Film Chronicle Research Articles

Photo and film chronicle of the defense of Stalingrad from the fund of the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents

This article is devoted to the photo and film chronicle of the defense of Stalingrad, stored in the funds of the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents. Its funds contain a huge array of documentary evidence on the history of the Great Patriotic War, including more than 3500 files and about 1 million meters of film. A special place among them belongs to materials dedicated to the Battle of Stalingrad. The archive contains negatives of photographs taken by leading wartime photojournalists; photo albums; films; canned news; and newsreels, produced directly in combat units that fought on the outskirts of the city and in Stalingrad itself.

Kyiv International Film Festival "Film Chronicles of War"

Kyiv International Film Festival "Film Chronicles of War"

Screen Time Specifics in the Film Chronicle of the Fiery Years

Screen Time Specifics in the Film Chronicle of the Fiery Years

Propaganda w Polskiej Kronice Filmowej

Polish Film Chronicle was a party medium which, over the last 50 years of activity, was supposed to perform propaganda, cognitive and ludistic functions. Controlled by censorship institutions, it was using various manipulative measures aimed at the appropriate transfer of information or coverage of political, social, sports and cultural events. The use of various types of linguistic persuasion mechanisms, the selection of an appropriate, emotionally marked vocabulary, suggestive portrayal of objects or events or the use of directives are just some of the means taken by the editorial team of the Chronicle. All this to cope with the task of combining contained in the circulars with the instructions of censorship guidelines, and at the same time making the reception of their film magazine for the average viewer something pleasant, useful and educating. The aim of the article is to show the process of intensifying or easing the propaganda mechanisms in the implementation of the Polish Film Chronicle, as well as to indicate what measures taken by the editorial team in creating the Chronicle were intended to influence the viewer’s perception

Publicystyka Heleny Lemańskiej ‒ przypadek Polskiej Kroniki Filmowej w latach 1949‒1967

The Polish Film Chronicle in the times of mass information falling in the years after the end of World War II gave the opportunity to formulate a message addressed to specific groups of recipients. Its reception was one of the components of the life of social groups and individual recipients who could become addicted to watching the message formulated by the aforementioned medium. The chronicle, which was part of the mass media system, had a direct impact on its recipients in the processes of socialization of education and self-education. PKF became and remains an interesting source of knowledge about the functioning of the People’s Republic of Poland. It is also an extremely valuable film document reflecting the style of the political discourse of the time, moreover, it is a historical document that allows to reproduce the features of the then styles of political press journalism.

Film chronicle: This Is Cinerama dir. by Merian C. Cooper, and: The Motorcycle Diaries dir. by Walter Salles, and: Easy Rider dir. by Dennis Hopper, and: Two for the Road dir. by Stanley Donen, and: The Wages of Fear dir. by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and: Tracks dir. by John Curran, and: Finding Nemo dir. by Andrew Stanton, and: Finding Dory dir.

Reviewed by: Film chronicle: This Is Cinerama dir. by Merian C. Cooper, and: The Motorcycle Diaries dir. by Walter Salles, and: Easy Rider dir. by Dennis Hopper, and: Two for the Road dir. by Stanley Donen, and: The Wages of Fear dir. by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and: Tracks dir. by John Curran, and: Finding Nemo dir. by Andrew Stanton, and: Finding Dory dir. by Andrew Stanton, and: Baraka dir. by Ron Fricke Jefferson Hunter (bio) Film chronicle: This Is Cinerama, directed by Merian C. Cooper (streaming on Kanopy); The Motorcycle Diaries, directed by Walter Salles (streaming on Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube); Easy Rider, directed by Dennis Hopper (streaming on Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube); Two for the Road, directed by Stanley Donen (streaming on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube); The Wages of Fear, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot (streaming on Kanopy and the Criterion Channel); Tracks, directed by John Curran (streaming on Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube); Finding Nemo, directed by Andrew Stanton (streaming on Disney+, Apple TV, and Amazon); Finding Dory, directed by Andrew Stanton (streaming on Disney+, Apple TV, and Amazon); Baraka, directed by Ron Fricke (streaming on Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube). Many Saturday afternoons of my childhood were spent in the balcony of the Fox or the Paramount, watching the main feature and maybe a B-picture, but always trailers for coming attractions, a newsreel, and a cartoon or travelogue. The last would be a short subject about a far-off and scenic part of the world, photographed in color and featuring a commentary by Lowell Thomas or some other sonorous-voiced authority. Historically speaking, the travelogues of the 1950s derived from the illustrated-withlantern-slides lectures that nineteenth-century explorers delivered to audiences in provincial lyceums, and in turn they have led to the countless travel programs of 21st-century television—for example all of those nowadays broadcast on the Travel Channel. Ethnographic and touristic in equal measure, like articles in National Geographic magazine, travelogues catered to the interests of a middle-class American public that, in fact, had not yet done much traveling itself. The Fox or the Paramount revealed a larger world, and introduced all of us to the thrills and occasionally the perils of getting out into that world. Travelogues cannot easily be seen today, but their general style, combining breathless excitement with straightforward reporting, escapism with a geography lesson, and exoticism with the occasional touch of good old American humor, is well captured by This Is Cinerama, a full-length travel documentary released in 1952 and now available for streaming on Kanopy. It was co-produced and directed by the adventurer, aviator, and all-around cinema whiz-kid Merian C. Cooper, who, two decades earlier, had been the moving force behind King Kong—a film, it will be remembered, [End Page 610] that begins with the making of a travelogue. I saw This Is Cinerama a few years after its initial release and was suitably thrilled when the compere (inevitably, Lowell Thomas) introduced the new cinematic process. He had been giving a potted lecture on film history in a sequence shot in black-and-white and employing the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, but then he declaimed, "This is Cinerama!" and the image suddenly widened across the huge theater screen, turned from black-and-white to Technicolor, and started us off on the first of our travels, a ride on a New Jersey roller-coaster car crawling up high on its tracks, then vertiginously speeding down. The widescreen images of This Is Cinerama were produced by three cameras simultaneously shooting a scene from slightly different angles, then by three synchronized projectors casting the footage onto a huge curved screen. On a small screen at home you will see only a letterboxed simulacrum of the original effect, but in truth the technical achievement of the film is the least interesting thing about it (and Cinerama itself has long been superseded by other and less distorting widescreen processes). It is This Is Cinerama's take on travel that makes the film worth seeing. After that roller-coaster ride, a series of vignettes transports us to places the producers deemed...

Film Chronicle dir. by Akira Kurosawa, and: Stranger on the Third Floor by dir. by Boris Ingster, and: Spellbound dir. by Alfred Hitchcock, and: The Big Lebowski dir. by Joel and Ethan Coen, and: An American in Paris dir. by Vincente Minnelli, and: The Kid dir. by Charlie Chaplin, and: Le Grand Amour dir. by Pierre Étaix, and: Wild Strawberries

Film Chronicle dir. by Akira Kurosawa, and: Stranger on the Third Floor by dir. by Boris Ingster, and: Spellbound dir. by Alfred Hitchcock, and: The Big Lebowski dir. by Joel and Ethan Coen, and: An American in Paris dir. by Vincente Minnelli, and: The Kid dir. by Charlie Chaplin, and: Le Grand Amour dir. by Pierre Étaix, and: Wild Strawberries

Kwestia kobieca w Polskiej Kronice Filmowej (postulaty badawcze w zarysie)

For 50 years of its work, Polish Film Chronicle has repeatedly focused on women as the hero of its materials. The editions of the Chronicle, showing an over-colored and properly censored picture of reality, acted as a propaganda instrument of the PRL government, presenting the public with images that were to induce them to certain behaviors and adopt certain views. Depending on the political and economic situation of the country and the decisions made by the authorities, the image of women has changed many times over the years. Among the editions of the chronicle, the most common image is a woman as a mother and a worker. Pictures about mothers most often included individual stories of individuals devoted to raising their children, as well as issues of country infrastructure aimed at facilitating the functioning of working mothers. The Chronicle tried to convince women to take up professional work – often difficult professions, commonly considered to be the domain of men, such as a mine foreman, a steel worker, a bricklayer or a railwayman. In addition, the profiles of women – role models, dedicated to work, exceeding the production standards set by them, working for the local society, were presented, aimed at encouraging Polish women who only act as housewives to undertake similar commitments.

Source study of the Polish Film Chronicle (1944–1994). Biography of editor-in-chief Helena Lemańska

The aim of the scientific article was to present the biography of Helena Lemańska, for many years the editor of Polish Film Chronicle (PFC). The article used two science technique: 1) Exegesis sources, 2) Interview. An interesting theme in the biography of Lemańska was her annual activity of the organization Hashomer Hatzair. Experience in journalism helped her in managing a team of PFC and contributed to the introduction of innovative techniques in the work of the PFC.

Film Chronicle

Film Chronicle Jefferson Hunter (bio) In a Lonely Place, directed by Nicholas Ray (streaming on Amazon) Sunset Blvd, directed by Billy Wilder (streaming on Amazon) White Hunter, Black Heart, directed by Clint Eastwood (streaming on Amazon and YouTube) Barton Fink, directed by Joel Coen (streaming on Apple TV and Amazon) Trumbo, directed by Peter Askin (streaming on Kanopy) Dreams on Spec, directed by Daniel Snyder (streaming on Amazon) Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze (streaming on Apple TV and Amazon) Mank, directed by David Fincher (streaming on Netflix). In the Hollywood of old a well-defined hierarchy of power and prestige extended from studio moguls at the top down through unit managers and producers to directors and established stars, then to ordinary actors, and below them, finally, to screenwriters, the necessary but otherwise unimportant wordsmiths who crafted lines for stars to speak and studio moguls to sneer at. From the 1930s through the 1940s a lot of wordsmiths, among them highly regarded reporters, playwrights, and novelists like Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Herman Mankiewicz, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, and Scott Fitzgerald, headed west to make easy money by writing scripts, only to find that film-industry money came with a price, namely the incomprehension, disdain, or outright hostility of picture people. In the last sad year of his life Fitzgerald distilled his unhappy scenario-writing experiences into a dozen or so stories about an old alcoholic hack, Pat Hobby, still trying to scratch out a living in Hollywood. One of the stories, “Mightier Than the Sword,” sees Pat and another scrivener yelled at by a big-shot producer: Goddam writers! . . . What do we pay you for? Millions—and you write a lot of tripe I can’t photograph and get sore if we don’t read your lousy stuff! How can a man make pictures when they give me two bastards like you and Hudson. How? How do you think—you old whiskey bum? The producer promptly throws them out of his office and off the lot. So much for the might of the pen as compared with that of the sword. Interestingly, old Hollywood liked to depict fictional screenwriters in movies, low-positioned as they might be in the studio pecking order. After all, comedy or melodrama might be wrung out of their eccentricities [End Page 459] or disillusionments. Unquestionably, melodrama is wrung out of the experiences of the fictional screenwriter Duke Steele in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place, from 1950. Humphrey Bogart plays Steele in what is generally regarded as one of the finest performances of his career; Gloria Grahame is no less impressive as Laurel Gray, the young actress-wannabe who falls hard for him. There are really three storylines here. First and least interesting, a murder mystery: did Steele seduce and then strangle a naïve hat-check girl? Certain clues point in his direction, but it is scarcely giving anything away to reveal that he is innocent, and finally proven innocent by a deus-ex-machina confession from someone else. Second comes the story of Steele’s uncontrollable anger. His outbursts may have to do with his drinking or being suspected by the police, but fundamentally they derive from built-up resentment at the whole Hollywood scene. Even when not enraged, Steele can be controlling, at times boorish, so that one sometimes wonders how Laurel can be drawn to him. Eventually she becomes terrified by him, his sudden fury at an innocent beach party, his lashings-out at another driver on the highway (could this be the first instance of road rage ever screened?). The third and by far most compelling story focuses on Steele as screenwriter. We watch him lost in concentrated thought, scribbling away, piling up pages of dialogue for Laurel to type. Many movies involving screenwriters feature getting-it-down-on-paper processes like this, often via montage sequences. In a Lonely Place, unusually, shows the mental work which precedes getting it down on paper. A genuinely startling moment from early in the film presents Duke imagining how the murder of the hat-check girl might have taken place, detail by lurid detail (note the melodramatic light Ray casts on...

Kulturowe znaczenie IV Międzynarodowego Konkursu Chopinowskiego w kontekście odradzającego się po II wojnie światowej polskiego życia muzycznego

The article aims at summarizing different activities undertaken to organize and run the first post- war Chopin piano competition. It is an attempt to collect facts, accounts and memories concerning actions initiated by Polish music culture environment after the Second World War. The author fo- cuses on a detailed description of the organization and proceedings of the 4th International Piano Competition, making use of information that has existed in independent sources so far. The article uses diaries, biographies, autobiographies, private notes, interviews with representatives of Polish culture, archive films and documentaries belonging to the Polish Film Chronicle. Press excepts were not used on purpose, as most press information was included in the aforesaid bibliography entries. The analyzed sources let us conclude that the organization of the first post-was Chopin piano competition in Warsaw was an event requiring both the engagement of all state institutions and personal contribution of musicians and music teachers. The author considers such a detailed historical-cultural account justified and necessary, especially in 2020, the 210th birth anniversary of Frederic Chopin, the year in which the 18th Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition was supposed to take place.

Cultural Importance of the 4th International Chopin Piano Competition in the Light of Polish Music Life Reviving after the WW II

The article aims at summarizing different activities undertaken to organize and run the first post- war Chopin piano competition. It is an attempt to collect facts, accounts and memories concerning actions initiated by Polish music culture environment after the Second World War. The author fo- cuses on a detailed description of the organization and proceedings of the 4th International Piano Competition, making use of information that has existed in independent sources so far. The article uses diaries, biographies, autobiographies, private notes, interviews with representatives of Polish culture, archive films and documentaries belonging to the Polish Film Chronicle. Press excepts were not used on purpose, as most press information was included in the aforesaid bibliography entries. The analyzed sources let us conclude that the organization of the first post-was Chopin piano competition in Warsaw was an event requiring both the engagement of all state institutions and personal contribution of musicians and music teachers. The author considers such a detailed historical-cultural account justified and necessary, especially in 2020, the 210th birth anniversary of Frederic Chopin, the year in which the 18th Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition was supposed to take place.

Polska Kronika Filmowa as a source for research on contemporary Polish architecture

The materials used by architectural historians to research the post-war period are very limited, and the available archive resources are incomplete and dispersed. In this context, of special significance are other forms of visual materials that documented the spatial reality of the communist period. Documentary films, and in particular the Polska Kronika Filmowa [Polish Film Chronicle] newsreel, can make an an important contribution to and a resource for historical research on contemporary Polish architecture. This text contains methodological reflections on the role of film studying the history of contemporary architecture. It describes the new research options, including the ability to recreate original spatial phenomena, and also the contemporary techniques and technology as well as the educational dimension of the Polish Film Chronicle. In this context, it is especially interesting to compare the documentary material from the Chronicle with other archival material, e.g. drawings, plans and photographs. This method provides an additional opportunity for a fuller and more objective recreation of space in 3D. This “reverse modelling” can be used to restore or preserve the original condition of structures, or even to rebuild ones no longer existing.

Rhetoric of the image of architecture

Based on the example of one of the newsreels of the Polish Film Chronicle of 1965, we have researched the issue of the usability of rhetorical figures for the analysis of the image of architecture recorded in film and its relations with the verbal rhetoric of narration as well as the pictorial rhetoric, which makes up the message of a different nature. By this we have attempted to decode the lifestyle model presented in the film and propagated by its manner of description of architecture with the use of rhetorical figures and also to decode the role and meaning of the architectural forms, which were engaged in the creation of the message of the film image. Combining the rhetorical analysis with an interpretation of the architectural forms has enabled us to identify the persuasive nature of the message of the chronicle material included in the documentary film.

Film Chronicle: 1984 dir. by Michael Radford, and: Eye in the Sky dir. by Gavin Hood, and: The Last Enemy dir. by Iain MacDonald, and: Hamlet dir. by Gregory Doran, and: Hamlet dir. by Michael Almereyda, and: You Were Never Really Here dir. by Lynne Ramsay, and: Caché dir. by Michael Haneke, and: The Lives of Others dir. by Florian

Reviewed by: Film Chronicle: 1984 dir. by Michael Radford, and: Eye in the Sky dir. by Gavin Hood, and: The Last Enemy dir. by Iain MacDonald, and: Hamlet dir. by Gregory Doran, and: Hamlet dir. by Michael Almereyda, and: You Were Never Really Here dir. by Lynne Ramsay, and: Caché dir. by Michael Haneke, and: The Lives of Others dir. by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Jefferson Hunter (bio) Film Chronicle: 1984, directed by Michael Radford (Amazon Prime) Eye in the Sky, directed by Gavin Hood (Imports, 2016) The Last Enemy, directed by Iain MacDonald (PBS, 2009) Hamlet, directed by Gregory Doran (BBC Home Entertainment, 2010) Hamlet, directed by Michael Almereyda (Miramax Lionsgate, 2011) You Were Never Really Here, directed by Lynne Ramsay (Lionsgate, 2018) Caché, directed by Michael Haneke (Artificial Eye, 2013) The Lives of Others, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2007) Do you sense you're being watched? That inconspicuous camera set high up on the building façade, panning relentlessly from side to side—what footage is it recording, and for whom? Is your tablet being tracked? Or the turnpike transponder in your car? What happens with all the personal data you so heedlessly furnish to the internet? In the latest breach of a computer system, did someone hack your social security number? Has the tiny aperture at the top of your laptop screen been opened by a malware worm and is it clandestinely taking pictures of you and recording your voice? How private is your privacy, really? On its way to becoming a mainstay of the contemporary economy (see Shoshana Zuboff's recent book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism), the exposure to onlookers' eyes and listeners' ears has for years now been a daily constant, and for some a cause for concern or anxiety, or even paranoia. Modern-technology-enabled onlookers' eyes and listeners' ears: that is important. In the past surveillance had to be carried out artisanally, for example by watchers with binoculars or shadowers on the street like the trench-coated pair whom Richard Hannay glimpses through the window in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. Then later, electronics arrived, and auditory surveillance suddenly became the thing to fear, the bug in the room, the wiretap on the phone line, the unimaginably sensitive directional microphone such as was pointed at the trysting couple in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. Nowadays, thanks to improved technology—CCTV and tracking cookies, one-way mirrors and facial recognition software, drone-mounted sensors and voice-activated recorders—all modes of overseeing and overhearing seem possible, automated ones, improvised ones. Think of the opening scene of John Chu's rom-com Crazy Rich Asians, where the rich boy's new girlfriend is surreptitiously photographed by a passerby pretending to take a selfie on her smartphone. The girlfriend's photo is instantly uploaded to social media, her once-private [End Page 437] identity transformed to a meme. The very latest thing in surveillance is crowdsourcing. The whole world as panopticon . . . No art forms seem better suited to trace the lineaments of this world than film and television, creative modes which are of course camera- and microphone-based themselves, investigations of what can be seen and heard. Screens are good at showing the screens all around our lives and at mimicking technical developments in the art of surveillance; also good, over time, at revealing our varying attitudes to the art. Six decades ago, in Hitchcock's Rear Window, we could applaud the across-the-courtyard snooping of Jimmy Stewart's photo-journalist character because he is tracking the progress of what appears to be a murder. Later, surveillance became permissible as a tool of Lawful Authority. In the opening episodes of David Simon's The Wire, Baltimore detectives listen in on drug dealers' phone calls; in the closing scenes of Alastair Reid's Traffik, a bug is hidden under the desk of the cartel kingpin; and in hundreds of police-procedural television dramas, closed-circuit footage from street cameras leads to quick arrests, usually after the geeks on the squad sharpen up the images with a few keystrokes. Unquestionably, screens can be protective. Think of those shown...

Film Chronicle: A Quiet Place dir. by John Krasinski, and: The Shape of Water dir. by Guillermo del Toro, and: The Creature from the Black Lagoon dir. by Jack Arnold, and: Godzilla dir. by Ishiro Honda, and: The Day of the Triffids dir. by Ken Hannam, and: Cat People dir. by Jacques Tourneur, and: Cat People dir. by Paul Schrader,

Film Chronicle: A Quiet Place dir. by John Krasinski, and: The Shape of Water dir. by Guillermo del Toro, and: The Creature from the Black Lagoon dir. by Jack Arnold, and: Godzilla dir. by Ishiro Honda, and: The Day of the Triffids dir. by Ken Hannam, and: Cat People dir. by Jacques Tourneur, and: Cat People dir. by Paul Schrader,

Film Chronicle: Hercules Unchained by Pietro Francisci, and: Ben-Hur, by William Wyler, and: Quo Vadis by Mervyn LeRoy, and: The Fall of the Roman Empire by Anthony Mann, and: Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick, and: Rome: The Complete Series by Michael Apted, and: I, Claudius by Herbert Wise, and: The Sign of the Cross by Cecil B. DeMille, and: Cleopatra by

Film Chronicle: Hercules Unchained by Pietro Francisci, and: Ben-Hur, by William Wyler, and: Quo Vadis by Mervyn LeRoy, and: The Fall of the Roman Empire by Anthony Mann, and: Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick, and: Rome: The Complete Series by Michael Apted, and: I, Claudius by Herbert Wise, and: The Sign of the Cross by Cecil B. DeMille, and: Cleopatra by

Film Chronicle: Lost Horizon dir. by Frank Capra, and: Man of Aran, dir. by Robert Flaherty, and: The Edge of the World, dir. by Michael Powell, and: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, dir. by Zacharias Kunuk, and: Hud, dir. by Martin Ritt, and: Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, dir. by Claude Berri, and: The White Hell of Piz

Film Chronicle: Lost Horizon dir. by Frank Capra, and: Man of Aran, dir. by Robert Flaherty, and: The Edge of the World, dir. by Michael Powell, and: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, dir. by Zacharias Kunuk, and: Hud, dir. by Martin Ritt, and: Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, dir. by Claude Berri, and: The White Hell of Piz

O propagandzie w Polskiej Kronice Filmowej (na podstawie komentarza narracyjnego z lat 1971-1975)

The aim of the article is to show how persuasion intertwined with artistry in the Polish Film Chronicle [Polska Kronika Filmowa]. The years 1971-1975 were a period of a relative stability; a time in which the voice of the authors could break through even in the texts primarily used for language manipulation. Therefore, it is worth looking at the linguistic realisation of persuasive aims, as well as at the genre features of the Chronicle, which testify to its uniqueness in comparison to other journalistic genres.

Crônica de Anna Magdalena Bach: amor, trabalho e morte no cinema de Danièle Huillet e Jean-Marie Straub

Este artigo analisa o filme Crônica de Anna Magdalena Bach (1968), de Danièle Huillet e Jean-Marie Straub, de modo a mostrar como, analogamente, ao tratar de modos de produção artística, desmitifica-se o gênio de Johann Sebastian Bach, contextualizando sua obra na ordem eclesiástica do século XVIII, e se faz uma crítica dos preceitos do Autorenfilm do novo cinema alemão, dependente de um sistema de financiamento estatal, do qual ele faz parte. Ademais, busca-se indicar a possibilidade de formas alternativas de produção artística e percepção sensível engendradas cinematograficamente que se contraponham ao trabalho alienado.