Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2023.2149122
Lars Kristensen
This is the first special issue of Studies in Eastern European Cinema that addresses computer game culture within the region of Eastern Europe. The reasons for doing so are twofold. The first has to do with the idea of convergence between industries. The film and game industries are increasingly overlapping, meaning that separating the two on the levels of production and consumption is unproductive. This does not mean that films become computer games, or games become films – in the form of one media product being translated into another as transmedia adaptations. Instead, the relationship between the two industries is much more dynamic; for example, film production is borrowing tools from game production. In virtual production, large studios use computer game engines to render sets while shooting live action scenes, which make shooting faster and more effective to meet the demands of major streaming services. Another example of industry convergence is the fact that computer games are moving closer to immersive forms, where head-mounteddisplays are essential for the ultimate experience of a work, which is often less ludic and more geared toward experience design and performance arts, something that lies at the foundation of cinema. This cross-over illustrates how technological environments are converging to facilitate storytelling on a different level. The second issue that grounds this turn towards games is the fact that computer games are played by large audiences. As more and more film students emerge with gameplay experience in their toolkits, the way we study screen media, including social media and television, needs to address the media ‘next door’, of which the computer game is an important one. The current generation of university students has grown up playing games on a daily basis and are likely to continue this activity in some form. In short, it is unproductive to remain ignorant of developments in computer games while our students are playing games as well as watching films. However, this puts the spotlight on a problematic issue; namely, how we should study games and how is studying games different from studying cinema? Highlighting this here might get some game scholars out of their seats, arguing that game studies has already had this debate in the early 2000s, with Janet Murray and Esben Aarseth as the leading scholars. Some readers would argue that the field of game studies is already past this discussion, having formed its own discipline game studies. However, game studies are still a divided field dependent on which perspective we are looking at the game and indeed dependent on what kind of game is being analysed. It is still the case that many academic divisions ‘claim’ games as a core division – computer science, sociology, linguistics, education, and the arts and humanities. Regional studies, too, have to be attuned to this development, which is something that we hope to reflect through this special issue.
{"title":"Gaming Eastern Europe: Production, Distribution and Consumption","authors":"Lars Kristensen","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2023.2149122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2023.2149122","url":null,"abstract":"This is the first special issue of Studies in Eastern European Cinema that addresses computer game culture within the region of Eastern Europe. The reasons for doing so are twofold. The first has to do with the idea of convergence between industries. The film and game industries are increasingly overlapping, meaning that separating the two on the levels of production and consumption is unproductive. This does not mean that films become computer games, or games become films – in the form of one media product being translated into another as transmedia adaptations. Instead, the relationship between the two industries is much more dynamic; for example, film production is borrowing tools from game production. In virtual production, large studios use computer game engines to render sets while shooting live action scenes, which make shooting faster and more effective to meet the demands of major streaming services. Another example of industry convergence is the fact that computer games are moving closer to immersive forms, where head-mounteddisplays are essential for the ultimate experience of a work, which is often less ludic and more geared toward experience design and performance arts, something that lies at the foundation of cinema. This cross-over illustrates how technological environments are converging to facilitate storytelling on a different level. The second issue that grounds this turn towards games is the fact that computer games are played by large audiences. As more and more film students emerge with gameplay experience in their toolkits, the way we study screen media, including social media and television, needs to address the media ‘next door’, of which the computer game is an important one. The current generation of university students has grown up playing games on a daily basis and are likely to continue this activity in some form. In short, it is unproductive to remain ignorant of developments in computer games while our students are playing games as well as watching films. However, this puts the spotlight on a problematic issue; namely, how we should study games and how is studying games different from studying cinema? Highlighting this here might get some game scholars out of their seats, arguing that game studies has already had this debate in the early 2000s, with Janet Murray and Esben Aarseth as the leading scholars. Some readers would argue that the field of game studies is already past this discussion, having formed its own discipline game studies. However, game studies are still a divided field dependent on which perspective we are looking at the game and indeed dependent on what kind of game is being analysed. It is still the case that many academic divisions ‘claim’ games as a core division – computer science, sociology, linguistics, education, and the arts and humanities. Regional studies, too, have to be attuned to this development, which is something that we hope to reflect through this special issue.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79200808","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 : 2022-12-28DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2159161
Lars Kristensen, Marcus Toftedahl
. PhD
。博士学位
{"title":"Interview with Ágnes Karolina Bakk (ÁKB) and Alexey Izvalov (AI)","authors":"Lars Kristensen, Marcus Toftedahl","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2159161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2159161","url":null,"abstract":". PhD","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87113240","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 : 2022-12-09DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2152542
Żaneta Jamrozik
Abstract Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (2019) represents France of La Belle Époque not through cafés, cabarets, and literary salons but as a military state of dilapidated army offices filled with half-asleep soldiers, dust, stink, and clouds of suspicion. The Third Republic seems suspended between its revolutionary past and the bleak present: the lost war with Germany and constant governmental scandals. The country recedes into the interior to try less grandeur methods like plotting, spying and surveillance. Polanski recounts the era through the Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906), treated not as a designed plot but as a logical outcome of the bureaucratic system of the state. I analyse An Officer and a Spy historically alongside Walter Benjamin’s writing on the interior. Benjamin’s interior is a complex space that can function as a protective space, a space of death or inertia, a space of history and action as well as a colonising space that brings together the far and the near through colonial objects and customs.
{"title":"An Officer and a Spy: Roman Polanski in the Benjaminian Interior","authors":"Żaneta Jamrozik","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2152542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2152542","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (2019) represents France of La Belle Époque not through cafés, cabarets, and literary salons but as a military state of dilapidated army offices filled with half-asleep soldiers, dust, stink, and clouds of suspicion. The Third Republic seems suspended between its revolutionary past and the bleak present: the lost war with Germany and constant governmental scandals. The country recedes into the interior to try less grandeur methods like plotting, spying and surveillance. Polanski recounts the era through the Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906), treated not as a designed plot but as a logical outcome of the bureaucratic system of the state. I analyse An Officer and a Spy historically alongside Walter Benjamin’s writing on the interior. Benjamin’s interior is a complex space that can function as a protective space, a space of death or inertia, a space of history and action as well as a colonising space that brings together the far and the near through colonial objects and customs.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79733355","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 : 2022-11-28DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2149043
Zsolt Győri
{"title":"An Educational Corpus Based Exploration of Contemporary Hungarian Cinema: Lessons of the 2021 Hungarian University Film Awards","authors":"Zsolt Győri","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2149043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2149043","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84667574","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 : 2022-11-11DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2144461
Jan Hanzlík, Petr Szczepanik, K. Čada, Zuzana Chytková
{"title":"‘I don’t care if it’s the Third World War’: Czech cinemagoers during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Jan Hanzlík, Petr Szczepanik, K. Čada, Zuzana Chytková","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2144461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2144461","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82750448","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 : 2022-11-02DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2141967
András Lénárt
Abstract Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden (1994), the adaptation of a play written by Ariel Dorfman, can be interpreted on various levels. Although not stated explicitly, it is unambiguous that the background of the story is the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, though it could equally have been any East-Central European or Latin American country with a dictatorial past. This motion picture raises questions concerning human consciousness, guilt, pain and torture (both emotional and physical), revenge and moral uncertainty. Three episodes of Polanski’s life may add a special significance to this adaptation. Being a Holocaust survivor, the Polish director experienced the repression of a dictatorship and the effects of human cruelty. Furthermore, his pregnant wife was brutally murdered by the Manson Family. Also, taking into consideration that he was found guilty of unlawful sex with a minor, he knows how society and individuals punish someone for his or her crimes. The aim of my article is to examine the possible interpretations of the movie, paying special attention to Polanski’s approach towards tragedies, dictatorships (in both East-Central Europe and Latin America), and personal guilt, and also to highlight what message the film may transmit to future generations.
{"title":"Approaches to Crime and Punishment in a Historical Context: Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden","authors":"András Lénárt","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2141967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2141967","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden (1994), the adaptation of a play written by Ariel Dorfman, can be interpreted on various levels. Although not stated explicitly, it is unambiguous that the background of the story is the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, though it could equally have been any East-Central European or Latin American country with a dictatorial past. This motion picture raises questions concerning human consciousness, guilt, pain and torture (both emotional and physical), revenge and moral uncertainty. Three episodes of Polanski’s life may add a special significance to this adaptation. Being a Holocaust survivor, the Polish director experienced the repression of a dictatorship and the effects of human cruelty. Furthermore, his pregnant wife was brutally murdered by the Manson Family. Also, taking into consideration that he was found guilty of unlawful sex with a minor, he knows how society and individuals punish someone for his or her crimes. The aim of my article is to examine the possible interpretations of the movie, paying special attention to Polanski’s approach towards tragedies, dictatorships (in both East-Central Europe and Latin America), and personal guilt, and also to highlight what message the film may transmit to future generations.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79448399","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 : 2022-10-25DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2137006
Veronika Hermann
{"title":"From Agent to Subject: Panoptic and Post-Panoptic Surveillance in Contemporary Eastern European Television Series","authors":"Veronika Hermann","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2137006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2137006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79993691","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 : 2022-10-14DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2133354
Vlastimir Sudar
{"title":"Interview with Želimir Žilnik – August, 2022","authors":"Vlastimir Sudar","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2133354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2133354","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89291969","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 : 2022-09-29DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2127228
Mélisande Leventopoulos
{"title":"A Journey through the Balkans’ Early Cinema History","authors":"Mélisande Leventopoulos","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2127228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2127228","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89525069","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}