“The magic of fiery spiral”: on one Vladimir Kobrin’s cinematic technique

Abstract

In a series of "educational films" of the 80s devoted to various phenomena and effects from the field of natural sciences, Vladimir Kobrin sometimes refers to the technique he developed, which he calls "the method of obtaining a movie image using a running beam." In particular, in the film "The Physical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics", this technique is used to create a visual image of the well-known Heisenberg uncertainty relation. The article attempts to show that the effect of the technique developed by the director goes beyond just a technical way of visualizing an abstract scientific and theoretical representation. It is suggested that this technique in Kobrin's later films, which are characterized by fragmentary, allegorical images, a shift from the expression of movement to the plasticity of transformations, the replacement of the spectator-observer figure with the spectator-witness figure, acts as a kind of condensation mechanism, a technique of "awakening to recognition" beyond the capabilities of the spectator assembly of film editing.