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Timothy Mitchell: Orientalism and the
Exhibitionary Order
Timothy Mitchell
explores the way patterns created by colonialism about the non-Western
world relate to the representational logic of the West that consolidated
in the nineteenth century. Mitchell demonstrates the mechanisms of this
representational logic on the examples of the 1867 and 1889 Paris World
Fairs, from the perspective of the exhibited world of Egypt - in other
words, from a perspective that is Eastern, not Western. The study examines
the world of orientalist exhibitions, world fairs, streets of Paris,
trade halls, panoramas and uranoramas, adopting the focus of Middle-Eastern
accounts of these spectacles, which themselves were the targets of the
objectivising gaze of the modern spectators, and which were unintentionally
becoming parts of the theatrical machinery.
Full text in Hungarian→
Andrea Éva Tóth: Cinema in the exhibition hall
The author
of the article discusses the theoretical questions raised by films that
have left their classical social space, the movie theater, and have
moved into museums, galleries of contemporary art or into other locations.
The article, among other things, searches for answers that explain the
reason of this migration, whereby the moving pictures, leaving the movie
theater, shifted their residence to the illuminated galleries, thus
taking the classical place of paintings and sculptures. Based on literature
on the subject in English and French, the author investigates the topic
of categorizing films that appear in the context of the museum, and
the way films are transformed in this process of delocalisation. The
article also touches upon the subject of how the viewer's position metamorphoses
in a situation that is different from a position of the spectator in
a classical movie theater and also, how this phenomenon of film dislocation
fits into the concept of contemporary art.
Full text in Hungarian→
Zoltán Gyulai: (Heterotopical)
spaces of a dystopia: On George Orwell's
1984
The article
offers an interpretation of Orwell's 1984 in which the metaphors
of space are examined as structures that function as organising principles
of the narrative. The rich and diverse topic of space offered by the
genre of dystopia defines not only the poetics of the novel, but seems
to prescribe the subject as well as the logic of authentic speech performance.
This duality is one of the topics explored by the essay.
Full text in Hungarian→
Izabella
Békés: The nonexistent treasure:
The case of the Elgin-marbles
The central
theme of the essay is the exploration of diverse aspects of the debate
between Britain and Greece related to the quasi-stealing of the Elgin-marbles.
The British point of view is presented with the help of the Heideggerian
term "revealing". In the context of a broader discourse on museums,
the author concentrates on scrutinizing the power-related aspects of
an institution representing authoritative politics, as well as revealing
the motives behind acquiring the work. The marbles, work of Greek sculptor
Phidias, were transported to Britain in 1801 by Lord Elgin, ambassador
to Istanbul. According to the Greek argument Lord Elgin had simply stolen
the marbles, and for this reason the Greek party has been requesting
the return of the marbles since 1829. The British version of the event
is that the marbles were acquired legally, and thus there is no possibility
for their return to their original place.
Full text in Hungarian→
Miklós Sághy: Stubborn realism. What kind of fiction
is reality?
In my essay I
explore the problem of pictorial realism. On the one hand I focus on
the conceptual conditions and acquired circumstances of vision which
influence the perception of reality, while on the other hand I examine
the perception of the quality of reality that is attributed to pictures.
I also try to show the significant difference between the realism theories
(Bazin, Barthes, Kracauer) and the opinions which argue that the realistic
representation does not depend on simple imitation, but on inculcation
(Goodman, Nietzsche).
Full text in Hungarian→
Gábor Gelencsér: Modifications:
The realism theory of Miklós Mészöly and the avantguard documentarism
of the seventies
At the turn of the sixties
and the seventies, Miklós Mészöly's work had a double tie to the
contemporary trends of Hungarian cinema. One connection was the adaptation
of István Gaál's novel Magasiskola [Falcons]. The other was
his theoretical work on realism, relying on the guidance of cinéma
direct. The essay - a continuation of the author's earlier analysis
of Falcons, detects the effects and afterlife of Mészöly's
film theory from the mid-seventies as it surfaces in the work of authors
and directors associated with Balázs Béla Studio.
Full text in Hungarian→
Mark Vernet: The ideal
In the last chapter of his
Figures de l'absence Marc Vernet analyses a single film: Joseph
L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives from 1949. In his study
he examines the attributes of Addie Ross, a character who is not present
in the film, while at the same time he explores in great detail the
relationship of the three couples present. Apart from interpreting the
shots, he discusses the differences between the screenplay and the short
story serving as the source of the screenplay, and pays attention to
the costumes as well.
Full text in Hungarian→
Jim Hillier: Swimming and
sinking: form and meaning in an avant-garde film
Jim Hillier analyses a 1990
movie of an American indie/avant-garde director Sue Friedrich, entitled
Sink or Swim. The essay explores the relationship of the film to
the traditions of ethnographic and subjective documentaries, as well
as to realistic cinema. As for the legitimacy of interpretations, the
essay explores the borderline between still and not yet
legitimate, trying to map up the significance of meaning of the film
that has set itself free from the classical traits of narrative. The
frustration that roots in the narrative expectations of the audience
that are not met by the movie is linked to "narrative jouissance",
broadening the relevance of the conclusion based on Sink or Swim
to avant-guard films in general.
Full text in Hungarian→
Zsolt Zsombor
Kapás: The characters' subjectivity in Daren Aronofsky's films
The treatment
of character subjectivity in a key question of filmic narration -
an aspect which gains a specific significance in the works of Darren
Aronofsky. The study differentiates between six categories, ways of
expressing subjectivity, all of which can be linked to respective forms
of expression and narrative significance. The first three films of Aronofsky
(p
from 1998, Requiem for Dream from 2000, and The Fountain
from 2006) apply the tools belonging to given categories intensely and
diversely. These respective subjective narrative options are present
in individual works with different intensity, but it is unquestionable
that they always have a central role. Based on the diverse way of expressing
character subjectivity, Aronofsky's films offer a unique way of narration,
and adorn the works with special artistic quality, making them significant
in the larger context of filmmaking.
Full text in Hungarian→
Dániel
Turi: Through Hollywood darkly? Representation of the crisis of consciousness
in adaptations of Philip K. Dick's prose
The essay examines
adaptations based on the works of Philip K. Dick focusing on the ways
these adaptations treat the problem of human consciousness vis-á-vis
the way the same problem appears in the original texts. The central
claim of the argument is that these conclusions are usually lost in
adaptations applying classical Hollywood-type narratives. A detailed
analysis is devoted to Richard Linklater's Throug a Camera Darkly,
which, according to the author of the article, is closer to the perspective
of the novel, because certain forms of expression (such as the rotoscoping
technology enriching the texture of the live-character movie with drawn
animation) create a certain "idiom", and thus establish a characteristic
relationship to Dick's novel.
Full text in Hungarian→
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