Film and Media Studies

Edited by Rimgaila Salys

The early years of the twenty-first century have been an exciting transitional period in Russian cinema, as the industry recovered from the crises of the late 1990s and again stepped onto the global stage. During these years four generations, from the late Soviet directors through post-Soviet and New Russian filmmakers to the Russian millennials, have worked in varying visual styles and with diverse narrative strategies, while searching for a new cinematic language. Financing and distribution models have evolved, along with conservative politics driving Ministry of Culture regulation. This reader is intended both for contemporary Russian cinema courses and for modern Russian culture courses that emphasize film. It does not attempt to establish a canon for the period but seeks to provide undergraduate students with an introduction to significant Russian films released between 2005 and 2016 that are also available with English subtitles. The twenty-one essays on individual films provide background information on directors’ careers, detailed analyses of selected films, along with suggested further readings both in English and Russian.

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The argument proposed here is that an analysis of time as it is manifested by the film festival illuminates both the particularity of the festival's structure and the continuation of its appeal. Equally, through the study of a film festival as a model or figural form we are able to comprehend our contemporary experience of time as it has mutated from a regulated clock-time of the early twentieth century to a more amorphic modality at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In summary, at cinema's inception over a century ago the populace encountered a new temporal regime that forced them to inhabit life as a series of units designated by schedules and conforming to standardized timetables. Cinema famously played it both ways, colluding with the uniformity of an increasingly mass culture in its roll-out of repetitive exhibition programs, but it also broke with the demanding nature of working life in the provision of a new spectacular culture of distraction. If factory life meant clocking in, cinema culture equaled release from duty. If we travel forward 100 years, the patterns of life and the experience of time have radically changed in a climate of deregulation and deinstitutionalization. Both work and leisure (including film viewing) in the process of relocating to the home have become mixed up and overlapping. The collective nature of film viewing is all but lost as film is dispersed across technological forms, locations, and times. In short, the dominant concept of time at the beginning of this century is one of distributed nonalignment. The film festival, however, operates a temporality that runs counter to the deregulated environment in which it exists. To a certain extent this argument runs counter to the paradigmatic features of the film festival as they have been established in a growing body of scholarship that identifies its effectiveness and appeal through spatial terms (De Valck 2007; De Valck and Loist 2009). It is useful to enumerate the most prominent of these at the beginning. First, film festivals provide for film cultures that would otherwise remain marginalized by a dominant, high-budget cinema. These " alternative " films may be minority language, or they may focus on identitarian politics, or they may locate themselves within a minority aesthetic such as cult cinemas. Second, collectively festivals operate routes of distribution where each autonomous site also belongs to a series of nodes that 659_04b_Film Festivals.indd 69 2/12/15 15:06:31

Tijelo kao film | Body as Film | Body and Sexuality in Short Feature Film; Retrospective at Croatian Film Days 2015 curated by Željko Luketić. Featuring works from Ante Babaja, Miroslav Mikuljan, Mišo Budisavljević, Neven Korda, Tomislav Gotovac, Dasen Štambuk, etc.

Published by Cognella Academic Publishing (San Diego), ISBN 978-1-7935-2153-8. Previous editions have been adopted at 10 universities and colleges.

"Media Environments: Using Movies and Texts to Critique Media and Society" uses popular film as a gateway to critical readings, encouraging students to think creatively and critically about media, society, technology, and popular culture.

The text anthology explores media in their totality and provides models and theories for interrogating many universal themes that span media, technology, and planetary civilization. Using popular films about media as lead-ins, students are introduced to the works of well-known thinkers and writers such as Marshall McLuhan, Charlton D. McIlwain, Shoshanna Zuboff, Julia Hildebrand, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Devon Powers, Antonio Lopez, and many others. Chapters span interconnected topics:

Memes (original meaning),
Networks (McLuhan),
Spectacle (Debord),
Hyperreality (Baudrillard).

Capitalism and Consumerism,
Freedom and Protest,
Social-Mobile Media,
Ecology and the Anthropocene,
Science and Our Place in the Universe,
Pseudoscience and Conspiracy,
Celebrity and Superheroes,
New Concepts of "Hot" and "Cool" Media,
Land Art, Dark Skies, and Technological Civilization.

The fourth edition features 19 new readings that explore Afrofuturism in Black Panther, Avatar and global media ecosystems, Hollywood and climate change, Blade Runner 2049 and future earth scenarios, Avengers and environmental advocacy, #BlackLivesMatter and Black movements in digital culture, and the International Dark Sky movement as a radical media-tech philosophy. Intellectually rigorous and thematically diverse, Media Environments is ideal for courses and programs in media and/or communication studies.

This thesis examines seven films from the cinemas of Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky—Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), and The Silence (1963), and Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983), and The Sacrifice (1986).

These films were chosen as they represent the deepest periods of two directors’ engagements with the possible death of God and the subsequent loss of intrinsic existential meaning—topics with which this thesis is principally concerned.

As a starting point, this thesis argues that the films present the silence of God as the primary indicator of God’s absence from the human world. Becoming aware of this silence thus causes one to interrogate religious certainties which have hitherto been taken to be timeless and true. This thesis then contends that, when faced with this silence and its implications, Bergman desperately sought evidence of God’s existence while Tarkovsky unyieldingly maintained an attitude of faith.

The directors’ progressions toward these contrasting positions are evident through the uses of sound elements in their films. As Bergman unsuccessfully pursued evidence of God’s existence, the soundscapes in his four films become increasingly minimal. The sparse use of sound reveals Bergman’s conception of a Godless void. On the other hand, metaphysical silence in Tarkovsky’s films was not perceived as emptiness. Instead, “silence” in his films was, paradoxically, often depicted through complex layers of sounds. Presented as manifestations of the metaphysical, the sounds of “silence” in Tarkovsky’s films consequently become affirmations of faith.

Through this sound-based approach to film analysis, this thesis sets out to explain why Bergman and Tarkovsky understood metaphysical silence so differently by examining how they portrayed literal silences.

In 2007, the Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan wore an attire similar to calendar image of tenth Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh, and performed a ritual baptism, which became controversial. This article will show how this controversy opens up two significant issues: first, questioning the egalitarian ethos of caste equality upheld by the Sikh religion, and second, with regard to authenticity of religious practice – of what is deemed Sikh and non/un-Sikh practices. The controversy became the fulcrum for questions of visuality and material practices around imageries of Sikh gurus in the domain of popular religiosity and visual culture. This historically relates to the much-debated status of images around gurus in contemporary Punjab. The image and ritual become a crucial site of conflict with regard to questions of Sikh identity, religion and caste. Questions of iconoclasm, authenticity and representation have emerged around the images—largely audio-visual in nature--of the Sikh gurus. In this article I will analyse music video/s that engages with the genre of Sikhi (Sikh principles or faith) highlighting crisis in Sikh identity through lyrical and visual references, for instance to the institutions of popular religion, such as Deras. I then mainly argue that the DSS event cannot be grasped without understanding the modes of engagement and ritual practices around images of Sikh gurus. Such an analysis will not only underline contestations around the ‘vexed’ status of images comprising both Sikh and Dera gurus but will also critique the normative understanding of Sikh identity and religion.

Heidi-Verfilmung von 1952 steigen Heidi und der Geißenpeter in die Höhe, um nachzuschauen, »wo der Bach herkommt«. Oben auf dem Grat angekommen, zeigt Peter seinem Heidi nicht nur die überwältigende Natur, sondern auch, wie der eigene Ruf von den sie umgebenden Bergen als Echo widerhallt. »Großvater!« und »Heidi!« rufen die Kinder in die Landschaft und das Echo spricht es ihnen nach. Als jedoch der Geißenpeter in seinem Übermut auch ein Schimpfwort in die Landschaft brüllt -»dummi, blödi Schwiichatz dräckigi« -, bleibt der Widerhall aus, sehr zum Erschrecken der beiden Kinder, die glauben, das Echo erzürnt zu haben. Dieser amüsante Einfall findet sich in der Form nicht in der Vorlage von Johanna Spyri. Er ist eine Zutat des Films. Umso mehr aber ließe sich die Idee vom selektiven Echo auch als unfreiwilliger Kommentar übers eigene Medium und dessen Umgang mit dem Heidi-Stoff lesen. Wie das Echo in dieser Szene, welches nicht alles reproduziert, sondern nur wiedergibt, was ihm genehm ist, so hat sich auch die Filmgeschichte als Echoraum erwiesen, der den Heidi-Stoff ganz unterschiedlich nachgebildet hat, nie eins zu eins, sondern immer mit ganz entscheidenden Veränderungen. Doch es sind gerade diese Unterschiede in der Wiedergabe von Johanna Spyris Doppelroman, die Heidis filmisches Nachleben erst so interessant machen. Darum ist denn auch die Frage danach, welche der Adaptionen besonders werkgetreu sei, eigentlich müßig und zielt letztlich genau an dem vorbei, was die betreffenden Filme so spannend macht. Ohnehin beweist der alte und immer wieder gerne von Leserseite erhobene Vorwurf gegen das Kino, es verfälsche in seinen Adaptionen die literarische Vorlage, immer nur aufs Neue, wie wenig man vom Kino als eigenständiger Kunstform verstanden hat. Schließlich wirft man auch einem Gemälde nicht vor, dass es anders funktioniert als ein geschriebener Text, und so kann auch der Film wegen seiner grundlegend anderen Medialität schlechterdings nicht anders, als eine literarische Vorlage komplett umzugestalten. Wären Verfilmungen schlicht dasselbe wie ein Roman, bräuchte es die Filme gar nicht. Mithin sind Literatur-Verfilmungen gerade nicht daran zu messen, wie nah an der Vorlage sie sich in: Viceversa. Jahrbuch der Schweizer Literaturen #10(2016)

How was it that technology and writing came to inform each other so extensively that today there is only information? Technographies seeks to answer that question by putting the emphasis on writing as an answer to the large question of 'through what?' . Writing about technographies in history, our contributors will themselves write technographically.

In June 2015 my book about film programming was released: Film Programming: Curating for Cinemas, Festivals, Archives, published by Wallflower Press (London)/Columbia University Press (New York) in their series ‘Short Cuts’. These are some additions to my book.
The series ‘Short Cuts’ has a reasonable limit of 40,000 words. Initially, to compose a text of this range sounded to me like an enormous task but in practice I had to condense and restrict the content I had in mind. It was a satisfying learning experience because a well-balanced conciseness makes every message stronger. However, there are still some matters to complete and even only after two years there are new publications and new insights. Therefore, I present some additional texts and references. It is a chance for me to elaborate on some topics concerning film programming. In the arrangement of my various afterthoughts I follow the chapter structure of my book.
It is a work in progress. This update is made in the winter of 2016-2017. It has grown into a total of circa 12,000 words. Totally free of charge, but I hope not gratuitous.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

This PDF includes Chapters 1 and 2 of the innovative text anthology, designed for use in Media Studies courses, especially large lecture courses like "Media and Society."
-- The book combines movies and texts to introduce students to critical media studies. Accessible and readable, the book is well-liked by students. Topics include the Spectacle, Hyperreality, the Global Village, Social/Mobile Media, Capitalism and Counterculture, Surveillance and Privacy, Ecology and the Anthropocene, Media and Science, Media Futures, the Meme (original version from Dawkins), and many others.
-- Upon adoption, I will provide handouts, syllabus, PPTs.
-- Published by Cognella.  https://titles.cognella.com/media-environments-9781516521104

Directed by David Mackenzie and starring Hollywood’s Chris Pine, more usually found in blockbuster franchises such as Star Trek and Wonder Woman, Outlaw King is one of a number of medieval historical dramas soon to make their way to our screens. But, just as the trailer for the upcoming Mary Queen of Scots film prompted criticism across social media for apparent historical inaccuracy after it appeared to show Mary and Elizabeth meeting face to face (an event most historians agree never took place), so too will Outlaw King find itself under similar scrutiny...

Liz Watkins, University of Leeds. contact: [email protected]  'Threads of Colour and Meaning in the Film Work of Nicolas Roeg and Anthony Richmond', Guest blog for the Eastmancolor Revolution and British Cinema 1955-1985. https://eastmancolor.info/2018/07/25/threads-of-colour-and-meaning-in-the-film-work-of-nicolas-roeg-and-anthony-richmond/ From the vibrant hue of a detail that punctuates the image to a single colour that envelopes the screen, the chromatic, in films by Nicolas Roeg, signals a greater acuity than cosmetic distraction. In Roeg's work I would find both an attention to a central paradox of cinema – a photographic inscription of an image by light as permanent record of a fleeting moment – and an experimental approach to photography and editing that has frequently been described as fragmented and labyrinthine (Roeg 2013, p.5, p.29; Houston 1973, p.205). However, my initial textual analysis of Don't Look Now, found that the colour red demanded an attention to the materiality of the film. Colours fade and colour balances shift: cyan and yellow dyes diminish emphasising the red hues. In viewing a 1973 Eastmancolor circulation print it seemed that the degradation of the image underscored the effects of lens flare as an element of film style (Watkins 2015). What I want to suggest is that Roeg's approach to colour combines a fascination with photographic materials and effects, filmmaking practices honed through his work as cinematographer for directors including Roger Corman, François Truffaut, and Donald Cammell, and experimentation with the possibilities of different colour technologies, lighting and editing. From a stated interest in the 'retained image', which Roeg describes as much like the indexicality of the photographic (associated with Bazin's concept of the death mask), to the complexity of a film form structured through layered flashbacks, Roeg's work examines the disquieting of belief systems and social structures. The thread that can be tracked through the labyrinthine form of Roeg's film work – social order and its enactment – is underscored by a tension in the organisation of colour, as it shifts between the lighting and design of classic cinema (bright reds, yellows set forth against greys and browns, else contrasting hues) and a spontaneity of camera movement and naturalistic lighting. For example, Roeg has cited classic Technicolor designs (c.1940-1950) as an influence for his cinematography on The Masque of the Red Death (Corman, 1964) and Fahrenheit 451 (Truffaut, 1966). In The Masque of the Red Death the progression of colour rooms (blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet), drawn from Edgar Allen Poe's text, is interspersed with a vibrant red hue as something that spills and consumes from within. A thread of colour can be tracked throughout the film, from the plague of the Red Death outside the castle, to the fantasies that consume from within it (Branigan 2017, p.121): its meaning lies in its movement. For Fahrenheit 451, shot on Eastman Color, Roeg recalls Truffaut's request for the 'artificial and glossy' colour schemes associated with the studio lighting of three-strip Technicolor (Petrie 1996, p.136). The film contrasts colour details – red fire engines – with a background of naturalistic hues. Roeg's references to Technicolor design are interlaced with a broader cultural shift in the visual style of 1960s filmmaking. As Duncan Petrie has written in his essay on British Cinematography, the 1960s saw a transformation from 'hard-edged, high-contrast lighting to a softer, more diffused use of illumination; from carefully composed images and minimal camera movement to a much freer, more mobile and spontaneous visual register; from the aesthetics of classicism to a much more self-conscious use of form appropriate to a decade associated with a new emphasis on spectacle and sensation' (Petrie 2018: p.204). Petrie's argument, that the availability new lenses and increased light sensitivity of film stocks facilitated 'a new topography and environment' (Petrie, p.210) links film technologies and aesthetics with a decade characterised by social and political change. However, I want to suggest that Roeg's collaborations with cinematographer Anthony Richmond further erode the dominant teleological form of a film history that has been determined by technological innovations (see Elsaesser's critique, 2016) and concepts of authorship. Roeg's work with Richmond – Walkabout (1970/1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and Bad Timing (1980) – combines naturalistic colour with photography considered experimental to commercial cinema: inverse images, slow motion, and mirrors extend and complicate the filmed space to convey dystopian landscapes.[1] Each of these films utilises lens flare, and shots which 'fall away into underexposure on the actors in the background' concealing the peripheral areas of the image. Richmond has linked these characteristics in Don't Look Now to the increased sensitivity of film stock (Richmond 1976; Watkins 2015). The effects of lens flare – causing the overexposure of the film as the light refracts on the camera lens and effaces the legible composition of the image – persists as the filmic expression of disorientation, intoxication and cultural displacement in contemporary works – Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1976) – shot by Russell Boyd for director Peter Weir. Boyd combines time-lapse sequences of dark clouds, backlit with golden sun and reflected in the windows of a skyscraper (The Last Wave) and slow-motion, high angle and 360˚shots in Picnic at Hanging Rock. The diminished hues of each overexposed image disquiets otherwise familiar landscapes. The entanglement of film technologies and aesthetics testifies to the persistence of filmmaking practices beyond the perceived obsolescence of a colour process such as three-strip Technicolor and questions the borderlines of national cinemas.[2] The selection of film stock was significant to colour design of Performance (1970), a film which Roeg co-directed with Donald

"Le basi teoriche della Sociosemiotica e le sue applicazioni nell'analisi di film, programmi e canali televisivi, pubblicità e opere di videoarte.

Sociosemiotics theories and their application to the analysis of films, tv programmes and tv channels, advertising and video art."

This chapter examines the meaning-making functions of cinematic sound from the perspective of embodied cognition. Using embodied simulation theory (Gallese, 2005) as a unifying framework, and placing particular emphasis upon the affective aspects of ‘Feeling of Body’ (Wojciehowski & Gallese, 2011), an account of cinematic media emerges which puts into play Mark Johnson’s concept of ‘embodied meaning’ (Johnson, 2007). Central to Johnson’s concept is the assertion that all human meaning, abstract conceptual thinking, and imagination have basis in our sensorimotor interactions with the world. In the context of cinematic media, it suggests the stylistic crafting and patterning of perceptual content not only elicits an affective response but also shapes cognition. Drawing upon examples of cinematic sound design an embodied aesthetics is illustrated.

This dissertation analyzes the postfeminist tendencies and biopolitics in contemporary media practices by considering the pop culture exemplar, the Kardashian-Jenner family.

This dissertation received First Class Honors from Trinity College Dublin.
Vanessa graduated with Distinction in B.A. English Literature and Media Studies.

Alfred Hitchcock'un sinemasını özgün kılan dinamikler incelendiğinde, öne çıkan motif hiç kuşkusuz uyandırdığı gerilim duygusu (suspense) olacaktır. Klasik kara film yapısında aydınlatma düzeyinde yaratılan, korku sinemasında anlatının ilerleyişini mümkün kılan bu duygu her iki durumda da filmin bütünlüğü içerisinde dağınık bir biçimde işlenir, çoğu zaman ait oldukları türün diğer karakteristik özellikleri tarafından geri plana itilir. Hitchcock filmlerinde ise, gerilim duygusu sistematikleştirilir, anlatı ve mizansen bu motif etrafında birleşir. Matematiksel bir titizlikle işlenen gerilim, filmi her yönüyle kuşatır; dolayısıyla seyircinin anlamlandırma süreçlerini yönlendirir. Sinema dilinin tüm imkanlarını kullanmayı gerektiren bu yaklaşım, görsel-işitsel düzeyde metaforik, sembolik yenilikçi denemeleri mümkün kılar. Bunun yanında, anlam yaratma kaygısıyla kurgulanan film evreni, farklı yorumları bir arada bulunduracak anlam düzeylerini engelleyerek izleyici otonomluğunu sekteye uğratma potansiyeline sahiptir. Yine de, anlam tarafından kuşatılan, farklı izlenimlere kaçışın mümkün olmadığı bu estetik yapı, karakterlerin maruz kaldığı durumun yeniden üretimini amaç edinen bilinçli bir tercih olarak da yorumlanmaya müsaittir. Söz konusu yönelimin temelleri ise, gerekli anlatısal ve görsel-işitsel elemanların arasında ilişkilerin kurulduğu başlangıç sekanslarında atılır. Hitchcock, bu sekanslarda gerilim unsurunu meydana getiren kodları bir yapboz estetiği içerisinde, seyirciyi anlatının merkezine yönlendirecek bir biçimde kurgular. Başka bir deyişle gerilim düğümü, birbirinden bağımsız niteliklere sahip görünen mizansen öğelerinin montajlanmasıyla oluşturulur. Hitchcock'un bu metodu bağlamında, Strangers on a Train filminin başlangıç sekansı kusursuz bir örnek teşkil eder. Adından da anlaşılacağı üzere, Strangers on a Train (Trendeki Yabancılar) iki yabancının trende tanışması etrafında şekillenir. Dolayısıyla, birbirini tanımayan iki insanın karşılaşmasının, anlatı pusulasını kaçınılmaz bir şekilde psikolojik gerilim ve cinayete yönlendirmesini mizansen bağlamında incelemek doğru olacaktır.

La digitalizzazione della sala offre un punto di osservazione privilegiato per ricostruire il campo di tensioni che, a partire dagli anni ’80, ha prodotto una serie di cambiamenti. Il colore costituisce uno degli elementi che, fin dagli albori del digitale, ha più fortemente operato come elemento di innovazione delle tecniche, dei flussi di lavoro e delle retoriche visive. A questo proposito, il digital turn può essere considerato anche nei termini di un vero e proprio color turn, attraverso il quale il colore si impone come elemento chiave per la produzione e il consumo di immagini nei film e nei media contemporanei.

Encompassing experimental film and video, essay film, gallery-based installation art, and digital art, Jihoon Kim establishes the concept of hybrid moving images as an array of impure images shaped by the encounters and negotiations between different media, while also using it to explore various theoretical issues, such as stillness and movement, indexicality, abstraction, materiality, afterlives of the celluloid cinema, archive, memory, apparatus, and the concept of medium as such.

Grounding its study in interdisciplinary framework of film studies, media studies, and contemporary art criticism, Between Film, Video, and the Digital offers a fresh insight on the post-media conditions of film and video under the pervasive influences of digital technologies, as well as on the crucial roles of media hybridity in the creative processes of giving birth to the emerging forms of the moving image. Incorporating in-depth readings of recent works by more than thirty artists and filmmakers, including Jim Campbell, Bill Viola, Sam Taylor-Johnson, David Claerbout, Fiona Tan, Takeshi Murata, Jennifer West, Ken Jacobs, Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller, Hito Steyerl, Lynne Sachs, Harun Farocki, Doug Aitken, Douglas Gordon, Stan Douglas, Candice Breitz, among others, the book is the essential scholarly monograph for understanding how digital technologies simultaneously depend on and differ film previous time-based media, and how this juncture of similarities and differences signals a new regime of the art of the moving image.

In the post-liberalization period, the Bengali film industry underwent a radical transformation, emerging as ‘Tollywood’ from the erstwhile ‘Tollygunge’. This book explores the ‘crisis narrative’ of Bengali cinema, and how the industry, which had been floundering since the death of actor-superstar Uttam Kumar, was commercially revived by ‘masala’ films. It also sheds light on the industrial landscape of the Bengali film industry, affected as it is by the convergence of TV, radio, print, and new media.

There is a line of reasoning shared by police officials, police unions, legislators, and civil rights organizers that supposes that videos of the police behaving badly will naturally lead to reform. This is the logic that fuels expensive body camera programs, like the ones implemented by the NYPD, LAPD, and Department of Justice. However, the idea that surveillance in the hands of the state can be somehow emancipatory is laughable. To equate the footage of Rodney King or Eric Garner with footage taken from police cameras is to fundamentally misunderstand the nuance that images express. Existing social vulnerabilities migrate seamlessly into new technologies, and photography’s dominant mode is to reinforce, not resist, existing structures of power.

The aim of this article is to interpret the musical layer of Andrzej Wajda’s 2009 movie Tatarak (Sweet Rush), based on the novel by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. In the first part, the author attempts to depict the complex relationship between the literary and film works of these two artists and emphasizes three main motifs used by both of them: love and death, water and women’s themes. Next, Wajda’s attitude to music is analyzed. He treats sounds as an element of everyday life and, as is typical for our times, he is aware of the “dissolution” of musical works. In the next part, the author articulates the main problems of Sweet Rush, drawing attention to both Iwaszkiewicz’s novel and Wajda’s movie. The director’s adaptation, which is full of intermedia references, revolves around the theme of death and seems to underestimate the sexual aspect of Iwaszkiewicz’s work. Finally, Pawel Mykietyn’s soundtrack to Sweet Rush is interpreted. The composer used one of his earlier Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2000), which plays the role of a leitmotif, to illustrate the
most enigmatic, inexplicable scenes from Wajda’s movie. Thanks to its discrete, sparing and “austere” nature, Mykietyn’s music made the artistic composition of Sweet Rush more balanced and revealed the suggestiveness of this work.

The unprecedented economic growth and immigration that Ireland experienced between 1995 and 2007 did not only challenge national but also ethnic, social, and gender identities. The contributions to this volume explore how films tackle these challenges and help to make sense of Ireland’s altered position in a globalised world. Among the films discussed are some of the most critically acclaimed Irish films of recent years, including Once (2006), Adam & Paul (2004), Garage (2007), and The Secret of Kells (2009), as well as the work of Oscar-winning director and writer Neil Jordan. The volume is completed by an extensive interview with award-winning director Lenny Abrahamson, and his collaborator, screenwriter and actor Mark O’Halloran.

Soutenu par le Labex ICCA, ce séminaire entend contribuer à fédérer, dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire, un ensemble de travaux se proposant d’étudier les films ou les cinémas dits « de genre », tout en réfléchissant aux différents sens de ce qualificatif polysémique et à la variété de ses usages créatifs, professionnels et cinéphiliques.
Il déroulera une fois par mois le vendredi (15h-17h) à la Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Les propositions sont à envoyer avant le 15/09.