Pub Date : 2023-04-04DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2023.2196756
P. Zwierzchowski
{"title":"Polish Spy Movies of the 1960s in Light of Transcripts from Meetings of Script Assessment and Film Approval Commissions","authors":"P. Zwierzchowski","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2023.2196756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2023.2196756","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73325239","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}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2023.2196784
Aleksandra Piętka
Abstract This article analyzes the cinematographic means used by Roman Polanski in Death and the Maiden to portray the characters of the movie and the relationship between them. It discusses how Polanski toys with the thriller convention to create a cognitive dissonance in the viewer and uses artistic devices to reflect the process of restoring the identity by the protagonist. In particular, the author examines the frame of the movie and its compositional and semantic functions and compares selected scenes with René Magritte’s paintings, to show how the director depicts the experience of the main character and the blurring of boundaries between the perpetrator and the victim. Also, colours, props, and landscape motifs associated with each character are analyzed to explain their symbolic and dramatic function in the film.
{"title":"Image of the Perpetrator, the Victim, and the Bystander in Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden (1994)","authors":"Aleksandra Piętka","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2023.2196784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2023.2196784","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyzes the cinematographic means used by Roman Polanski in Death and the Maiden to portray the characters of the movie and the relationship between them. It discusses how Polanski toys with the thriller convention to create a cognitive dissonance in the viewer and uses artistic devices to reflect the process of restoring the identity by the protagonist. In particular, the author examines the frame of the movie and its compositional and semantic functions and compares selected scenes with René Magritte’s paintings, to show how the director depicts the experience of the main character and the blurring of boundaries between the perpetrator and the victim. Also, colours, props, and landscape motifs associated with each character are analyzed to explain their symbolic and dramatic function in the film.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72791194","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}
Pub Date : 2023-03-27DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2023.2194048
A. Leal
Abstract As the imaginary deadline or vanishing point of the turn of millennium was drawing ever closer, its associated anxieties and apocalyptic woes offered a fertile breeding ground for suspense, horror, and the fantastic to experience a resurgence in Western cinemas. Roman Polanski’s fifteenth feature film The Ninth Gate, released in 1999, can be read among the various auteur-helmed evidences of such a trend, but also as a self-conscious exercise in the kind of trans-European filmmaking being promoted at the time within the continent, one in which Polanski himself had, willingly or not, already been cutting his teeth for almost two decades after his spiteful return from the US and Hollywood in the late 1970s. On the back of a border-crossing journey in search for three demonic books, this essay will argue, The Ninth Gate manages to discursively interlace both facets. The result, by way of an intermedial concern with the world of literature, a generic involvement with the supernatural, and a meticulous mobilization of cinematic space, location shooting and architecture, is a cynical, self-deprecating reflection on the precarious state of Europe at the time, caught between the memories of glorious but long-fading splendor and a crippling uncertainty about its future and place in an increasingly globalized world.
{"title":"The Sense of an Ending: Culture, Capital, and the Fate of (Late) Modern Europe in Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999)","authors":"A. Leal","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2023.2194048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2023.2194048","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As the imaginary deadline or vanishing point of the turn of millennium was drawing ever closer, its associated anxieties and apocalyptic woes offered a fertile breeding ground for suspense, horror, and the fantastic to experience a resurgence in Western cinemas. Roman Polanski’s fifteenth feature film The Ninth Gate, released in 1999, can be read among the various auteur-helmed evidences of such a trend, but also as a self-conscious exercise in the kind of trans-European filmmaking being promoted at the time within the continent, one in which Polanski himself had, willingly or not, already been cutting his teeth for almost two decades after his spiteful return from the US and Hollywood in the late 1970s. On the back of a border-crossing journey in search for three demonic books, this essay will argue, The Ninth Gate manages to discursively interlace both facets. The result, by way of an intermedial concern with the world of literature, a generic involvement with the supernatural, and a meticulous mobilization of cinematic space, location shooting and architecture, is a cynical, self-deprecating reflection on the precarious state of Europe at the time, caught between the memories of glorious but long-fading splendor and a crippling uncertainty about its future and place in an increasingly globalized world.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90069279","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}
Pub Date : 2023-03-09DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2023.2187526
György Kalmár
{"title":"Eden and Eastern European Ecocinema","authors":"György Kalmár","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2023.2187526","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2023.2187526","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77594435","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}
Pub Date : 2023-02-13DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2023.2176031
Lucia Szemetová
{"title":"Raising the Curtain over Cold War Transnational Media Practices","authors":"Lucia Szemetová","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2023.2176031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2023.2176031","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90393129","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}
Pub Date : 2023-02-08DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2023.2176019
Anna Keszeg
{"title":"Cinematic Mobility Regimes in Eastern Europe","authors":"Anna Keszeg","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2023.2176019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2023.2176019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76573001","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}
Pub Date : 2023-02-06DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2023.2174701
L. Strausz
The 2022 edition of ‘The Greatest 100 Films of All Time’ poll by the British journal Sight & Sound brought to surface important debates linked to the topics of cultural canon, decolonization, and perceived visibility of so-called1 minority artists in the mainstream. One of the main question has been: how do we interpret the fact that for the first time in the poll’s history, a woman filmmaker, Chantal Akerman’s film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) came out as number one? In the previous polls, no woman has even reached the top ten. As Laura Mulvey put it, ‘things will never be the same’ (2022). But what caused this landslide? And how do we interpret this paradigm shift? Due to the fact that the poll, conducted every ten years, showed the diminishing critical relevance of feature films produced in the Eastern European region, the waves of these debates have reached the shores of Studies in Eastern European Cinema as well. In her opinion article ‘The Sight and Sound Poll and Eastern European Cinema’, Ewa Mazierska related this trend, among other factors, to the appearance of the quota system that ensures the visibility of the currently trendiest minorities and their cultural products. In the quota system, according to Mazierska, ‘[t]he question is what minority groups are regarded as important enough to be included in the system’ (2023). Eastern Europeans, once the repressed Others to the dominant Western Self, have fallen out of this position, and gave place to new Others more central for the collective social imaginary. She suggests that the high volume of films canonized by the poll that were produced by women, non-(Western)-European-or American filmmakers is a political reaction to several contemporary political movements such as MeToo and Black Lives Matter. In turn, this argument also suggests that there exists some kind of invisible political correctness authority, which sanctions all those who do not adhere to these progressive voices. It follows that out of fear of becoming pariahs, critics simply fall in line with the inclusivity dogma, and vote for so-called minority artists and films. In this brief response I will argue that the quota argument (whether applied in the context of the diminishing visibility of Eastern European cultural goods, or elsewhere) is, in my opinion, the rearguard action of a now declining Eurocentric worldview that has dominated much of political, social and cultural thinking for the past several hundred years. Since the late 1970s, a large number of arguments came to light that effectively described how dominant discourses have worked to maintain political oppression over the subaltern once military control over a conquered land, a nation, a class or an ethnicity gave way to more subtle channels of cultural coercion. The postcolonial condition has also been examined in the Eastern European context, and there are convincing arguments for and against comparing the relationship of Easterna
{"title":"Return of the Repressed. A Response to Ewa Mazierska’s ‘The Sight and Sound Poll and Eastern European Cinema’","authors":"L. Strausz","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2023.2174701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2023.2174701","url":null,"abstract":"The 2022 edition of ‘The Greatest 100 Films of All Time’ poll by the British journal Sight & Sound brought to surface important debates linked to the topics of cultural canon, decolonization, and perceived visibility of so-called1 minority artists in the mainstream. One of the main question has been: how do we interpret the fact that for the first time in the poll’s history, a woman filmmaker, Chantal Akerman’s film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) came out as number one? In the previous polls, no woman has even reached the top ten. As Laura Mulvey put it, ‘things will never be the same’ (2022). But what caused this landslide? And how do we interpret this paradigm shift? Due to the fact that the poll, conducted every ten years, showed the diminishing critical relevance of feature films produced in the Eastern European region, the waves of these debates have reached the shores of Studies in Eastern European Cinema as well. In her opinion article ‘The Sight and Sound Poll and Eastern European Cinema’, Ewa Mazierska related this trend, among other factors, to the appearance of the quota system that ensures the visibility of the currently trendiest minorities and their cultural products. In the quota system, according to Mazierska, ‘[t]he question is what minority groups are regarded as important enough to be included in the system’ (2023). Eastern Europeans, once the repressed Others to the dominant Western Self, have fallen out of this position, and gave place to new Others more central for the collective social imaginary. She suggests that the high volume of films canonized by the poll that were produced by women, non-(Western)-European-or American filmmakers is a political reaction to several contemporary political movements such as MeToo and Black Lives Matter. In turn, this argument also suggests that there exists some kind of invisible political correctness authority, which sanctions all those who do not adhere to these progressive voices. It follows that out of fear of becoming pariahs, critics simply fall in line with the inclusivity dogma, and vote for so-called minority artists and films. In this brief response I will argue that the quota argument (whether applied in the context of the diminishing visibility of Eastern European cultural goods, or elsewhere) is, in my opinion, the rearguard action of a now declining Eurocentric worldview that has dominated much of political, social and cultural thinking for the past several hundred years. Since the late 1970s, a large number of arguments came to light that effectively described how dominant discourses have worked to maintain political oppression over the subaltern once military control over a conquered land, a nation, a class or an ethnicity gave way to more subtle channels of cultural coercion. The postcolonial condition has also been examined in the Eastern European context, and there are convincing arguments for and against comparing the relationship of Easterna","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87097953","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}
Pub Date : 2023-02-03DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2023.2170735
Krzysztof E. Borowski
{"title":"Poland under Martial Law in Netflix’s 1983 as a Critique of Contemporary Polish Socio-Politics: An Intertextual Analysis","authors":"Krzysztof E. Borowski","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2023.2170735","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2023.2170735","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74586470","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}
Pub Date : 2023-01-27DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2023.2168119
J. R. Young
Abstract Roman Polanski’s films are master classes in entertaining an audience and keeping them engaged, but they are no mere popcorn movies. Bitter Moon and Venus in Fur excel as studies in sexual humiliation and degradation. It is a leitmotif that runs through the filmmaker’s work, from Knife in the Water to Death and the Maiden. Both Moon and Venus invoke the earlier Cul-de-Sac, ramping up the humiliation that permeates the latter and presenting it in a more provocative and titillating fashion. Polanski’s proclivities almost certainly reflect his Eastern European sensibilities and his penchant for the Theatre of the Absurd, and appear to be autobiographical as well.
{"title":"Sexual Humiliation in Polanski’s Bitter Moon and Venus in Fur","authors":"J. R. Young","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2023.2168119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2023.2168119","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Roman Polanski’s films are master classes in entertaining an audience and keeping them engaged, but they are no mere popcorn movies. Bitter Moon and Venus in Fur excel as studies in sexual humiliation and degradation. It is a leitmotif that runs through the filmmaker’s work, from Knife in the Water to Death and the Maiden. Both Moon and Venus invoke the earlier Cul-de-Sac, ramping up the humiliation that permeates the latter and presenting it in a more provocative and titillating fashion. Polanski’s proclivities almost certainly reflect his Eastern European sensibilities and his penchant for the Theatre of the Absurd, and appear to be autobiographical as well.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86003349","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}
Pub Date : 2023-01-20DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2023.2169372
E. Mazierska
The Sight and Sound polls for the Best Films of all times, conducted from 1952 every decade, are an important barometer of changes in the cinematic tastes of broadly understood specialists: film critics and, in due course, filmmakers. Such judgement is not entirely subjective and neither does it reflect an objective aesthetic value of films. It is shaped by changes in cinema itself; resulting, for example, from evolutions in technology and film distribution, and many extra-cinematic factors, such as political events, as well as age, gender, race and national and regional loyalties of the judges, or their lack thereof, to list only some of the factors. The latest Sight and Sound poll for the Best 100 Films of all times, published in December 2022, attracted much attention, at least online, with commentators highlighting the difference in results from previous polls. The most revolutionary change was the de-crowning of Vertigo (1958) by Alfred Hitchcock, which is now number 2 on the list, by Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) by Chantal Akerman. This is the first time a female filmmaker has taken the number one spot since the poll’s inception. Jeanne Dielman appeared on the previous poll, but its jump of 35 places from the 2012 poll is remarkable. Another difference across the poll is the large proportion – in comparison with previous polls – of films made by women. Apart from two films by Akerman – the second being News from Home (1976) – we also find films by Claire Denis, Maya Deren, Agnès Varda, Julie Dash, and Věra Chytilová. Relatively new films also found their way into the first 100 rankings, including Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho in 90th position, Moonlight (2016), directed by Barry Jenkins (60th) and Portrait of A Lady on Fire (2019), directed by Céline Sciamma (30th). Films made by Black and Asian directors also did well, as exemplified by the successes of Bong Joon-ho and Jenkins, in addition to Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. The last poll also stablished two directors at the forefront of what can be regarded as classics of postmodern cinema: David Lynch and Wong Kar-Wai. Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) reached 8th place and Wong’s In the Mood For Love (2000), entering the top 10 in 5th, and each of these two directors also have a second film on the list. Their films are gaining in (critical) significance. On the other hand, a notable difference from earlier incarnations of the poll is the departure of many classics, such as Lawrence of Arabia, Raging Bull, Rio Bravo alongside the disappearance of films from such directors as Nicholas Ray, Ernst Lubitsch, Luis Buñuel, or Robert Altman. Equally, films from many important younger directors, such as Pedro Almodóvar, Lars von Trier or Paul Thomas Anderson, also failed to reach the first hundred best films. By and large, the dominance of films made by white European and American male directors in such ‘best of ’ tables is coming to its end. This is ref
从1952年开始,《视觉与听觉》杂志每十年进行一次“最佳电影”投票,这是一个重要的晴雨表,反映了广泛理解的专业人士(影评人,以及适当时候的电影人)电影品味的变化。这种判断不完全是主观的,也不反映电影客观的审美价值。它是由电影本身的变化所塑造的;例如,由于技术和电影发行的演变,以及许多电影之外的因素,例如政治事件,以及年龄,性别,种族和法官的国家和地区忠诚度,或者他们缺乏这些因素,仅列出了一些因素。2022年12月发布的最新《视觉与听觉》百部最佳电影投票引起了广泛关注,至少在网上引起了广泛关注,评论人士强调了与以往调查结果的不同。最具革命性的变化是阿尔弗雷德·希区柯克的《迷魂记》(1958)被摘掉了桂冠,现在排名第二,由珍妮·迪尔曼,23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles(1975)由尚塔尔·阿克曼。这是自该调查开始以来,女性电影人首次获得第一名。Jeanne Dielman曾出现在之前的调查中,但与2012年的调查相比,她的排名跃升了35位,这很引人注目。这次调查的另一个不同之处在于,与之前的调查相比,女性导演的电影占了很大的比例。除了阿克曼的两部电影——第二部是《来自家乡的新闻》(1976)——我们还发现了克莱尔·丹尼斯、玛雅·德伦、阿格诺斯·瓦尔达、朱莉·达什和v拉·奇蒂洛夫的电影。奉俊昊导演的《寄生虫》(第90位)、巴里·詹金斯导演的《月光男孩》(第60位)、希阿玛导演的《着火的女人的肖像》(第30位)等相对较新的电影也进入了前100名。黑人和亚洲导演的电影也取得了不错的成绩,奉俊昊和詹金斯以及日本动画师宫崎骏都取得了成功。上一次投票还选出了两位可以被视为后现代电影经典的导演:大卫·林奇和王家卫。林奇的《穆赫兰道》(2001)排在第8位,王家卫的《花样年华》(2000)排在第5位,进入前10名,这两位导演都有第二部电影上榜。他们的电影越来越有(批评)意义。另一方面,与早期的评选有一个显著的不同,那就是许多经典作品的退出,如《阿拉伯的劳伦斯》、《愤怒的公牛》、《里约布拉沃》,以及尼古拉斯·雷、恩斯特·卢比奇、路易斯·Buñuel或罗伯特·奥特曼等导演的电影的消失。同样,许多重要的年轻导演的电影,如佩德罗Almodóvar,拉斯·冯·提尔或保罗·托马斯·安德森,也未能进入前100部最佳电影。总的来说,欧洲和美国白人男性导演在这种“最佳”榜单上的主导地位即将结束。这不仅体现在Jeanne Dielman被提升到最高职位上,也体现在许多巨头的工作被降级上
{"title":"The Sight and Sound Poll and Eastern European Cinema","authors":"E. Mazierska","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2023.2169372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2023.2169372","url":null,"abstract":"The Sight and Sound polls for the Best Films of all times, conducted from 1952 every decade, are an important barometer of changes in the cinematic tastes of broadly understood specialists: film critics and, in due course, filmmakers. Such judgement is not entirely subjective and neither does it reflect an objective aesthetic value of films. It is shaped by changes in cinema itself; resulting, for example, from evolutions in technology and film distribution, and many extra-cinematic factors, such as political events, as well as age, gender, race and national and regional loyalties of the judges, or their lack thereof, to list only some of the factors. The latest Sight and Sound poll for the Best 100 Films of all times, published in December 2022, attracted much attention, at least online, with commentators highlighting the difference in results from previous polls. The most revolutionary change was the de-crowning of Vertigo (1958) by Alfred Hitchcock, which is now number 2 on the list, by Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) by Chantal Akerman. This is the first time a female filmmaker has taken the number one spot since the poll’s inception. Jeanne Dielman appeared on the previous poll, but its jump of 35 places from the 2012 poll is remarkable. Another difference across the poll is the large proportion – in comparison with previous polls – of films made by women. Apart from two films by Akerman – the second being News from Home (1976) – we also find films by Claire Denis, Maya Deren, Agnès Varda, Julie Dash, and Věra Chytilová. Relatively new films also found their way into the first 100 rankings, including Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho in 90th position, Moonlight (2016), directed by Barry Jenkins (60th) and Portrait of A Lady on Fire (2019), directed by Céline Sciamma (30th). Films made by Black and Asian directors also did well, as exemplified by the successes of Bong Joon-ho and Jenkins, in addition to Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. The last poll also stablished two directors at the forefront of what can be regarded as classics of postmodern cinema: David Lynch and Wong Kar-Wai. Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) reached 8th place and Wong’s In the Mood For Love (2000), entering the top 10 in 5th, and each of these two directors also have a second film on the list. Their films are gaining in (critical) significance. On the other hand, a notable difference from earlier incarnations of the poll is the departure of many classics, such as Lawrence of Arabia, Raging Bull, Rio Bravo alongside the disappearance of films from such directors as Nicholas Ray, Ernst Lubitsch, Luis Buñuel, or Robert Altman. Equally, films from many important younger directors, such as Pedro Almodóvar, Lars von Trier or Paul Thomas Anderson, also failed to reach the first hundred best films. By and large, the dominance of films made by white European and American male directors in such ‘best of ’ tables is coming to its end. This is ref","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89623124","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}