Papers by Mario Županović
Performance dans les Amériques De 1950 à nos jours, 2024
In this article I re-examine the esthetics and poetics of the seminal figure of modern Brazilian
... more In this article I re-examine the esthetics and poetics of the seminal figure of modern Brazilian
cinema Glauber Rocha from the perspective of the theatricality of his Cinema Novo films starting with
Barravento from 1962 and finishing with Antonio das Mortes from 1969. Rocha was a founder and
theoretical frame giver for the Cinema Novo movement with his manifesto Aesthetics of Hunger in 1965,
and it was he who envisioned a new postcolonial context of the Brazilian cinema in the 60’s. Article
will provide an insight how Rocha employed theatricality to emphasize the revolutionary and anti-colonial
narrative present in his films. In Barravento we witness the rare negative employment of the traditional
and ethnographic performative praxis of the Brazilian Bahia region with theatrical representation of the
Capoeira and Candomblé rituals. In his seminal Black God, White Devil, the director stages the “black”
processions of the pseudo religious movement of the beatos while also using the performatives of the
poetical duels known as desafios. Finally, in the closing times of Cinema Novo and Brazilian democracy
Rocha presented the film Antonio das Mortes filled with theatricality from the ongoing inner audience
witnessing duels, processions, acclamations and desafios. All the strategies that Rocha employed to design
a bloody and revolutionary power of the Cinema Novo movement owe a great deal to the theatricality and
performativity stamped in the core of these three films.
Komunikacija i kultura online, 2023
Rad analizira narativne strategije i subverzije u filmu Sjećanja na nerazvijenost kubanskog reda... more Rad analizira narativne strategije i subverzije u filmu Sjećanja na nerazvijenost kubanskog redatelja Tomása Gutiérreza Alee iz 1968. koji je ekranizacija istoimenog romana Edmunda Desnoesa iz 1965., radnjom i vremenom smještenog na Kubu 1962., godine koja je obilježila vrhunac Hladnog rata zbog kubanske raketne krize i nuklearne opasnosti koja je prijetila svijetu. Premda su obojica autora, Alea i Desnoes ostali na Kubi i nakon završetka Revolucije 1959., njihovi su pogledi i perspektive u bitnome različite. Desnoes se u romanu koji ima autoreferentni iskaz prepoznaje kao intelektualac zapadnjačkog tipa za kojeg nema mjesta u doktrini socijalističkog realizma, dok Alea subverzijama spram oba dominantna ideološko kulturna bloka (zapadni i sovjetski model) uspijeva ispoljiti i autorski i angažirani iskaz koji je anomalija u kontekstu doktrinarnog soc- realizma. Rad će pokazati kako je Alea kroz narativne subverzije spram Desnoesovog romana u filmu u isto vrijeme razotkrio i skrio višestruke socio-ideološke slojeve vezane uz kontekst socijalizma, Zapada, Istoka i pozicije intelektualca u njima.
Ključne riječi: Alea, subverzija, Desnoes, nuklearna opasnost, intelektualac
Journal of Romance Studies, 2021
This article employs the concepts of duplicity and posthegemony to analyse intimate and social in... more This article employs the concepts of duplicity and posthegemony to analyse intimate and social interactions in Lucrecia Martel’s La niña santa [The Holy Girl] (2004) and Claudia Llosa’s Madeinusa (2005), focusing in particular on the personal and social development of each film’s female protagonist. By viewing the films through the psychoanalytic concepts of duplicity as defined by Harold Kelman and posthegemony as defined by Jon Beasley-Murray, we distinguish how each female protagonist strives toward posthegemonic status while adopting opposite approaches to duplicity. This is to say that Amalia entirely eschews duplicity while Madeinusa plays upon the liminalities of moral doubleness. In elaborating this argument, we will also demonstrate that both films represent a feminist critique of hegemony in which the emergent and emancipative subject liberates herself from the patriarchal apparatuses of the family, religion and community.
Secuencias. Revista de historia del cine, 2020
Ya el título de este libro, El espectador pensan-te, nos atrae hacia él y nos urge a leerlo. A fi... more Ya el título de este libro, El espectador pensan-te, nos atrae hacia él y nos urge a leerlo. A fin de cuentas, qué sería más apropiado para una mo-nografía sobre Jorge Sanjinés y el Grupo Ukamau que una frase que refleje los objetivos y logros del cineasta y el grupo que ayudó a dar forma al Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano y, especialmente, al cine y la cultura contemporánea boliviana. David M. J. Wood es un investigador especialista en el cine boliviano y mexicano, radicado en el Insti-tuto de Investigaciones Estéticas de la Universi-dad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). El libro es un exhaustivo y bien escrito recorrido por casi todos los aspectos del trabajo realizado por Sanjinés y el Grupo Ukamau y no se limita a las películas, sino que incluye los textos, ideas y tra-yectorias culturales y filosóficas de la subversiva carrera del cineasta, que empezó con el corto-metraje inacabado El Poroto, realizado en Chile en 1957 cuando Sanjinés aún era un estudiante y que, por ahora, cuenta con Juana Azurduy: Guerrillera de la Patria Grande (2016) como su última película.
Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 2019
Claudia Llosa's seminal work The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada) is a Peruvian feature from 200... more Claudia Llosa's seminal work The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada) is a Peruvian feature from 2009 that has been widely analysed and scrutinized. It deals with very intriguing topic of trauma and self-inflicted oppression of a young indigenous woman in contemporary Peru. The task in this research was to elaborate and display how the personal trauma of the female, a victim of rape committed by the Peruvian guerrilla and paramilitary is transmitted onto her daughter and what are the consequences of that transmission. Another goal was to show case how the narrative structure of the film is overlapped by psychological narration unspoken in film, but evident to the viewer through the over amplified presence of the symbolism and through the protagonist's inner state of mind. The narrative is built upon an indigenous belief that the evil of the rapist transmits through mother's milk and that it can only be understood when a subject becomes aware of its own pre-traumatizing experience. This is exemplified by iconological and symbolic usage of the potato, which the protagonist Fausta inserts into her vagina. She does so in order to shield herself from the transmitting of the evil, but the potato inevitably becomes a trigger/safety of her traumatizing existence. The real narrative is thus border by the potato insertion and finally by the potato being removed from the protagonists genitals. Frame and montage analysis of the strategies employed by Llosa reveals that the visual and symbolic content of The Milk of Sorrow narrates the trauma in the unique way that has influenced feminist filmmakers in the Latin America to approach the taboo topics like rape and incest from different perspectives. At the same time, the trauma narrative produces ambiguity that has led the scholars to complete opposition in their analysis, and precisely this ambiguity is the raison d'être of this research.
The paper focuses on the comedia ranchera genre of Mexican cinema, and especially two important f... more The paper focuses on the comedia ranchera genre of Mexican cinema, and especially two important films: On the Big Ranch and Two Types of Care. The genre is analyzed in view of its cultural, political and aesthetic significance in the post-revolutionary Mexico of the 1930s and 1950s, and through its reactionary and subversive features regarding the prevailing indigenismo art and culture of Mexico. Analysis of shot by shot sequences and the iconography of frames reveals that comedia ranchera is a distinctive genre of Mexican cinema, which can be seen as a reactionary ideological apparatus that echoes porfirismo and the old pre-revolutionary regime. The subversive potential of comedia ranchera is hidden cleverly beneath its stereotypical plots and stock characters, and particularly beneath the omnipresent theme of the love triangle. Comparing comedia ranchera to the Western showcases the main difference between heroes of the Western frontier and the rural, reactionary protagonists of comedia ranchera. Although aesthetically different in their visual representation, both On the Big Ranch and Two Types of Care emanate the reactionary paradigm: a class-based society marked by paternalism and Catholic conservatism.
Rad istražuje veze body- arta i teorije pharmakosa , tj. povezuje učinke i parametre žive izvedbe... more Rad istražuje veze body- arta i teorije pharmakosa , tj. povezuje učinke i parametre žive izvedbe body art performansa sa teorijom izvedenom u dijelu Diseminacija Jacquesa Derride . Derridin lanac označitelja pharmakon-pharmakos se mapira u radovima većinski ženski i feminističkih body arta izvedbi od Gine Pane do Carolle Schnnemann do video radova Linde Bengalis. Kroz istraživanje jasno je utvrđeno kako body art živa izvedba pokazuje dvojake učinke ne samo na izvođača već i na gledatelje, tako da je izvedba za neke trauma, a za neke rehabilitacija. U isto vrijeme primjenom Derridinog diseminacijskog sustava se povezuje većina boyd art izvedbi koje pripadaju vidu tzv. ekspresivnog body arta kojeg označavaju stvarni činovi ostvareni destrukcijom tijela ili je tijelo djelatna alatka koja ostvaruje neki programski ili teorijski koncept (kao u slučaju Annie Sprinkle ).
The paper analyzes two films from Bolivia and Peru – Ukamau and The Milk of Sorrow, respectively ... more The paper analyzes two films from Bolivia and Peru – Ukamau and The Milk of Sorrow, respectively – from the perspective of the deconstruction of cholaje evident in the dramaturgy of both films. The focus is on how cholaje is represented as a byplay and subversively deconstructed as the affirmative social and ideological paradigm in Peru and in Bolivia. Using formal and stylistic analysis, the paper focuses on the deconstructing of cholaje through the principle of associative montage in the case of Ukamau, and through anthropological and ethnographical coding in the case of The Milk of Sorrow. The analysis also emphasizes the notion of indianismo, as the ideology opposed to cholaje, which becomes a national and indigenous way of the future in Ukamau, while in The Milk of Sorrow it elaborates a feminist point of view and turns into a vehicle of emancipation for the protagonist. The goal of this paper is to reveal the deconstruction of the concept of cholaje in two seminal films of Peruvian and Bolivian cinema: Ukamau, directed by Bolivian Jorge Sanjines in 1966, and The Milk of Sorrow (La teta asustada), directed by Peruvian Claudia Llosa in 2009. The link between the two films, however different they may be in terms of aesthetic or poetic features, is the deconstruction of cholaje and the establishment of the ideology of indianismo, which was/is almost nonexistent in other Peruvian or Bolivian films. Being an avant-garde revolutionary manifesto of the indianismo movement, Ukamau is also the first motion picture from the region that denounces the principle of mestizaje (mixture) as the basis for reconciliation between colonial and postcolonial societies reshaped throughout the 20 th century. The Milk of Sorrow, a postmodern indigenous feminist melodrama, resurrects the notion of indianismo in Peru almost a hundred years after the inauguration of the cholaje. In order to outline the deconstruction of cholaje in both films, one must first establish what cholaje was/is in Peru and in Bolivia, and how it was represented in the arts. Secondly, the analysis must show how the deconstructed cholaje can be perceived as the boosting of the indianismo concept and how this concept worked in revolutionary Bolivia in the 1960s and how it operates in 21 st century Peru. The strength of the mestizaje/cholaje ideology in politics, but also in academic circles, is the reason why the issue of cholaje in both films was overlooked by the authors
Abstract
The paper analyzes two films – Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomas
Gutiérrez Alea and ... more Abstract
The paper analyzes two films – Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomas
Gutiérrez Alea and Hector Babenco’s Pixote: The Law of the Weakest – by looking
at the respective protagonists in the perspective of the term blurred other. The
term implies that the protagonists are ambiguous characters embodying both the
principles of the Other/Alien and that of the transgressed identity of the First.
Memories are looked at through the dialectic of contrasting visual and textual
narration, involving the subversive offer for the spectator to choose the
ideological side. Pixote is analyzed through a deconstruction of the binary
oppositions of decadence and order and through an analysis of the duality
present in the main character’s identity features: the abolishment of childhood
traits and the assuming of the others’ identity by emulating them as role models
and becoming corrupt in the process. Both films were milestones in their native
countries, Memories being a seminal example of subversion in Cuban socialist
cinema and Pixote being an almost real-life representation of the Brazilian social
and political disorder in the last quarter of the 20th century. The paper also
emphasizes the subversion as regards the context of the novels on which the film
were based: departing from Desnoes’ utopian melancholy in the case of
Memories and from Louzeiro’s reportagem prose in the case of Pixote
Originalan naučni rad UDC 811.134.2:39 325.14(=134.2)(8) Uz analizu poznatijih, danas uglavnom ne... more Originalan naučni rad UDC 811.134.2:39 325.14(=134.2)(8) Uz analizu poznatijih, danas uglavnom neobilježenih etnonima (mestik, mulat, zambo, kreolac), autori donose etnolingvistički osvrt na nazivlje za miješano stanovništvo nekadašnjih španjolskih prekomorskih kolonija od kojih su samo neki, ne bez promjene značenja, očuvani u suvremenim varijetetima španjolskog jezika. U motivacijskim čimbenicima nazivlja za miješano stanovništvo potkraljevstvâ Nove Španjolske i Perua krije se složen kolonijalni diskurs, a etnolingvistička interpretacija etnonima uvelike tumači položaj što su ga u kolonijalnom društvu imale različite etničke zajednice, osobito miješano stanovništvo koje čine potomci Španjolaca, indijanskog i crnačkog stanovništva. Rad donosi interpretaciju etnonima sadržanih u slikarstvu s kastinskom tematikom i vizualnog prikaza različitih tipova miješanog stanovništva koji otkrivaju status što su ga pojedine kaste imale u kolonijalnom društvu.
This work underlines the key concepts of the Third Way revolutionary cinema of Latin America cont... more This work underlines the key concepts of the Third Way revolutionary cinema of Latin America contextualizing the collective memory and politics of remembrance. The National Project and reshaping of the National identities and the ideological shift from de-colonial and postcolonial matrixes in the revolutionary utopianism of modernistic cinema and its academic reevaluation is the basic assumption of the paper. Resurfacing of the ideologies of indianismo , indigenismo and mestizaje helps in revealing the true aims of the revolutionary filmmaking in Latin America which had more than aesthetic agenda in mind when it set trademarks of National cinemas like Yawar Mallku in Bolivia or La Hora de los Hornos in Argentina. The work tried to emphasize the original voice of the revolutionary cinema while tracking its apparatus with the theoretical works from decolonial and Marxist perspective.
Books by Mario Županović
Conference Presentations by Mario Županović
The paper discusses the performativity of the disabled bodies in La pelea, a documentary by Viole... more The paper discusses the performativity of the disabled bodies in La pelea, a documentary by Violeta Ayala from 2017. The film depicts the protest of the disabled people of Bolivia who walked or travelled by wheelchair for 35 days to reach the seat of Bolivian government in La Paz. La pelea is curious because of the topic: the protest of the disabled against the government. Although used as a political weapon, the protesting body is not only a symbol of the resistance, but a statement of resilience. Liminality of the disabled body set against the oppressor is overwhelming in La pelea because of the emotional stress on behalf of the disabled protestors but also because of the inevitable empathy or rage on behalf of the viewer. The disabled body constitutes the site of the resistance ; it becomes the subject/object of the political, social and performative struggle against the oppression, not in a sense of otherness but in a context of decolonising of the body from the discouraging position it has in Bolivian society. Performativity of the disabled body filmed in La pelea is an extraordinary one, it shows how far the oppressed and colonised body is from recognition
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Papers by Mario Županović
cinema Glauber Rocha from the perspective of the theatricality of his Cinema Novo films starting with
Barravento from 1962 and finishing with Antonio das Mortes from 1969. Rocha was a founder and
theoretical frame giver for the Cinema Novo movement with his manifesto Aesthetics of Hunger in 1965,
and it was he who envisioned a new postcolonial context of the Brazilian cinema in the 60’s. Article
will provide an insight how Rocha employed theatricality to emphasize the revolutionary and anti-colonial
narrative present in his films. In Barravento we witness the rare negative employment of the traditional
and ethnographic performative praxis of the Brazilian Bahia region with theatrical representation of the
Capoeira and Candomblé rituals. In his seminal Black God, White Devil, the director stages the “black”
processions of the pseudo religious movement of the beatos while also using the performatives of the
poetical duels known as desafios. Finally, in the closing times of Cinema Novo and Brazilian democracy
Rocha presented the film Antonio das Mortes filled with theatricality from the ongoing inner audience
witnessing duels, processions, acclamations and desafios. All the strategies that Rocha employed to design
a bloody and revolutionary power of the Cinema Novo movement owe a great deal to the theatricality and
performativity stamped in the core of these three films.
Ključne riječi: Alea, subverzija, Desnoes, nuklearna opasnost, intelektualac
The paper analyzes two films – Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomas
Gutiérrez Alea and Hector Babenco’s Pixote: The Law of the Weakest – by looking
at the respective protagonists in the perspective of the term blurred other. The
term implies that the protagonists are ambiguous characters embodying both the
principles of the Other/Alien and that of the transgressed identity of the First.
Memories are looked at through the dialectic of contrasting visual and textual
narration, involving the subversive offer for the spectator to choose the
ideological side. Pixote is analyzed through a deconstruction of the binary
oppositions of decadence and order and through an analysis of the duality
present in the main character’s identity features: the abolishment of childhood
traits and the assuming of the others’ identity by emulating them as role models
and becoming corrupt in the process. Both films were milestones in their native
countries, Memories being a seminal example of subversion in Cuban socialist
cinema and Pixote being an almost real-life representation of the Brazilian social
and political disorder in the last quarter of the 20th century. The paper also
emphasizes the subversion as regards the context of the novels on which the film
were based: departing from Desnoes’ utopian melancholy in the case of
Memories and from Louzeiro’s reportagem prose in the case of Pixote
Books by Mario Županović
Conference Presentations by Mario Županović
cinema Glauber Rocha from the perspective of the theatricality of his Cinema Novo films starting with
Barravento from 1962 and finishing with Antonio das Mortes from 1969. Rocha was a founder and
theoretical frame giver for the Cinema Novo movement with his manifesto Aesthetics of Hunger in 1965,
and it was he who envisioned a new postcolonial context of the Brazilian cinema in the 60’s. Article
will provide an insight how Rocha employed theatricality to emphasize the revolutionary and anti-colonial
narrative present in his films. In Barravento we witness the rare negative employment of the traditional
and ethnographic performative praxis of the Brazilian Bahia region with theatrical representation of the
Capoeira and Candomblé rituals. In his seminal Black God, White Devil, the director stages the “black”
processions of the pseudo religious movement of the beatos while also using the performatives of the
poetical duels known as desafios. Finally, in the closing times of Cinema Novo and Brazilian democracy
Rocha presented the film Antonio das Mortes filled with theatricality from the ongoing inner audience
witnessing duels, processions, acclamations and desafios. All the strategies that Rocha employed to design
a bloody and revolutionary power of the Cinema Novo movement owe a great deal to the theatricality and
performativity stamped in the core of these three films.
Ključne riječi: Alea, subverzija, Desnoes, nuklearna opasnost, intelektualac
The paper analyzes two films – Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomas
Gutiérrez Alea and Hector Babenco’s Pixote: The Law of the Weakest – by looking
at the respective protagonists in the perspective of the term blurred other. The
term implies that the protagonists are ambiguous characters embodying both the
principles of the Other/Alien and that of the transgressed identity of the First.
Memories are looked at through the dialectic of contrasting visual and textual
narration, involving the subversive offer for the spectator to choose the
ideological side. Pixote is analyzed through a deconstruction of the binary
oppositions of decadence and order and through an analysis of the duality
present in the main character’s identity features: the abolishment of childhood
traits and the assuming of the others’ identity by emulating them as role models
and becoming corrupt in the process. Both films were milestones in their native
countries, Memories being a seminal example of subversion in Cuban socialist
cinema and Pixote being an almost real-life representation of the Brazilian social
and political disorder in the last quarter of the 20th century. The paper also
emphasizes the subversion as regards the context of the novels on which the film
were based: departing from Desnoes’ utopian melancholy in the case of
Memories and from Louzeiro’s reportagem prose in the case of Pixote