{"title":"Voiceless Screams: Pictorialism as Narrative Strategy in Horror Silent Cinema","authors":"Delia Enyedi","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2021-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2021-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As a complementary condition to narrative, the notion of pictorialism in film is rooted in the first decades of the medium. In their quest to demonstrate the capturing and restoring of images with various devices, early filmmakers selected views with pictorial qualities in the long-standing tradition of painting, transferring them on film in the form of non-narrative shots. The evolution of fictional narratives in silent cinema displaced the source of inspiration in theatre, assimilating its nineteenth-century tradition of pictorialism. Thus, the film audiences’ appeal for visual pleasure was elevated with balanced elements of composition, framing and acting that resulted in pictorially represented moments actively engaged in the narrative system. The paper explores the notion of “pictorial spirit” (Valkola 2016) in relation to that of “monstration” (Gaudreault 2009) aiming to describe the narrative mechanism of provoking fear by means of pictorially constructed cinematic images in a selection of short-length horror silent films belonging to the transitional era, consisting in The Haunted House/The Witch House (La Maison ensorcelée/La casa encantada, Segundo de Chomón, 1908), Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley, 1910) and the surviving fragments of The Portrait (Портрет, Vladislav Starevich, 1915).1","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78317179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Picturesque Pictures: Italian Early Non-fiction Films within Modern Aesthetic Visions","authors":"I. Blom","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2021-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2021-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Within early non-fiction film, the Italian travel or scenic films of the 1910s may be considered the most picturesque. They are remarkable for their presentation of landscapes and cityscapes, their co-existence of modernity and nostalgia, their accent on beauty – at times at the expense of geographic veracity and indexicality – and their focus on the transformed gaze through the use of special masks, split-screens, and other devices. The transmedial roots for this aestheticization can be found both in art (painting) and popular culture (postcards, magic lanterns, etc.). While the author was one of the firsts to write on this subject decades ago, today there is a need for radical revision and a deeper approach. This is due to the influx of recent literature first by Jennifer Peterson’s book Education in the School of Dreams (2013) and her scholarly articles. Secondly, Blom’s co-presentation on Italian early nonfiction at the 2018 workshop A Dive into the Collections of the Eye Filmmuseum: Italian Silent Cinema at the Intersection of the Arts led to the recognition that revision was needed. Finally, the films themselves call for new approaches while they are being preserved and disseminated by, foremost, the film archives of Bologna, Amsterdam, and Turin.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88066124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Tableau Vivant and Social Media Culture","authors":"Maria Männig","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2021-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2021-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article aims to analyse the tableau vivant in social media culture by emphasizing its intermedial relation to technical visual media, particularly digital photography and film. By focusing on the living picture’s specific mimetic qualities, the study traces back the tableau vivant’s history in a media archaeological perspective primarily regarding photography. It explores the current revival of the tableau vivant within social media. The article examines living pictures and the aspect of self-staging, relevant to contemporary digital culture. The tableau vivant develops between two polarities: a primarily analytical approach that allows a profound exploration of a particular artwork and the performative aspects of self-staging.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77454354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Screening Landscapes: Film between the Picturesque and the Painterly","authors":"S. Jacobs","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2021-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2021-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Inherently connected to movement and to a sequential spatial experience in time, the picturesque has been considered as a precursor of the cinematic. In addition, the idea of the picturesque is closely connected to Heinrich Wölfflin’s notion of das Malerische or “the painterly,” which stands for a dynamic style of painting characterized by qualities of colour, stroke, and texture rather than of contour or line. Based on the keynote lecture delivered at the conference, The Picturesque: Visual Pleasure and Intermediality in-between Contemporary Cinema, Art and Digital Culture (Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, 25–26 October, 2019), 1 the essay disentangles the complex network of connections between image and landscape, painting and film, the picturesque and the painterly.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82171571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decoding Tableaux Vivants: the Metareferential Potential of Painterly References in Cinema","authors":"Cristian Dragan","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2021-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2021-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article focuses on the intermedial relationship between cinema and painting, viewed as a self-referential process, and tries to determine various ways in which this type of signifying process can be used to “encode” various messages (within the work itself), or become an integral part of this (meta)communicative operation. Starting from a broad definition of intermedial references and continuing with a brief recontextualized detour through Gérard Genette’s taxonomy of transtextual instances, the author narrows down a specific technique that exemplifies this type of “codifying” procedure, namely the tableau vivant. In accordance with Werner Wolf’s proposed terminology, he attempts to determine the metareferential potential of this extra-compositional self-referential technique. The case studies focus on films by Peter Greenaway and Lars von Trier.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83526796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Images in Suspension: Tableaux Vivants, Gesturality and Simulacra in Raul Ruiz’s film The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting","authors":"I. Paraskevopoulos","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2021-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2021-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article discusses Raul Ruiz’s film The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978). In the closed space of the house a parallel world emerges, where the filmic hypertext is constituted by a series of mise-en-abyme images that explore the multiple universe of tableaux vivants. The article analyses Ruiz’s appropriation of Pierre Klossowski’s concept of simulacra. The structure of The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting is based upon the infinite reproduction of meaning since each simulacrum-tableau vivant leads to another. The author explores the gesturality of the bodies and its relevance to the use of language and sound in the film. Furthermore, he argues that Ruiz orchestrates the placement of the tableaux vivants in the filmic space in order to reveal the thought of eternal return.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84312721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Up the Slope. Women’s Mobility Stories in Post-Transition Hungarian Cinema","authors":"Beja Margitházi","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2020-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2020-0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Using data and statistics obtained in the research project The Social History of Hungarian Cinema (1931–2015), this study investigates the upward and downward mobility movements of women in the Hungarian films made after the regime change. The political transition following the collapse of communism radically altered the economic and social structure of Hungarian society. The social experiences of losses and failures, as well as the closing social structure are reflected directly and explicitly in many Hungarian films made between 1990 and 2015. With the help of Bernard Weiner’s social attribution theory for describing failure and success, the article analyses the narratives of these films in terms of the extent to which and the proportion that they are attributed to inner, individual dispositions or external circumstances. Based on this approach, the author states that female heroines in these movies appear to move “up the slope,” as they are pulled down not only by the gravitational force of economic and social crises, but also by the lack of emancipation and gender equality.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75667187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Travel Down Memory Lane: Nostalgia and Nostophobia in Youth (2017)","authors":"Ying Zhu","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2020-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2020-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article analyses Youth, a Chinese melodrama directed by Feng Xiaogang in 2017, as a representation of China during a transitional period in history. It explores issues of nostalgia and nostophobia in connection with the complexities of memory, representation, and viewing pleasure. It discusses how sound and image trigger memories and conflicting emotional reactions. In the film’s nostalgic and elegiac re-enactment of a controversial past, the military art troupe performs songs and dances extolling socialist virtues as their own lives gradually unravel with the dawn of a post-socialist era. The article elaborates on how Youth reflects and enlivens personal and collective social memory as well as how we negotiate our ambivalent feelings towards the representation of a controversial past.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79397019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Angry Old Men in Post-Crisis European Cinema","authors":"György Kalmár","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2020-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2020-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper explores the representation of ageing white men in 21st-century European art cinema in the socio-cultural context of the series of crises that European societies had to face in the first decades of the new millennium. In Europe ageing is a growing concern, which already influences economic productivity and further endangers the welfare system. Ageing white men, who used to belong to the hegemonic majority of society during their active period, are often disoriented and frustrated by rapid technological development, social changes, shifts in social values or the failures of the welfare system. This paper, through the analysis of Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, 2011), I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach, 2016) and A Man Called Ove (Hannes Holm, 2015), explores the ways these issues are represented in contemporary European cinema. The films of this period often depict the disappearance of an old life-world, together with its old sense of community and its old types of men. Thus, these films tend to be critical of globalized modern societies, and often reveal both the vulnerability and the potential destructiveness of these vanishing masculinities.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78637621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Ethical Anxiety of Remediation and Speculative Aesthetics in Landscape Film","authors":"Z. Szabó","doi":"10.2478/ausfm-2020-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2020-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The link between avant-garde cinema and painting has always been a conspicuous one but perhaps never as much as in the case of landscape films. However, not only repurposing or evoking specific paintings but constructing entire films with the intention of producing cinematic analogies to certain traditions of landscape painting presents a number of issues, especially when the films in question are inspired by the sensibilities of 19th-century Romanticism and explore similar topics, such as the works of Peter Hutton. The problem is essentially twofold: on the one hand, how to break away from the painterly roots and make an exclusively cinematic pictorial representation of landscape and, on the other hand, how to account for the complicit position of the filmmaker with regard to the nature–technology opposition they address. Within the theoretical framework of the recent speculative turn in philosophy and the implications of this with regard to aesthetics, I argue that an object-oriented approach to landscape filmmaking – as seen in the works of Chris Welsby –, by establishing pre-compositional rules within which landscape itself can intervene in the filmmaking process, provides a solution to both the aesthetic and the ethical anxiety that haunt landscape filmmakers.","PeriodicalId":40721,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae-Film and Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90297031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}