Articles
Jonathan Bignell: From detail
to meaning: Badlands (Terence Malick, 1973) and cinematic articulation
Based on the analysis of individual
scenes from Badlands, the essay investigates the movie along
major film theoretical questions, such as genre, gender, or the context
of American film history, and finally arrives at general problems of
film criticism and film analysis. This way film analysis itself becomes
the ultimate topic of his film analysis. [Full text in Hungarian]
Marc Vernet: Portrait of dead
souls
Young woman, ageing men, (haunted)
manor, and a portrait of a deceased woman on the wall. In the fourth
chapter of Figure de l'absence Marc Vernet investigates the plot
structures of American gothic movies from the 1940s. What is the function
of the portrait: does it represent a super ego that absorbs the vitality
of the female characters, or does it transform them into preys? The
essay also deals with the types of viewers' expectations satisfied
by films using portraits. [Full text in Hungarian]
Zoltán János, Tóth: The
rhetoric of historical film
The author examines changes
in signification in historical films which have transformed the mise-en-scène
of the genre in the past decade. Is this change substantial, or reflects
the lack of reflection on the historicity of signs used for representing
history? Focusing on the sets, costumes and language used in big budget
films made after the turn of the millennium the author detects differences
of argumentation techniques used in historical films. The "New"
historical film which uses seemingly more effective tools for modeling
is shown to be no more successful in anchoring its referent than its
predecessors. [Full text in Hungarian]
Attila Kiss:
Cinematographical Anatomy: Gábor Bódy's Stage of Consciousness
This paper investigates an
example of the theater - film interface. Recent studies in mediality
have given new impetus to the postsemiotic theories of adaptation and
representational logic. Film theories have amply benefited from comparative
investigations into the analogies and differences between theatrical
and cinematic representational techniques. My focus here is on Shakespearean
scholarship and the reinterpretations of the early modern theater, as
well as the bearing these new findings had on filmic representation.
I intend to establish a connection between the two fields by attempting
an analysis of a production of Hamlet by the pioneering figure
of experimental Hungarian theater and film, Gábor Bódy. The cultural
practice and public spectacle of anatomy will be the example which will
connect in my argumentation the early modern and the postmodern, as
well as the theatrical and the cinematic. I would like to shed light
on how Bódy's work can be interpreted as a peculiar premonition of
critical trends that emerged after his experiments. [Full text in English]
Zsolt Győri:
Churchill as "Film Critic" - The Politics of British War-Cinema
The aim of
this paper is to address the interrelated fields of politics, nation
and cinema in the period of the Second World War, in short to reflect
upon the uses and abuses of political cinema. The study of British propaganda
cinema is by no means a groundbreaking topic, it has been discussed
to varying degrees and depths by several monographs, most notably
Britain Can Take It by Tony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards. The Cinema
and Society series (I.B Tauris Press) edited by Richards has revealed
a treasure-chest of essential material on the topic, but has yet failed
to come up with a volume that examines theoretical issues and offers
a theoretical framework that would contextualize the archival material
compiled by the film historian and historian. The following sections
are to be read as notes towards such a line on inquiry. [Full text in
English]
W.J.T. Mitchell: The Unspeakable
and the Unimaginable: Word and Image in a Time of Terror
W.J.T. Mitchell examines the
question of the unspeakable and the unimaginable from several points
of view. After summarizing the interrelation between word and image,
he turns to the investigation of the unspeakable and the unimaginable
as a violation of the borders of word and image. He demonstrates this
idea via a semiotic analysis in which the double notion of word and
image is conflated with the problem of signifier and signified. The
argument aims at examining the logic of terrorism, which may be approached
through the classical question of word and image. The problem of terrorism
and image is contextualized within the discourse on cloning. Finally,
the "cloning of terrorism" is described as the phenomenon in which
image making and the technology of warfare are connected. [Full text
in Hungarian]
Hans Belting: Image, Medium,
Body: A New Approach to Iconology
The article proposes a new
kind of critical iconology, which concentrates on the triad of image,
medium and body, and examines the interrelationship between the elements
of this set. Physical pictures and mental images are considered to be
two sides of the same coin, providing a definition of images which happen
or take place in medial representation and perception. [Full text in
Hungarian]
Student's
Workshop
Izabella Békés: Crash
Art
My essay analyses the attributes
of irregular (car)accident, the aphrodisiac, and personality-shaping
effects, which influence victims of accidents, as it appears in David
Cronenberg's movie, Crash. I suggest that crash, and new sensibility
(is introduced by one of the main characters of the movie, Vaughan),
can be understood as artistic forms, laid in the institutional system
of art. [Full text in Hungarian]
Linda Huszár: An anachronistic
film: Derek Jarman: Wittgenstein
In this not particularly "film-like"
film from Derek Jarman we face an irregular organization of view, and
a mise-en-scène literally adapted for the stage. These characteristics
are not only provoking formal gestures to remind us that filmspace has
been artificial at all times, but a sort of stylizing to create an intellectual
scene of action, both for the actors and our reception.
The essay tries to put this
interpretation into practice. It also touches upon the unusual structure
of narrative levels, and scrutinizes the border-line of genre to deal
with Wittgenstein as a biography. [Full text in Hungarian]
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