Pub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2021.1994745
Richard Vojvoda
Abstract In this article I argue that debates about Kolya (1996) and the images of its two authors Jan and Zdeněk Svěrák that were circulating in the media at the time of its release reveal several hopes and anxieties about Czech national cinema’s coming to terms with the effects of post-communist transition. I will analyse interpretations and discourses about the film circulating primarily in Czech press. The aim is to look at how the talk about Kolya developed as several discourses and interpretative strategies were introduced in different attempts to make sense of the film. The time frame I focus on here starts before the film’s release and reaches until the coverage of the Academy Awards ceremony in 1997 where the film received an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film. I argue that in this timespan, the film’s value was negotiated and contested prominently along a set of two references – the ‘truthfulness’ of the Czechness it represents, and the importance of international recognition for Czech cinema. I analyse these discourses in the context of changing conditions in Czech cinema after the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
{"title":"Selling ‘Czechness’ abroad: images of Jan and Zdeněk Svěrák in promotion and reception of Kolya","authors":"Richard Vojvoda","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2021.1994745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2021.1994745","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article I argue that debates about Kolya (1996) and the images of its two authors Jan and Zdeněk Svěrák that were circulating in the media at the time of its release reveal several hopes and anxieties about Czech national cinema’s coming to terms with the effects of post-communist transition. I will analyse interpretations and discourses about the film circulating primarily in Czech press. The aim is to look at how the talk about Kolya developed as several discourses and interpretative strategies were introduced in different attempts to make sense of the film. The time frame I focus on here starts before the film’s release and reaches until the coverage of the Academy Awards ceremony in 1997 where the film received an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film. I argue that in this timespan, the film’s value was negotiated and contested prominently along a set of two references – the ‘truthfulness’ of the Czechness it represents, and the importance of international recognition for Czech cinema. I analyse these discourses in the context of changing conditions in Czech cinema after the Velvet Revolution in 1989.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"13 1","pages":"196 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80792520","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 : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2021.1994240
Jelena Jelušić
Abstract This article examines Želimir Žilnik’s telefilm Stara mašina/Oldtimer (1989) as an example of the politically engaged use of genre and intertextuality in televisual representation. As a road movie, Oldtimer highlights how the journey trope imbued visual representations of movement with ideological and political meanings. At the same time, the film exposes the nationalist motivations behind the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution in Serbia in 1988 and emphasizes television news department staff’s complicity in concealing them. This article argues that, by incorporating television news into its diegetic universe, the film displaced the content presented as informational into the realm of fiction. In this way, Oldtimer not only exposed this case of misinformation but modeled a critical approach to the consumption of television. The paper shows that Žilnik’s work contributed to the broadening of televisual potential for ideological signification, allowing the medium to function not simply as a propaganda instrument but as a space of contestation of different ideological positions. Žilnik’s choice to realize this project as a film for television shows the televisual capacity for self-awareness, and Oldtimer points to the medium’s potential to address the problems that political pressures create.
{"title":"The politics of a rock ‘n’ road docudrama—genre and intertextuality in Želimir Žilnik’s Oldtimer (1989)","authors":"Jelena Jelušić","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2021.1994240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2021.1994240","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines Želimir Žilnik’s telefilm Stara mašina/Oldtimer (1989) as an example of the politically engaged use of genre and intertextuality in televisual representation. As a road movie, Oldtimer highlights how the journey trope imbued visual representations of movement with ideological and political meanings. At the same time, the film exposes the nationalist motivations behind the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution in Serbia in 1988 and emphasizes television news department staff’s complicity in concealing them. This article argues that, by incorporating television news into its diegetic universe, the film displaced the content presented as informational into the realm of fiction. In this way, Oldtimer not only exposed this case of misinformation but modeled a critical approach to the consumption of television. The paper shows that Žilnik’s work contributed to the broadening of televisual potential for ideological signification, allowing the medium to function not simply as a propaganda instrument but as a space of contestation of different ideological positions. Žilnik’s choice to realize this project as a film for television shows the televisual capacity for self-awareness, and Oldtimer points to the medium’s potential to address the problems that political pressures create.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"45 1","pages":"293 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74530293","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 : 2021-10-16DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2021.1990505
E. Mazierska
ABSTRACT This article presents the career of Eugeniusz Bodo who was the greatest Polish male movie star of the interwar period, examines the character he created on screen and its connection to Bodo’s off-screen persona. It also examines his position in Polish cinema after his death, especially during the period following the fall of state socialism, what is described here as ‘poststardom’. It argues that Bodo owed his success to two principal factors. One of them was the conducive circumstances in the Polish film and entertainment industry and his ability to exploit them to the full. Another factor was the match between his artistic persona and certain traits of Polish national character and, especially, the fit between the ideas Bodo embodied in some of his films and the image Poland tried to create during the same period. It also claims that after 1989 Bodo’s appeal was augmented because the details of his death, revealed in this period, rendered him the perfect tragic artist.
{"title":"Eugeniusz Bodo: the tragic face of Polish capitalism","authors":"E. Mazierska","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2021.1990505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2021.1990505","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article presents the career of Eugeniusz Bodo who was the greatest Polish male movie star of the interwar period, examines the character he created on screen and its connection to Bodo’s off-screen persona. It also examines his position in Polish cinema after his death, especially during the period following the fall of state socialism, what is described here as ‘poststardom’. It argues that Bodo owed his success to two principal factors. One of them was the conducive circumstances in the Polish film and entertainment industry and his ability to exploit them to the full. Another factor was the match between his artistic persona and certain traits of Polish national character and, especially, the fit between the ideas Bodo embodied in some of his films and the image Poland tried to create during the same period. It also claims that after 1989 Bodo’s appeal was augmented because the details of his death, revealed in this period, rendered him the perfect tragic artist.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"128 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81327025","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 : 2021-09-06DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2021.1969788
Nick Hodgin
In sum, the Film Genres in Hungarian and Romanian Cinema excels in building up and fine-tuning the conceptual support for the central argument, according to which the small national cinemas of Hungary and Romania in the 2010s articulate their uniqueness through the generic appeals of art cinema. The case studies of how the Easter European art cinema/ genre film hybrid reappropriates, recodes, and problematizes generic models are likewise convincing, nevertheless at times feel contrived. For scholars of Eastern European and European cinema history, national cinemas, and small size film industries, this volumes will prove a truly valuable contribution. Owing to its insightful exploration of the ‘generic accents’ of global cinema, it is likewise an essential reading for researchers and students investigating theories and histories of classical, post-classical and hybrid genres.
{"title":"Notes from the edge: dreams, paradoxes, and self-discovery in east German experimental film","authors":"Nick Hodgin","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2021.1969788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2021.1969788","url":null,"abstract":"In sum, the Film Genres in Hungarian and Romanian Cinema excels in building up and fine-tuning the conceptual support for the central argument, according to which the small national cinemas of Hungary and Romania in the 2010s articulate their uniqueness through the generic appeals of art cinema. The case studies of how the Easter European art cinema/ genre film hybrid reappropriates, recodes, and problematizes generic models are likewise convincing, nevertheless at times feel contrived. For scholars of Eastern European and European cinema history, national cinemas, and small size film industries, this volumes will prove a truly valuable contribution. Owing to its insightful exploration of the ‘generic accents’ of global cinema, it is likewise an essential reading for researchers and students investigating theories and histories of classical, post-classical and hybrid genres.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"15 1","pages":"116 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74885381","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 : 2021-08-31DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2021.1969847
Zsolt Győri
{"title":"New angles and accents in the study of Eastern European genre cinema","authors":"Zsolt Győri","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2021.1969847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2021.1969847","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"36 1","pages":"112 - 115"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83529769","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 : 2021-08-14DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2021.1964218
Jan Hanzlík, E. Mazierska
Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted virtually all domains of the film industry, from the production, through distribution to exhibition of films. As opposed to flourishing VOD platforms, cinemas have been hit particularly hard and with them film festivals, which had to choose between postponing their terms, becoming online or hybrid, or being cancelled altogether. The article focuses on festivals that either take place in Eastern Europe or are focused on the cinema of the region. It first briefly outlines the history of film festivals in Eastern Europe, then it summarizes the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on cinemas and VOD platforms and finally presents three case studies of festivals and their activities during the pandemic. The three festivals streamed at least some films from their programmes and endorsed other activities, such as online industry events, drive-in cinemas and Virtual Reality events. The study concludes that the degree to which film festivals could successfully take place during the pandemic depended more on the type of festival than on its geographical location or geographical focus. Eastern European festivals were not lagging behind the West in this respect and many European festivals were, in fact, cooperating and learning from one another.
{"title":"Eastern European film festivals: streaming through the covid-19 pandemic","authors":"Jan Hanzlík, E. Mazierska","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2021.1964218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2021.1964218","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted virtually all domains of the film industry, from the production, through distribution to exhibition of films. As opposed to flourishing VOD platforms, cinemas have been hit particularly hard and with them film festivals, which had to choose between postponing their terms, becoming online or hybrid, or being cancelled altogether. The article focuses on festivals that either take place in Eastern Europe or are focused on the cinema of the region. It first briefly outlines the history of film festivals in Eastern Europe, then it summarizes the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on cinemas and VOD platforms and finally presents three case studies of festivals and their activities during the pandemic. The three festivals streamed at least some films from their programmes and endorsed other activities, such as online industry events, drive-in cinemas and Virtual Reality events. The study concludes that the degree to which film festivals could successfully take place during the pandemic depended more on the type of festival than on its geographical location or geographical focus. Eastern European festivals were not lagging behind the West in this respect and many European festivals were, in fact, cooperating and learning from one another.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"55 1","pages":"38 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87915834","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2021.1943851
Eliza Rose
Abstract This article analyses three multi-author films by Polish artist Paweł Kwiek. To make these films, Kwiek applied the same collaborative formula in different social contexts, producing three sets of ‘1-minute films.’ The first film, Niechcice (1973), consists of sketches co-produced with rural youth. The later films were made at art festivals in 1973–4. This article treats these projects as a triptych: three parts of one whole. Taken together, they move from an experiment in cross-class collaboration to an intimate game among friends. Drawing from the language of Kwiek’s peer Anastazy Wiśniewski, the article parses Kwiek’s critical idiom as an instance of ‘positive negation’ that both affirmed and contested aspects of socialist reality. Kwiek’s procedures for making participatory art anticipated theories of social cooperation soon to be articulated by opposition thinker Jacek Kuroń. In this light, Kwiek’s ‘1-minute films’ are exercises in self-organisation that achieved, if only one minute at a time, the democratisation of social life envisioned by the opposition in this decade.
{"title":"Single-minute communities: assembling collective agency with Paweł Kwiek","authors":"Eliza Rose","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2021.1943851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2021.1943851","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses three multi-author films by Polish artist Paweł Kwiek. To make these films, Kwiek applied the same collaborative formula in different social contexts, producing three sets of ‘1-minute films.’ The first film, Niechcice (1973), consists of sketches co-produced with rural youth. The later films were made at art festivals in 1973–4. This article treats these projects as a triptych: three parts of one whole. Taken together, they move from an experiment in cross-class collaboration to an intimate game among friends. Drawing from the language of Kwiek’s peer Anastazy Wiśniewski, the article parses Kwiek’s critical idiom as an instance of ‘positive negation’ that both affirmed and contested aspects of socialist reality. Kwiek’s procedures for making participatory art anticipated theories of social cooperation soon to be articulated by opposition thinker Jacek Kuroń. In this light, Kwiek’s ‘1-minute films’ are exercises in self-organisation that achieved, if only one minute at a time, the democratisation of social life envisioned by the opposition in this decade.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"2 1","pages":"70 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86802336","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2021.1953240
Cerise Howard
{"title":"A celebration of the first decade of the East European Film Bulletin","authors":"Cerise Howard","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2021.1953240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2021.1953240","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81127093","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 : 2021-07-26DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2021.1957197
M. Brady
Želimir Žilnik’s time in West Germany (1973-6) ended with the short feature Paradise: An Imperialist Tragicomedy (Paradies: Eine imperialistische Tragikomödie, Alligator Film, 1976). An extraordinarily rich, at times uncomfortably visceral and chaotic parody of far-left terrorism (the RAF or Baader-Meinhof group), Paradise doesn’t feature in any of the myriad publications on the New German Cinema, despite being much more audacious than the work of contemporary German directors. If there is a German film Žilnik’s compelling mix of riotous anarchy, actionist body art, political satire can be compared with, then it is Fassbinder’s The Third Generation (Die dritte Generation, 1979) made after the events and, as we shall see, possibly inspired by Paradise. Žilnik’s ‘German films’ are not straightforwardly German either: they are shot there, they are (for the most part) in German, and they feature German actors, but they bring something from elsewhere; they are, to borrow the title of a contemporary Jean-Luc Godard/Anne-Marie Miéville film that itself addresses cultural and political dislocation, Ici et ailleurs (1976). Thomas Elsaesser is responsible for propagating the terms in my title; they are deeply engrained in the psyche of scholars and students of West German cinema and continue to resonate as a reassuringly simple binary categorisation: ‘contentism’, broadly synonymous with Brechtian political modernism, and romantic ‘sensibilism’ à-la Caspar David Friedrich or the Hollywood road-movie. In the late 1960s the former is associated with the dffb film school in Berlin (Harun Farocki, Holger Meins, Helke Sander), the latter with the HFF in Munich (Wim Wenders et al). Elsaesser acknowledges in his landmark 1989 study New German Cinema: A History – which popularized the contentism-sensibilism binary – that the terminology is not actually his: it had appeared first in Michael Rutschky’s book-length study of the psychology of the 1970s, Erfahrungshunger (‘The Hunger for Experience’, 1979). Rutschky’s thesis is that post-’68 the hunger in West Germany was for experience – qua sensibility and consumption – rather than emancipation. The resulting shift from contentism to sensibilism after 1968 is generally known as the Tendenzwende (‘change of direction’) or simply ‘New Subjectivity’. It is associated with a rejection, in the wake of the perceived ‘failure’ of the student movement, of political action and its associated discourse(s) of progressive politics, coupled with a renewed concern with personal experience and the less reified kinds of language needed to give expression to it. The shift is often dated to around the time Žilnik moved to Germany. For Richard McCormick, New German Cinema
Želimir Žilnik在西德的时光(1973-6)以短片《天堂:帝国主义悲喜剧》(paraddies: Eine imperialistische Tragikomödie, Alligator Film, 1976)结束。《天堂》是对极左恐怖主义(英国皇家空军或巴德尔-迈因霍夫集团)极其丰富、时而令人不安的本能和混乱的模仿，尽管比当代德国导演的作品大胆得多，但它并没有出现在新德国电影的无数出版物中。如果说有一部德国电影Žilnik引人注目地融合了骚乱的无政府状态、行动主义的人体艺术和政治讽刺，那么它就是法斯宾德的《第三代》(Die dritte Generation, 1979)，它是在事件发生后拍摄的，正如我们将看到的，它的灵感可能来自《天堂》。Žilnik的“德国电影”也不完全是德国的:它们是在那里拍摄的，(大部分)是用德语拍摄的，它们的演员也是德国人，但它们也从其他地方带来了一些东西;,借用当代的标题让-吕克·戈达尔密维尔/ anne - marie合拍电影本身地址文化和政治混乱,Ici等为(1976)。Thomas Elsaesser负责传播我头衔中的术语;它们深深植根于西德电影学者和学生的心灵中，并继续作为一种简单的二元分类产生共鸣:“内容主义”，大致等同于布莱希特政治现代主义，和浪漫的“感性主义”à-la Caspar David Friedrich或好莱坞公路电影。在20世纪60年代末，前者与柏林的dffb电影学院(Harun Farocki, Holger Meins, Helke Sander)有关，后者与慕尼黑的HFF有关(Wim Wenders等人)。Elsaesser在他1989年的里程碑式研究《新德国电影:一部历史》中承认，这个术语实际上不是他的:它首先出现在Michael Rutschky关于20世纪70年代心理学的长篇研究中，Erfahrungshunger(“对经验的渴望”，1979)。Rutschky的论点是，1968年后，西德的饥饿是对经验的渴望——作为感性和消费——而不是解放。1968年之后从内容主义到感性主义的转变通常被称为“趋势转变”(“方向的改变”)或简称为“新主体性”。在学生运动的“失败”之后，它与政治行动及其相关的进步政治话语的拒绝联系在一起，与对个人经验的重新关注以及表达它所需的不太具体化的语言类型相关联。这种转变通常可以追溯到Žilnik搬到德国的时候。理查德·麦考密克，新德国电影
{"title":"Contentism v. Sensibilism: Želimir Žilnik’s Paradise: An Imperialist Tragicomedy as a challenge to the New German Cinema","authors":"M. Brady","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2021.1957197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2021.1957197","url":null,"abstract":"Želimir Žilnik’s time in West Germany (1973-6) ended with the short feature Paradise: An Imperialist Tragicomedy (Paradies: Eine imperialistische Tragikomödie, Alligator Film, 1976). An extraordinarily rich, at times uncomfortably visceral and chaotic parody of far-left terrorism (the RAF or Baader-Meinhof group), Paradise doesn’t feature in any of the myriad publications on the New German Cinema, despite being much more audacious than the work of contemporary German directors. If there is a German film Žilnik’s compelling mix of riotous anarchy, actionist body art, political satire can be compared with, then it is Fassbinder’s The Third Generation (Die dritte Generation, 1979) made after the events and, as we shall see, possibly inspired by Paradise. Žilnik’s ‘German films’ are not straightforwardly German either: they are shot there, they are (for the most part) in German, and they feature German actors, but they bring something from elsewhere; they are, to borrow the title of a contemporary Jean-Luc Godard/Anne-Marie Miéville film that itself addresses cultural and political dislocation, Ici et ailleurs (1976). Thomas Elsaesser is responsible for propagating the terms in my title; they are deeply engrained in the psyche of scholars and students of West German cinema and continue to resonate as a reassuringly simple binary categorisation: ‘contentism’, broadly synonymous with Brechtian political modernism, and romantic ‘sensibilism’ à-la Caspar David Friedrich or the Hollywood road-movie. In the late 1960s the former is associated with the dffb film school in Berlin (Harun Farocki, Holger Meins, Helke Sander), the latter with the HFF in Munich (Wim Wenders et al). Elsaesser acknowledges in his landmark 1989 study New German Cinema: A History – which popularized the contentism-sensibilism binary – that the terminology is not actually his: it had appeared first in Michael Rutschky’s book-length study of the psychology of the 1970s, Erfahrungshunger (‘The Hunger for Experience’, 1979). Rutschky’s thesis is that post-’68 the hunger in West Germany was for experience – qua sensibility and consumption – rather than emancipation. The resulting shift from contentism to sensibilism after 1968 is generally known as the Tendenzwende (‘change of direction’) or simply ‘New Subjectivity’. It is associated with a rejection, in the wake of the perceived ‘failure’ of the student movement, of political action and its associated discourse(s) of progressive politics, coupled with a renewed concern with personal experience and the less reified kinds of language needed to give expression to it. The shift is often dated to around the time Žilnik moved to Germany. For Richard McCormick, New German Cinema","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"53 1","pages":"288 - 292"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91387764","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 : 2021-07-14DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2021.1950896
Mirosław Przylipiak
Alicja Helman passed away on February 24th 2021 in Torrivieja, Andalusia, where she had lived with her husband for the last four years of her life. With her demise a certain epoch in Polish film studies has ended. I met her in the mid-1980s. My academic career was just beginning, whereas Helman, widely known simply as ‘Alicja’ was already a distinguished figure in the Polish film studies, author of many books and essays on film theory published regularly in the most prestigious Polish film magazine of the time, Kino. I liked her way of thinking about cinema and tried to give my first writings on film a similar shape, therefore I wanted her to supervise my doctoral thesis. I asked my friend, who happened to know Alicja, to pass her my most recent achievement, a long, around 50.000 words typescript on the filmic narrator. I waited for her to come back to me for several months, which seemed to me like ages, but, most importantly, her reaction was favourable. Alicja agreed to supervise my PhD; later she also reviewed my habilitation work. In the meantime, we became close colleagues, perhaps even friends. Beyond doubt my professional life would have been very different without her. This is my story, but with some minor alterations it could have been a story of many people from my professional milieu in Poland. Alicja exerted an enormous influence on Polish film studies. The time of her professional career overlapped with a dynamic growth of this academic discipline, both in Poland and elsewhere. When she started her work at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1955, this discipline was a novelty, represented by a handful of professors, such as Jerzy Toeplitz. Now, several hundred Polish academics carry on research on various forms of moving images, and it would be difficult to find an institution of higher education, with departments of humanities or social sciences which does not conduct this kind of research. Admittedly, it probably would have happened without Alicja, for such was the zeitgeist, but it did happen with her enormous contribution and on her terms. For a long time nothing significant in Polish film studies could have happened without her involvement, be it conferences publications or launching of individual careers. In the 1980s and the 1990s practically all young Polish film studies researchers passed through her hands. She supervised and reviewed doctoral dissertations and habilitation theses. Some time ago Alicja herself told me a story. A young student meeting her for the first time exclaimed: ‘Wow, I can see a monument to Polish films studies’. This statement, probably a sign of the highest appreciation for Helman’s elevated position, and more than slightly ambivalent for her (although she told the story with amusement), was very true. Alicja Helman was, is and will remain a monumental figure in the Polish films studies. Alicja, a person of legendary diligence, whose numerous activities could be easily distribu
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