cultural communication differences, in this case, the study Chinese and foreign cultural dimension difference in the movie also has a deeper exploration of value.

Generic Fluency in Professional Subtitling:

This article evaluates the translation of neologies in professional subtitling of audiovisual science fiction from the point of view of genre-specific features. Neologies are seen to be the most important linguistic element of science fiction as they produce the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement and hence cognitively estrange the viewer from reality. Evaluating the translation of neologies is thus used as a tool to evaluate the transfer of the source text genre to the target text and to hypothesise whether the target text meets the expectations of the viewers. When the neologies are retained as genre-specific features of science fiction, the target text genre is seen to be generically fluent and the target text meets the viewer’s expectations. Even though the translation solutions which render the genre unfluent (misplace the science fiction cognitive estrangement produced by the source text) are in minority in the study material, the neologies can be seen to normalise towards common language in the translation process. This means that as neologies are considered as one of the producers of the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement, the source text genre becomes less accessible for the target text viewer. Lay summary Science fiction is one of the most popular contemporary film and tv-series genres. The audience has expectations on the content of a science fiction film or tv-series based on their previous experiences with the genre, in other words, the genre-specific features. This article evaluates the translation of neologies in professional subtitling of audiovisual science fiction from the point of view of these genre-specific features. Neologies are seen to be the voice of science fiction as they cognitively estrange the viewer from reality. Evaluating the translation of neologies is used as a tool to evaluate the transfer of the source text (the original tv-series) genre to the target text (the subtitled tv-series) and to hypothesise whether the translation meets the expectations of the viewers. When the dialogue’s neologies are retained in the subtitles, the target text is seen to meet the viewer’s expectations. The study revealed that the neologies can be seen to normalise towards common language in the translation process. This means that as neologies are considered as one of the producers of the science fiction genre-specific cognitive estrangement, the source text genre becomes less accessible for the target text viewer.

The Development of Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema

The purpose of the research is to investigate the history of contemporary Ukrainian cinema and to analyze the ways of its development. Highlight the main problems of national film production; identify the main principles and areas of its potential realization, the conditions for creating a successful and engaging film industry in Ukraine. The research methodology consists of the following methods: analytical – the study and analysis of historical materials of the Ukrainian cinema formation; empirical – the generalization of monitoring the intensity of filmmaking; theoretical – the research of prospects and directions of national film potential realization. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the prospects and directions of the national film potential realization are outlined based on the detailed in-depth analysis of the Ukrainian cinema historical development, an estimation of its modern condition. Conclusions. Analysis of the current state of Ukrainian cinema showed that the national cinema has undergone changes in the basic guidelines and value vectors of its development, intensified the process of realizing its potential, began building effective mechanisms of administrative and legal regulation of this area for development and proper functioning of the domestic film industry.

Improvisation, Blankness and Mesmerism: Mike Leggett and Ian Breakwell’s Sheet and the Two Avant-Gardes

This article examines Mike Leggett and Ian Breakwell’s short film Sheet. Though little scholarship exists on Sheet, the enigmatic quality of the film and the sheet that gives it its name has given rise to a number of contrasting interpretations. The article discusses two opposing accounts of the film, one which sees it as being a film haunted by the ghostly presence of the titular sheet, and which contains some form of narrative and resolution, and one which sees it as an example of structural film, characterised by repetition and formal concerns. I align these two interpretations with Peter Wollen’s article on the two avant-gardes in contemporary film and argue that Leggett and Breakwell’s work, through their improvisatory approach, triangulates Wollen’s distinction, and allows both interpretations to be simultaneously true. In addition, I discuss the way in which the film re-examines a theme found in filmmaking in the immediate post May ’68 moment, of characters moving from the urban to the rural. As such, the film can be seen as expressing the anxieties and concerns of that period, both political and artistic.

Doświadczanie kina a dramaturgia neomodernizmu filmowego

This article is an attempt to investigate contemporary film theory highlighting the inseparable connection between cinema and the human body and seeing, in which sense this theory complements academic recognition about neomodernism. The author expands on the philosophical concept of experience, showing problems posed by its conceptualization, and also points to the connection of this term with the body and sensuality. In the next part, the main distinguishing features characterizing the dramaturgy of cinematic neomodernism are given. The author argues that the dramaturgy of this movement creates a different kind of cinema experience in general. The final part presents an analysis of two films which are examples of the theory of cinema as senses, as well as exemplifying the dramaturgy characteristic for neomodernism, and thus creating a specific type of experience in the viewer.

The legacy of A Clockwork Orange in The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (Thomas Clay, 2005) and Bronson (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009): ‘all form and no content’?

This article considers the legacy and influence of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) in contemporary cinema. Kubrick’s film received criticism on its release for the director’s supposed excessive attention to form at the expense of content (what some termed the ‘aestheticization of violence’). Two recent directors that have frequently been compared to Kubrick, Thomas Clay and Nicholas Winding Refn, have similarly been criticised for their aestheticization of violence in their films. Drawing upon news clippings of film reviews, the article compares Clay’s The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (2005) and Refn’s Bronson (2009) to Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange to consider how the media discourse surrounding Kubrick’s film continues to inform contemporary criticism of violence in film. The article addresses the reception of these films through the prism of the form vs content dichotomy initiated by Kubrick himself. Archival material in the Stanley Kubrick Archive relating to the reception of Kubrick’s film is used to support a comparative approach and show that the accusations aimed at the imitators of Kubrick continue a debate that actually started with A Clockwork Orange itself.

Fashion in Copenhagen films and TV shows

This article examines the representations of fashion and clothing through the history of Copenhagen films and TV shows. Because a comprehensive study of Copenhagen media does not yet exist, we have reviewed, compiled and analysed many examples of historical and contemporary films and television shows that have a special relationship with the city and its fashion. We examine the ways in which the city is mediated, how various film genres (including social realism, historical costume dramas and contemporary lifestyle dramas) and TV shows (ranging from historical and political dramas to Nordic noir crime series) use the characters’ clothing as signifiers and representations of class, careers, lifestyles and identities. The clothing and fashion in these works reveal many underlying cultural messages, motivations of the characters, as well as important social, cultural and political commentary on the city as a microcosm for society at large. Our methodology is grounded in cultural history, fashion history and media analysis, with a particular attention to the cultural, political and urban transformations in Copenhagen over the decades, and the role fashion plays in the city’s cultural landscape.

The Ennui of the Scroll

Inspired by her difficulty selecting a film as the subject for her column, Film Quarterly regular Caetlin Benson-Allott explores the concept of the “paradox of choice” in relation to contemporary film culture. A common feature of late-stage capitalism with its characteristic consumer abundance, the paradox of choice afflicts people with too many options, decreasing their happiness and increasing anxiety. In her column, Benson-Allott explores the paradox of choice as a condition of the current streaming era, while also historicizing television culture’s ideology of plenty. She traces this notion of superabundance, which undergirds digital cable and streaming culture today, back to the 1950s when print media such as TV Guide pioneered a print-heavy layout that stupefied the eye into an impression of excess. Arguing that browsing print program guides and its more recent corollary, channel surfing, are numbing experiences that discourage risk-taking, Benson-Allott ultimately finds relief from the ennui of the scroll in the pleasures—both expected and unexpected—of the genre film.

Do gender, genre and the gaze still matter? Toward a feminine road movie in women’s experimental film

ABSTRACT Seen as historically masculine, the road movie has privileged the white heterosexual male and thus perpetuated its traditional patriarchal configuration. To counteract the genre’s gendered nature, some scholars have pointed to the growing need to study women’s road movies, yet never in the context of experimental filmmaking, which was institutionalized as thoroughly masculine with women’s work dismissed as peripheral or excessively lyrical. To fill this gap, I build on feminist geography and automobilities research to discuss the “feminine” road movie aesthetics in contemporary experimental films, Sophie Calle’s No Sex Last Night (1992), Su Friedrich’s Rules of the Road (1993), Michaela Grill’s Carte Noir (2014) and Faith Arazi and Madeleine Mori’s Through a Field (2019). While Carte Noir and Through a Field construct a lone female nomadic story and Double Blind and Rules of the Road embrace the couple road movie format, all works contest the road as a masculine space and question the genderedness of mobility through a strong emphasis on the (female) self and embodied practices of driving. This signals the cinematic transformation of women from a desired object to a creative subject, consequently denying the spectator the usual pleasures associated with voyeurism, fetishism and the (patriarchal) spectacle.

Frontier poetry: new adventures in contemporary French horror cinema

ABSTRACT Until the twenty-first century, the horror genre was a relatively marginal factor in French filmmaking. But in recent years the format has permeated the French media ecosystem. This article studies this phenomenon by way of a vital modern French cultural conversation ― that of frontier horror poetry, espoused by Claire Denis, influentially advocating for ephemeral beauty to be studied alongside savagery, for musicality and artistic expression to flourish on-screen in even the direst of horror genre situations. Exploring this paradoxical frontier horror poetry idiom, this article finds its manifestations in many leading French horror case studies, such as Denis’s Trouble Every Day (2001), Robin Campillo’s Les Revenants (2004), Gaspar Noé’s Climax (2018), and Dominique Rocher’s La Nuit a dévoré le monde (2018).

Considering Eye-tracking as a Validation Tool in Cinema Research

AbstractThe use of eye-tracking in data collection, when accompanied by the proper research questions and methodology, is a powerful tool that may provide invaluable insights into the way viewers perceive and experience movies. Film theory can use eye-tracking to test and verify research hypotheses not only with unprecedented accuracy, but also with the ability to address a significant variety of theoretical questions. Eye-tracking can help build contemporary film theory by supporting its various fields of research, and also even assist the production of films themselves by helping filmmakers make more informed creative decisions. The present article is an overview of eye-tracking and its gradual implementation in cinema research; in the context of discussing some recent examples of academic work based on eye-tracking, it considers the technology of eye-trackers and the way in which human vision handles visual information on screen. By testing the attentional behaviour of viewers, eye-tracking can produce more solid answers to questions regarding the way films are experienced; therefore, it may very well prove to be the spearhead of a more robust body of film theory in the near future.

As mulheres nas produções cinematográficas: uma abordagem psicológica das personagens femininas

With the arrival of the streaming technology, one can notice a certain movement within the cinematographic industry putting a spotlight on the role of women both in the field of making cinema and being a character in it. Women, their stories, their role within society, and how problems affect them have become important subjects of contemporary cinema, which is more concerned with the reality of social changes and with the so-called female empowerment. In some of these new cinematographic productions, one can notice female characters portraited in multiple professions, such as psychology or psychiatry, as shown in “Gypsy”, “Wanderlust”, and “8 in Istanbul”, which reveal three different mental health professionals shedding a light on the intimate relationship between cinema and the human Psyche. This work’s goal is to analyze these characters through the lens of different theories of social psychology, especially their role in the society in which they are inserted.

Evolution of dystopian models in contemporary film narratives. An ecosocial perspective

The current COVID-19 pandemic has seriously impacted our health, economy, daily life, interpersonal and international relations, to the point that this so-called “new normality”, a massively accepted dystopia, seems to have installed itself in our daily environment. But we have other problems besetting us: economic crisis, precariousness, questioning of the bases of democracy, and the most pressing one due to its generalization, the ecological unsustainability of our way of life. In this context, our culture is plagued by apocalyptic visions created through, among others, the audiovisual medium, as a great current generator of worldview. Along with television and online (mis)information, which gloats in catastrophic “news”, film and series production companies offer a multitude of dystopian audiovisual products, thus shaping the uncertainties of the present and the future.In this presentation, after sufficient socio-ecological contextualization of our multifactorial crisis, we analyze the evolution of the filmic representation of collapse models, in what we could call “classic catastrophism”, from the mid and late 20th century, through to the beginning of the 21st century, until the current films and series characterized by the eco-social dystopia as a plausible projection of future. To this end we begin by describing the current situation of decline and probable collapse of our highly fossil-dependent industrial societies, analyzing the fictional scenarios that have created, by redundancy, very defined models. Following this review, we looked at those productions that prioritizes contents linked to the systemic ecological crisis.

The main character of Ibero-American cinema in the hypermodern model

The movie Doña Clara, a Kleber Mendonça Filho film, analysed as a sample of identification analysis of contemporary Ibero-American cinema. Based on a quantitative methodology, the data has been analysed focusing on the characters which belong to a narrative look like the hypermodern cinema. The purpose of the study is to propose this movie as a model of Ibero-American paradigmatic cinema. The main character represented by Doña Clara and interpreted by Sonia Braga exerts a predominant position that sustains the whole work, the other characters as a choreography embody the rest of society. The conclusions present the cinema as a visual art that faithfully represents the historical moment by which we observe Ibero-American society.

A reunião: um diálogo entre a arte e o design para gestão e criação de um produto audiovisual em meio a pandemia de COVID-19 Orlando José Dantas Lopes

This project promotes a dialogue between contemporary art, cinema and design, seeking to develop an audiovisual project using limited resources in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study starts from a creative process focused on a poetics materialized through masks designed in the form of sculptures and installations that are transmuted into three-dimensional performance elements, composing costumes and scenarios suitable for creative exploration in the scope of photography and audiovisual production. The narratives and aesthetics are designed with light and shadow effects, emptiness and filling, space and non-space concepts. The social isolation caused by the new Coronavirus is personified through sensations and experiences of color, light and darkness, creating a ritualistic atmosphere of transformation of the self, starting from the principles of belief and faith, in addition to a cycle of learning and unveiling in an obscure environment. The methodology used was based on design thinking strategies, interviews with creators and potential consumers, scriptwriting, scale, costume development, photomontages and prototyping of the proposed audiovisual product. Making a creative proposal during the social isolation proved to be a methodological, managerial, financial, technical and mental challenge, in view of the overload of activities for the team members and the difficulties generated by remote work, with decision-making that is often time-consuming and dense. This study is relevant for creators, producers, designers and visual artists interested in producing audiovisual products with a strong creative appeal and at the same time with limited resources, using methodologies focused on remote team work.

O poder da videoarte e do cinema negros na arte contemporânea

This paper provides a critical framework to discuss the history of Black Film traditions in contemporary visual art. Since production of video art started in 1960, Black video and video performance artists had until now little visibility, were unrecognized and under-researched as they should have been. The paper aims to show the role of the Canadian video artists: Stan Douglas, Sylvia D. Hamilton, Michele Pearson Clarke; Brazilian artists: Ayrson Heraclito, Renata Felinto; and the South Africa Filmmaker and artist John Akomfrah; in redefining black identity. The works of these artists are very important to addressing black aesthetics in contemporary art films and video art in the present times of social change, black activism and Post-blackness philosophical movement. These artists discuss blackness, diversity, diaspora, and deconstruct a white Eurocentrism narrative and explores the complexity of the contemporary art scenes of Africa and video art of the Americas. This is of paramount importance to the role of black Films in the arts, as well as to decolonize artistic institutions, in addition to showing the importance of black video art and film. I will present a discourse on the works of the above mentioned artists, as they are engaged with political culture, and they make references in their oeuvre to African roots, race, gender, politics, society, and culture. These artists raise the social practice and contemporary issues for black people. It is important to emphasize their black video art contributes to this rise in the reshaping of black identity in art and in Film studies.

The Appearance and Resonance of Apocalyptic Archetypes in Contemporary Disaster Films

The COVID-19 pandemic has roused the apocalyptic fear that was foreseen in religious prophecies. This research will focus on the post-9/11 and pre-COVID-19 disaster films, in an attempt to understand the representation and pre-presentation of the collective disaster psychology. Aligned with Jungian film studies, this essay regards films as a convergence of generations’ collective unconscious. Apocalypse may as well be considered the psychic archetypes that emerge in our civilization in the name of religion. This essay aims to construe the ways that apocalyptic archetypes appear and are elaborated in contemporary films, in hope of recognizing the new apocalyptic aesthetics formed in the interval between the two disastrous events. Consistent with the meaning in classic doomsday narratives, the archetypal symbols in these films are found to have carried a dual connotation of destruction and rebirth. Through empirical cinematographic style, these archetypal images are revealed in an immersive way. Disaster films from this time place emphasis on death itself, fiercely protesting against the stagnation of life, and in turn triggering a transcendental transformation of the psyche. Unlike those in the late 1990s, viewing the doomsday crisis through the lens of spectacularity, disaster in these films is seen as a state of body and mind, and death a thought-provoking life experience.

Tachyons, tactility, drawing and withdrawing: cinema at the speed of darkness

Longitudinal, quantitative analyses of cinema have established how Hollywood is getting ‘quicker, faster, darker’. While in some senses the ‘intensified continuity’ of contemporary Hollywood narration is a given, the increased darkness of contemporary mainstream cinema remains unexplored – especially with regard to how its speed and its darkness might be inter-related. If to darken the majority of the screen during a film helps to draw our attention to the salient aspects of the image that are better illuminated, then of course this also allows for a faster cutting rate: in principle, there is ‘less’ information for the viewer to have to take in during each shot, meaning that the film can then cut to subsequent images more rapidly.
 However, there are other ways in which we can interpret this ‘darkening’ of contemporary film narration. For example, it perhaps ties in with a widespread sense of disorientation with regard to the increasingly globalized and connected world that digitization has helped to bring about, and which is equally reflected in the rise of the contemporary ‘mind-game’ or ‘puzzle’ film that is a staple of contemporary Hollywood. The darkness in such films thus gives expression to uncertainty and disorientation.
 More than this, though, we might use physics to understand the darkness of contemporary cinema in a more ‘meta-physical’ fashion. While it is accepted that light is the ‘fastest’ phenomenon in the known universe, there nonetheless remain unilluminated aspects of the physical universe that defy light as the limit of speed – and which convey the interconnected nature of matter in the contemporary universe. For example, polarized particles have been proven simultaneously to respond to stimuli – at a speed faster than it would take light to travel from one particle to the other, a phenomenon that baffled Albert Einstein, who referred to this process as ‘spooky action at a distance’. Not only does this process suggest what Karen Barad might refer to as the entangled nature of all matter, but it also suggests speeds beyond, or at least different, to that of light. In this essay, then, I shall theorise a ‘speed of darkness’ that can help us to understand how the darkening of contemporary cinema ties in with the interconnected, invisible (‘spooky’) and ultra-rapid nature of the digital world. Perhaps it is not in the light but in the darkness that we can identify the key to understanding contemporary mainstream cinema and the globalized, digital world that produces it.

Spaces of difference. Narration in animation/liveaction hybrid films

The aim of this paper is to focus on the ways of using animation as well as its function in live-action/ animation hybrid films. The usage of animation in narratives of such type of movies can vary. However, what connects them is the way of telling the story, based on the juxtaposition of two different realities that interact in a number of ways. The ways of combining the two worlds can be very different: animation may symbolize what is fantastic, as in pioneer McCay’s ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’, but also what is imagined, felt, thought out, once lived, dreamed of, alternative. The article describes the differences between classic hybrids and contemporary films.