Images, nr 13-14, 2009-2010
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Item Głos Joanny. O paragone sztuk w "Męczeństwie Joanny d'Arc" Carla Th. Dreyera(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Mrozewicz, AnnaThe last mute film in Carl Th. Dreyer’s oeuvre, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), is often referred to as a film “made of close-ups” and purely cinematic. Dreyer used to stress himself that close-up was the specific cinematic device that asserted film’s position as autonomous art. He especially insisted on film’s independence from theatre. Thus, it might sound quite surprising that in an interview from 1965, Dreyer draws attention to the underestimated, according to him, role of theatre in Joan of Arc. In my essay I focus on the theatricality in Dreyer’s film, arguing that “the theatrical” and “the cinematic” are two strategies used to present two different worlds of ideas and beliefs: that of the judges, clergymen and inquisitors, which at the same time is the world of males, and that of Joan, an illiterate woman who strives alone for her idea against a group of powerful men. What we observe in the film is a growing presence of ‘the cinematic’, the strategy allied with Joan, who in the final scene triumphs over the judges, just like cinema triumphs over theatricality.Item Wariacje jazzowe w kinie młodych gniewnych(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Śliwińska, AnnaJazz music and the vision of the world depicted by the “angry young men” are connected by a mysterious bond, its basis being not a simple citation of musical pieces, but functioning based on the identicalness of conveyed feelings and thoughts. Rarely can one find an example of correspondence of arts characterised by such extraordinary cohesion of thought and outlook on life. The objective of the present text is not to show the way jazz music functions in the “angry young men’s” films, but to take a closer look at this tangent point, this place where two worlds meet – worlds which are completely different, and yet, in consequence, alike. It transpires, after all, that there is only one way to self-cognition (whether in jazz or “angry young men’s” cinema) – the one leading through daring steps, rebellion and improvisation.Item Mozart i śpiewacy: ograniczenie czy inspiracja?(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Brandenburg, DanielStefan Kunze called the time before Mozart settled in Vienna the years of migration and study. Daniel Brandenburg in his article shows that in reference to the operas composed by young Mozart for Milan (Mitridate re di Ponto, 1770, Lucio Silla, 1772) and Munich (Idomeneo re di Creta, 1781), the process of education meant also mastering the Italian singing conventions. Composing for singers appears to be an inspirational task, although it was limited in various ways. That double effect is recorded in Mozart’s scores.Item Muzy w intymnym świetle. O przemianach w sztuce Odwilży i Października(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Hendrykowski, MarekThe study assesses the changing nature of the Polish art in the period of liberalization after Stalin’s death. It includes detailed analysis of various (social, political, philosophical and especially aesthetic) implications for important issues such as: poetry, drama, cinema, peinture, sculpture, song, popular culture etc. Marek Hendrykowski provides case studies that lead to alternative ways of viewing current conceptual frameworks of aesthetics and its consequences for interdisciplinary reflexion on arts.Item Decorum "Kardenia". O szalonym z "mad songu" Henry'ego Purcella(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Igielska, AnnaThe central topic of the article Cardenio’s Decorum is the depiction of madness in words and music. The character of Cardenio, the betrayed and lovesick Andalusian nobleman of Miguel Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote, represents one of many theatrical madmen who could be seen on the English stage during the Restoration period (1660–1700) and at the same time one of those who used to present their unusual mental condition in the frame of a stage song, the so-called ‘mad song’. The function of music consists here in the transfer of affection and vivid images: bound together with unreal visions, the music generates a kind of ‘mad’ dramaturgy, in which the images appear as an analogue for the character’s inner state and decide how the musical action is to develop.Item Angelologiczny traktat filmowy pomiędzy sztukami. O "Niebie nad Berlinem" Wima Wendersa(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Lisiecka, KatarzynaThe study titled Angelologic treatise between the arts. On “The Wings of Desire” by Wim Wenders undertakes to analyze aesthetic and cultural contexts which have impinged on the overall significance of the film. Commencing with the presentation of the angelic motifs and the relations they bear to the angelologic tradition of Western culture, the author identifies some thematic and formal elements which influenced the original concept of spiritual reality depicted in Wenders’s film. Due to its consistent fictional and artistic vision, the picture has been dubbed “the angelologic film treatise”. The second part of the article focuses on the analysis of the visual and musical aspects of the film. The most significant interpretative framework revolves around the concept of visual games and the topos of musical harmony (musica mundana, humana and instrumentalis). The issues under consideration demonstrate the great significance all the formal devices, both in terms of presented images and music, have in constructing deep layers of meaning. A particular importance should be assigned to these audio-visual elements that underscore the relevance of spiritual and existential aspects, constituting the substance of Wenders’s film.Item Artysta w l'univers concentrationnaire. "Kornblumenblau" Leszka Wosiewicza jako traktat o sztuce(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Mąka-Malatyńska, KatarzynaThe author of the essay considers Leszek Wosiewicz’s Kornblumenblau as a film about art and focuses on the self reflexive elements present in the film, particularly those referring to film conventions. This analysis examines the film in the context of the reflections about the meaning of art in totalitarian systems and situation of the artist in the reality of the concentration camp. Kornblumenblau depicts degenerated art as depriving of freedom and rescue, becoming another tool of oppression. Dehumanizing power of this art points at the final decay of man in the epoch of gas chambers.Item O adaptacji filmowej opowiadania Zofii Nałkowskiej "Przy torze kolejowym"(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Jazdon, MikołajAndrzej Brzozowski directed a live action short subject based on Zofia Nałkowska’s short story Aside of the Railway in 1963. The film was banned by the communist authorities and presented for the first time as late as in 1992. This is a story of runaway Jewish woman who jumped out of a train aiming at a concentration camp somewhere in Poland occupied by he Nazis. With a heavily wounded knee she lies aside of the railway looking at Polish countrymen who gathered near her and see no chance to help her as they fear of the Nazis. When she ask them not to carry her to Germans’ one of the onlookers shots her on the spot. Brzozowski made numerous modifications to present the tragic situation from the short story in film. One of them is the change of the point of view. In film it is the POV of the wounded woman, when in the short story it is presented by a witness who told the writer about the events only after the war. Brzozowski also changed the time of events from spring in the story to snowy winter in the film and focused on two main characters – the Jewish woman and the man who seemed most determined to help her and shot her in the end.Item Zapach śmierci, epilepsja i portret papieża. "Tatarak" Andrzeja Wajdy i "Bracia Karamazow" Petra Zelenki(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Otto, WojciechAndrzej Wajda’a Sweet Rush (Tatarak) and Petr Zelenka’s The Karamazovs (Karamazovi) are film adaptations of literature. Both directors represent very innovative approach to the literary material. Wajda wanted to depict the theme of death and passing in original way and combined various literary sources: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s short story Sweet Rush, a novelette by Sándor Márai, and Last Notes by Polish actress, Krystyna Janda. Her text is a form of reflection on the death of her husband who was a recognized cinematographer. Wajda also incorporated into the picture scenes revealing the film’s making off. Petr Zelenka’s screen adaptation of the famous novel by Fiodor Dostoievsky is based on the film record of the Prague theater presentation (also based on The Karamazovs) made in the industrial space of the Sendzimir Ironworks in Poland. The recorded spectacle became the opportunity for the director to present his artistic statement on the history and culture of the Middle and East Europe and the artist’s status nowadays.Item Film i dramat. "Śmierć i dziewczyna" Romana Polańskiego(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Choczaj, MałgorzataDeath and the Maiden by Roman Polański is an example of an experimental transposition of Ariel Dorman’s drama into the visual language of film. The merging of words and pictures in the film is compared to Bachtin’s dialogisation which permeates the element of the European novel. The meaning and motivation of the words in the characters’ dialogues influences the development of the action, form and rhythm of the takes as well as their juxtaposition with the characters and props. Polański does not limit himself only to a single-track effect. As dialogisation influences the forms of visualization, so images broaden the meanings of the dialogues, creating new contexts. The film is not only an attempt to prove that the alleged or real rapist was guilty, but also a study of the dishonoured woman’s fight for a right to live without traumatic reminiscences.Item Pętla obrazów. Wideo według Mariny Abramović(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Krawczak, MichałThe connection between video art and performance art has been inseparable since 1967, when the first commercial camera Sony Portapak appeared on the American market. The development of video art and performance art has been parallel. On the one hand, autonomous languages which used different discourses were created, on the other hand, the interaction was inextricable, long-lasting and very stimulating. Marina Abramović, recording her activities as a performer on video and then placing them in the space of her installations, gained a high level of energy in the picture, which became transcendent, a sign of body and life, a meditation. Abramović consciously sacralizes her art and highlights its meditational character. In that way the art became a loop of a video sequence, a multifaceted icon.Item Transmedia a sztuka Roberta Wilsona(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Jelewska, AgnieszkaRobert Wilson’s works have been discussed here in the historical-artistic context of the 20th century and in reference to the modern theories of the media, which use such terms as “transmediality” and “media landscape”. The intermedial model of arts has been exhausted and there has appeared the problem of transmediality, as well as such issues like transcegenity, transinstrumentality, transperception and even transcompetence of art. Technologies which developed in the 20th century and media codes, redefined and new, provoked a change of thinking about the theatre and every other art which uses various instruments. R. Wilson – like other artists who exist in the transmedial net – sees the theatre through audiovisual arts and film; he does not introduce them to his performances but uses their tools and specific narrations characteristic for the arts.Item "Serc starania stracone" - szekspirowskie libretto W.H. Audena i Ch. Kallmana(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Kowalski, TomaszThe article deals with the most significant changes the authors introduced in order to adapt the Shakespearean play to operatic requirements, e.g. reducing the number of characters, ascribing new parts to some of the characters remaining or balancing female and male voices on stage. An analysis is made here also of the flow of time inscribed in the libretto and the significance of the scene when the messenger comes to the Princess, saying that the King of France is dead. Their symbolism is interpreted with the additional contexts that were provided by W.H. Auden’s lecture on Love’s Labour’s Lost, which are: court love, court manners, euphuism and the Platonic philosophy and its continuations. This philosophical context allowed both poets to read the play as a process of gaining knowledge of life and feelings which the King of Navarre and his courtiers had declared to study in their academy, but never succeeded.Item W drodze do "opery filmowej". Muzyczne eksperymenty Kurta Weilla w "You and Me" Fritza Langa(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Mungen, AnnoFritz Lang’s film You and Me was billed as a “musical revolution”. But it never became one. Anno Mungen describes Kurt Weill’s struggles to reshape the film as a genre. Both in his theoretical reflections and his (not successful) practical attempts as a film composer, Weill was preoccupied with the idea of music as a crucial element of the film/theatre dramaturgy. This idea – as Mungen tried to show, analyzing three examples taken from Lang’s film – could direct the artist straight towards the category of film-opera.Item Muzyka i horror. "Lśnienie" Stanleya Kubricka(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Kozłowski, KrzysztofThis article will argue that in The Shining, Kubrick has constructed a radical semantisation of instrumental music, composed or adapted to the film. It could be argued that in this context Kubrick has produced such a sophisticated backdrop of fusion between music and film that this production can be considered one of the masterpieces in this field. In this light, the study shall discuss five aspects: the context of programme and instrumental music in respect to both conflicting and complementary tendencies of 19th c. esthetics, discussion of the simplest compositions used to demonstrate the film’s world of the inferno and finally, Kubrick’s complex semanticisation based on a clear labyrinth construction (catalysing fear in the labyrinth-trap). The study shall employ Carl Dahlhaus’ (1971) model of “method of interpretative analysis” used in respect to Richard Wagner as well as the notion of Wagners Konzeption des musikalischen Dramas. Further, the discussion shall be based on a complementary authorial methodology in three parts; a reading of non-musicological semantic markers of synchronically arranged fragments of instrumental composition used in film narration, a diachronic analysis of forms and their elements relating to the film score and last, an examination of the most functional of concepts relating to the esthetics of music. On the basis of the above mentioned issues, it shall be maintained that the music used as an overlay to the unfolding narrative of the film, though multifarious in construction, is powered by a dominant topos, diabolus in musica, which is realised in the form of “polyphony without cantus firmus”. This in turn supports the view that the role of music ought to be seen as one integral to film as a communicative medium, and not one simply of background, as some would argue. In conclusion, it shall be argued that in constructing a semantic framework of music in such a rich multi-level fashion, Kubrick has turned the role of music into an integral element of a highly complex artistic structure. This, it ought to be added, allows the score of this film to be placed at the same level as synthetic works of art (musical drama) and in terms of the genre horror, The Shining is the most “musicalised” of Kubrick’s films. This study may provide a basis for further research into the nature of Film, in particular, the work of Stanley Kubrick.Item Filmy dla muzyki. Egar Varèse i Bill Viola(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Mungen, AnnoAnno Mungen focuses on “films made for music” and on the rare phenomenon of ‘music depicted by picture’ (S. Kracauer). The narration about historical metamorphoses of varied forms of coexistence between music and picture is accompanied by a reflection on the laws of audiovisual perception. The main examples are discussed, these concentrating on the artistic ideas of Walt Disney’s animated film Fantasia and – first of all – on Edgard Varèse’s bold ideal of spatial music, attained post mortem in Bill Viola’s Déserts (1994). After a detailed analysis of Viola’s film the author admits that the movie pictures deduced from music are able to render the latter its own substantial visual power.Item Muzyka i medium. Szkic historiograficzny od początków do dzisiaj(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Faulstich, WernerThe relationship between music and media is closer than it is obvious at first sight. That includes primary media such as the singer or the theatre performance of an opera, print media such as sheet music and music books, electronic media like the record, the tape, radio, film and television, and the recent digital media such as the world wide web, the compact disc or the i-pod. If turned historically, we can realize a chain of media expressing and describing the history of music – from the ancient priestess and singers over the aoide and the rhapsode in old Greek culture presenting epic poetry and narrative literature up to church and choir singers in Christian churches, from mine singers, hymnbooks and troubadours in the Middle Ages up to ballad singers and street musicians selling music sheets and books in the 18th century, from music performance as live music up to recorded and canned music and finally a kind of quarry music allowing everyone a subjective and eclectic selection. The functional history of music follows inevitably the history of media.Item Tańczące muzy. Kino i korespondencja sztuk(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM w Poznaniu; Wydawnictwo PWSFTViT w Łodzi, 2010) Hendrykowski, MarekHow traditional arts are used and adapted by film? In what ways do they correspond and cooperate as structural elements supporting a fully coherent piece of film? These fundamental questions open many areas of film research. The paper examines three competing definitions of cinema as polimorfic art and gives overview of various versions and modes of coexistence of arts in film. Author argues that ambivalence is evidenced between policy of adapting established arts and policy of modelling new art by filmmakers. The role of film practice in orchestrating individual strategies is used to highlight this ambivalence. Aspirations good for one separate art can be wrong for film as specific medium and kind of art. „The play’s the thing”. As far as symbiosis of many different arts is important for cinema, culture of adaptation remains key question in film practice and filmmaking.