Articles
Ervin
Török: Trace,
over-determination and allegories of spectacle: a theatre of gestures
(On The Third and
Montage)
The
article analyses two films: Gábor Bódy's The
Third and András Jeles's
Montage.
The starting point of the exploration is the way two discourses -
the Hungarian experimental cinema of the seventies and the present
discourse on film theory - problematize and reinterpret the
documentary aspects of film and photography. One of the decisive
insights of the period is the fact that the document v.s. fiction
dichotomy and the system of genre categories based on it are
untenable. The paper explores the way the mentioned films address and
reinterpret this question. These works are understood as experiments
leading to valid insights, but presuppose different
"semio-techniques". Both films point to the allegorical
constructedness of the cinematic sign, but while Bódy stresses
the plurality of the cinematic sign, Jeles suggests the
restrictedness of the process of signification. (Full article in Hungarian)
Zoltán
János Tóth: "Double projection". András
Jeles: Montage
In this essay Zoltán
János Tóth explores the interpretation of "double
projection" in András Jeles's
experimental film entitled Montage
(1979). "Double screening" means that the images in the films
bear the characteristics of both fiction and documentary. Since
"double projection" is represented by the means of montage as
technique, the author of the article examines the way Jeles
reinterprets the ideas of the Soviet montage school at the end of the
seventies. (Full article in Hungarian)
Judit Pieldner:
Dialogue of Anti-Films.
The Dog's Night Song - Dream
Brigade
The paper aims at a
parallel analysis of the concept of experimentalism manifested in the
films titled The Dog's Night Song
(1983, Gábor Bódy) and Dream
Brigade (1983, András Jeles). Gábor Bódy's
film makes use of documentary devices, and illustrates the director's
concept of "double projection": the documentary and fiction are
inseparable in film, thus the term "documentary" is related to
both the material and the philosophy of film. András Jeles
rejects the narrative patterns, and creates a non-narrative by making
use of a complex destructive apparatus. The comparative analysis is
carried out along the terms "post-documentary" and
"post-narrative", along the subversion of film genres, the
presence of fine arts and music, as well as in relation to the motifs
of life, death and dream. (Full article in Hungarian)
Gábor
Rumann: Experimental cinema or ars
poetica? A comparative analysis
of One Bagatelle
and Audition
The essay is a
comparative analysis of two films, Gábor Bódy's One
Bagatelle and András Jeles's
Audition.
The primary consideration is the exploration of the experimental
mentality of the two authors. The essay consists of two parts: Theory
and Experiment contrasts Jeles's and Bódy's writings,
while the second part (Two Bagatelles) analyses elements of the two
films' subject and form. The essay examines the extent to which
these films can be considered as synopses for the creative method,
and looks at their characteristics that remain significant in the
directors' later works. (Full article in Hungarian)
Gabriella
Schuller: Theatre plays directed by Gábor
Bódy and András Jeles
The
article deals with the theatrical works of Gábor
Bódy and András Jeles. Gábor Bódy
directed only one performance, Shakespeare's Hamlet
in Győr in 1981. The performance was given very unfavorable
criticism. The article situates the performance in the context of the
Hungarian theatres of the 70's and 80's and points to the fact
that Bódy's Hamlet
was too alien for the contemporary audience and their horizon of
expectation due to the isolation of the Hungarian theatre, but would
have been given an adequate theatrical and critical context and
reception in the 90's.
The
second part of the article is on the spectator's position in András
Jeles's theatrical works. It uses a psychoanalytical approach to
demonstrate how the death drive is at work in his last performance
titled Old Acquaintances,
2007. In his oeuvre there are two other performances (Somewhere
in Russia, 1991 and Hello
Tolstoy!, 1993) which show similar
tendencies. These three performances are the most radical examples of
a 'sadistic' tendency in the oeuvre: Sade wrote about a
devil-like dimension which we try to repress in ourselves - as
Freud did when he wrote about the death drive as the kernel of the
human psyche in Civilisation and its
Discontents (Jacques Lacan draw this
parallel in his seminar on Ethics of Psychoanalysis). András
Jeles does a similar thing when giving free scope to jouissance by
the use of an acoustic device through the spectacular other (i.e.
the actor who is the support of the spectator's identification).
This way he offers a redefined position to the spectator. (Full article in Hungarian)
Kérchy Vera:
András Jeles's Living Marionette Theatre
In my
paper I focus on the peculiar characters of András
Jeles's films and theatrical performances with the aim to analyze
the significant status of their representations. Jeles turns the
actor's body (a guarantee of Presence) into a puppet, an immobile
and rigid china-doll, a marionette supported by poles and strings. I
rely on Kleist's "On the Marionette Theatre" and Paul de Man's
concept of irony in order to reveal how Jeles's "living puppets"
succeed in subverting the Presence in a deconstructive way. (Full article in Hungarian)
Gyöngyi Mikola:
The Metanoia of the Lumber-Room
Zoltán
Perovics, one of the most talented and inspired theatre-makers in
Hungary, director and stage-designer of Metanoia Theatre from Szeged,
has made an exhibition of his requisites, objects, stage properties,
scenes of installations under the ironic title Lumber-Room
of the Metanoia. The essay tries to
give a new interpretation of these requisites and objects with
regarding their collection as authentic sculpture. Also, the essay
investigates similarities and parallels between art philosophy and
visual world of two genuine 20th
century artists, a painter from Belgrade, Leonid ©ejka,
and a Christian poet, János Pilinszky from Budapest. The main
motifs and topics are the following: heap of garbage, the Factory and
war machinery, the plastic art of tin, the landscapes of Chaos and
homelessness of the modern City, possibilities of the way out from
the Labyrinth of heap of garbage and a new future of the useless
articles and activities. (Full article in Hungarian)
Students' Workshop
Mohácsi
Tamás: An analysis of Psyche
from the point of view of semiotics, history of myths and
intellectual history
The
two key attributes of the film entitled Psyche
are complexity and synthesis, i.e. the complexity of natural and
spiritual scientific way of thinking as well as the synthesis of film
language tools, the isomorphic-like correspondence between semiotic
structures and structures of mythical and theoretical history. Bódy's
commitment to totality, and his holistic approach to the world,
searching for the correlations of macrocosm and microcosm, has
resulted in creating a strange sort of total art (Gesamtkunst).
While
Sándor Weöres was the virtuoso of literary language, Bódy
was that of film language, therefore their encounter was nearly a
must. By writing Psyche,
Weöres created one of the strangest piece of Hungarian
literature, developing his unique lyrical ornament by applying a
baroque set of linguistic decoration. His pseudo-archaic language
served as a basis for Bódy to establish a post-modern
deconstruction of film language.
Psyche
represents a spiritual approach to history. Although history is
featured through specific historic events, the story of the main
characters switches to an abstract mythical level. That is how the
main characters do not grow older at all over a span of 120 years.
From spiritual aspect the play depicts a complete cultural picture of
historic periods synthesizing philosophy, science, arts and politics.
Weöres
adopted a poetic tragedy of the mythological hero, Narcissus by
László Ungvárnémeti Tóth. Echo
from the Narcissus myth is replaced by Psyché, who struggles
in vain to overwhelm her friend and fellow poet with her love.
However, Bódy extended the myth to certify the theory that
humanity's Narcissistic view on the world has been questioned. In
Bódy's film Ungvárnémeti undergoes more
metamorphoses. First as a poet he identifies with Narcisuss and
appears as his reincarnation, then turns into a rational scientist of
medicine and finally, he returns as an insane philosopher developing
an irrational racist ideology ("The role of the individual in the
perfection of fate"). (Full article in Hungarian)
Zoltán
Major: Levels of meaning in Narcissus
and Psyche
The article deals
with Gábor Bódy's Narcissus
and Psyche (1980). The film can be
regarded as the practical realization of Bódy's theory about
'Gesamtkunstwerk'. Psyche
is a film of many layers: it has different meanings at the level of
characters, symbols, sound, music, video effect as well as at the
level of the actors that represent the artistic scene of the 1970's
and the objects of arts pictured in the film. The article contains
some stills taken from the film which illustrate the director's
theory of Gesamtkunstwerk. (Full article in Hungarian)
Géza
Pintér: Analysis of the formalistic experiment in Gábor
Bódy 's movie American
Postcard
The article
applies Gábor Bódy's semiotic theories in analysing
his movie titled American Postcard.
Such an approach is made particularly appealing by the fact that the
movie and the theory applied are by the same author. The analysis
helps us find the way of thinking, which records the experiments of
the man of the age and on the other hand it probably can transmit us
some actual message. (Full article in Hungarian)
Sarolta
Pazár: 3?
The
paper investigates the role of the triangular structure in Gábor
Bódy's work. Three poles, three totally different film
characters represent the triplicity of essential tendencies of the
world which are in conflict with each other. Bódy's ouevre
advances from order to chaos: in films made in the mid-70s the three
poles create a mathematical system (Psyhocosmoses,
American Postcard),
later, in Psyche
there are overlappings, crossings between the three main characters;
finally in his late work the triangular structure of the main
characters lead to chaos because of their schizophrenic
personalities. (Full article in Hungarian)
Reviews
Erika
Fám:
From the viewpoint of the Universe
The
review presents Gábor' Bódy
s book titled Collected
works on cinema, published by Akadémiai
Kiadó in 2006, and describes the first volume from the three
planned volumes, compares it with the earlier publications in which
Bódy's writings were present, studies the book's style and
structure as well as the illustrations and photos. (Full article in Hungarian)
László
Kovács: Jump I Will, Jump - The Poetics of András
Jeles
The
volume entitled Teremtés,
lidércnyomás (Creation,
Nightmare) contains selected writings
of Hungarian movie and theatre director András Jeles. Himself
being a unique element of the national intellectual palette, the way
he treats different aspects of filmmaking and cultural/social reality
is also refreshingly insightful and sincere. Issues such as
directorial intentionality, the function of the spectator's
imagination, the functionality of the Hungarian actor in filmic
production, or the possibilities of the scenic representation of the
kiss are discussed on the basis of the author's extensive history
in filmmaking and theatrical production. Pragmatic concerns are
intertwined with greater philosophical considerations resulting in a
general criticism of contemporary Hungarian cultural and intellectual
climate, which in Jeles's view suffers from the hypertrophy of
mimesis, monotony, and exhaustion. The included writings are
organized around the process of creation,
permeated by a nightmarish
tonality, a consequence of the uncertainty of an unexpected and
chaotic freedom entailed by the possibility of creating something
completely new, outside the conventional limits of artistic
production. The volume is characterized by an unusual textual
heterogeneity and an almost poetic, though often laconic, style,
which underlie a deconstructive effort to point out the dangers of a
culture currently en route to intellectual simplification and
desolation. (Full article in Hungarian)
Interview
A
sign-consciousness of the
cinematographer : the ouevre of
Gábor Bódy . Izabella Füzi's interview with Vince
Zalán on Bódy's Collected
Works (Full article in Hungarian)
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