Identity in a notion of the Eastern and Western European cinema

2019

Postsocialist Mobilities. Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2021

This volume examines the various forms of mobility in the cinema of the Visegrad countries and Romania, bringing together the cross-disciplinary research of mostly native scholars. In four thematic sections, it expands our understanding of the political transition and the social changes it triggered, the transforming perceptions of gender roles and especially masculinity. The spaces of “in betweenness” and contact zones, be them geographical, interethnic or communicative, (im)mobility and transmedial encounters of Eastern European subjectivity are recurring figures of both cinematic representations and their theoretical analyses. In-depth and transcultural in their nature, the investigations of this volume are informed by political, social and cultural history, genre, gender and spatial theory, cultural studies, sociology and political science and, of equal importance, the rich personal experience of our authors who witnessed many of the discussed phenomena in “close-up “.

Images. The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication, 2018

Film (de)construction of national identity. The case of Serbian films from the 1990s Abstract. Zvijer Nemanja, Film (de)construction of national identity. The case of Serbian films from the 1990s. "Images" vol. XXIII, no. . Poznań . Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Pp. -. ISSN -X. DOI ./i....

2009

2017

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, 2020

BLACK-AND-WHITE SPOTS ON THE MAP OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA AND THE DIGITAL MONOCHROME If asked to refl ect on black-and-white fi lms made today, some of us would most probably think of a type of tableau image such as the one encountered in Michael Haneke's Th e White Ribbon (2011), rendering a solitary, empty landscape accompanied by the voice-over of the retrospective narrator. A still image inserted, as part of a series, into the texture of narration, lingers as a moment of stasis within the moving image. Th is momentary arresting of time reveals the subjective construct of the past that condenses in its enigmatic tranquillity and fi xity the tense atmosphere that precedes World War I. An image of the irretrievable past, a moment of fragile beauty-this is what the photographic still within the fi lm carries in itself, together with the potential of becoming memorable as an image, burnt in the beholder's mind. Th e Hanekean still may be highlighted as incorporating those qualities that are most commonly associated with the contemporary use of the black-and-white fi lm, namely the evocation of both the past and high artistry. Th e logic of evocation of the past is actually carried out via the logic of transposition: the eff ect of calling forth a bygone world is achieved through the mimicry of a past mode of representation and through the quality of the photographic within fi lm. Th e Hanekean example marks out the terrain that this essay addresses, namely the intermedial sensation, implying the conjunction of photography, painting and fi lm, emerging in the aesthetic of the contemporary black-and-white cinema. In the digital age, in the spirit of proliferation of a kind of vintage aesthetic, the use of black and white as a tendency to revert to earlier forms of representation has been refashioned with new impetus. Th e revival of the blackand-white fi lmmaking is a worldwide phenomenon. Beyond its exceptional diversity motivated by various intents, the aesthetic of the black-and-white image can be traced back to the perceptual otherness that has defi ned the 6243_Petho.indd 45 6243_Petho.

Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2014

This article examines two contrasting phenomena in the portrayal of Russian nationhood in recent independent cinema: "neo-chernukha" and "neo-populist" films. While films of the former continue to deconstruct and debunk myths of Russian nationhood prevalent in blockbuster cinema and the media, the latter group reveals a new tendency among indie filmmakers to construct affirmative, albeit fraught, notions of social identification, often by recycling cultural myths and traditions such as Christian collectivism and kenosis. The article gives close analysis of a representative film from each group, My Joy and Iur'ev Day, as well as a number of other examples, and attempts to situate them in the broader discourse of nationhood, both historically and in contemporary society.

The question of identity in all its ramifications has been one of the most frequently raised questions in European post-Socialist countries since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The shift in ideology and the dominant social paradigm were very strong factors that began to reshape the social space of these countries, resulting in socio-political, economic and other crises, which induced serious internal confrontations among their citizens. The crucial problem was the loss of the old collective identity, which left the citizens on their own to cope with new driving forces that began to "produce" the social space offering vague choices of models of identification. This has resulted in a retreat to historically older collective identities, above all, ethno-national and religious. The period that citizens needed to accept the process of social transformation was very long and had its ups and downs in most of the post-Socialist countries that respectively became members or are still on the waiting list to join the European Union.

Postsocialist Mobilities. Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2021