Ewa Mazierska

Road to authenticity and stability Representation of holidays, relocation and movement in the films of Eric Rohmer

The purpose of this article is to examine the discourse on travel and tourism in the films of one of the most famous French directors and co-creator of the French New Wave, Eric Rohmer, by looking at the holiday aspect of the lives of Rohmer’s characters, and the wider problem of the significance of geographical change in their lives. What interests me in particular is the opinion articulated in Rohmer’s films of what constitutes an enjoyable and morally valuable tourist experience and, more broadly, a satisfactory transition from one place to another. Rather than adopting a rigid definition of tourism and holiday-making, I attempt to reconstruct Rohmer’s own discourse on tourism. However, in my work I will refer to the work of several authors, such as Zygmunt Bauman and John Urry, who discuss tourism both as an actual experience and as a metaphor of the modern/postmodern condition.

Eastern European cinema: old and new approaches

ABSTRACT This opening article looks at the changing ways of conceptualizing Eastern Europe as a region, particularly since the political changes of 1989. This is discussed alongside the changes and emerging trends in more recent scholarship on Eastern European cinema.

Wanda Jakubowska’s Cinema of Commitment:

The purpose of this article is to provide a general overview of the work of Wanda Jakubowska (1907–98), the first Polish, female film director to gain national and international recognition. Her career spanned over 50 years, in which she directed 14 full-length feature films, thus being the longest working film director in the history of Polish cinema. She was also one of the highest profile filmmakers to join the Polish communist party after the Second World War and in subsequent years represented the ‘party line’ among her fellow film-makers, and lobbied the party on behalf of the cinema industry. The article looks at style, ideology and the most important themes of Jakubowska’s work. Its focus is on her films about concentration camps and about contemporary Poland. The article also attempts to establish whether and to what degree Jakubowska was a feminist.

In The Name Of Absent Fathers And Other Men

It has been stated on many occasions that the Polish cinema was never as maledominated and male-oriented as after the collapse of communism in 1989 (Mariola JankunDopartowa 1998; Grażyna Stachówna 2001). Female characters are typically relegated to the background of male pursuits or given the role of minor accessories with which men achieve their objectives. When women are taken more seriously and receive more prominent parts, film-makers tend to concentrate on their reproductive and nurturing roles, representing them as actual and even more often as prospective mothers. In this essay I will explore the cinematic representation of motherhood in Polish post communist cinema, concentrating on films depicting mothers of young children and expectant mothers (rather than films about mothers with adult children), especially those movies that tackle childlessness, abortion, and “maternal fathers.” I chose these films for two intertwined reasons. Firstly, over the last decade and a half when motherhood has been represented in Polish cinema it usually has been depicted as a conundrum, which the characters must solve or risk a tragedy. Secondly, I will suggest that the atypical cases of maternity can better reveal the parameters of the discussion about the institution of motherhood in Polish cinema and, by extension, in Polish culture more generally. I am particularly interested in howmotherhood is represented and evaluated in Polish post communist films and whether this evaluation differs from those proposed in other discourses in contemporary Polish culture, as well as whether the film-makers reveal the same attitude to the institution of motherhood and to the actual mothers. The majority of authors examining representations of motherhood in film limit their analysis to one genre: melodrama, or even its subgenre of maternal melodrama, produced in Hollywood. Instead, in my essay I will take into account a wider range of movies, including melodramas but also road movies and a thriller, as well as films which do not fit easily into any single genre and are regarded as model examples of auteurist cinema.

Shaping the Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia

Bringing together a range of theoretical and critical approaches, this edited collection is the first book to examine representations of the body in Eastern European and Russian cinema after the Second World War. Drawing on the history of the region, as well as Western and Eastern scholarship on the body, the book focuses on three areas: the traumatized body, the body as a site of erotic pleasure, and the relationship between the body and history. Critically dissecting the different ideological and aesthetic ways human bodies are framed, The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia also demonstrates how bodily discourses oscillate between complicity and subversion, and how they shaped individuals and societies both during and after the period of state socialism.

Discovering Armenian cinema

riage, motherhood, emancipation and pleasure are offered up for critical consideration. Socialist ideologies are shown as complex and contain utopian elements that still have a vision to contribute to the current neoliberal moment, which presents itself as without alternative. The various chapters’ dialogue with foundational texts in film theory constitutes one of the major strengths of Creech’s study. The other salient contribution is her contextualization of particular critical GDR films within a broad array of Eastern European films and against techniques and politics of Western European film. This book is not only highly useful to specialists in German Studies but also an essential resource to colleagues in Women’s and Gender Studies and Film Studies.

Sportsmen without a cause in Polish films of ‘Small Stabilisation’

ABSTRACT Polish cinema of the 1960s includes a cluster of films with sportsmen in the main roles. Among them are Walkower (Walkover, 1965) by Jerzy Skolimowski, Jutro Meksyk (Tomorrow Mexico, 1966) by Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski and Jowita (1967) by Janusz Morgenstern. This article argues that, although they concern sportsmen, their protagonists are not particularly interested in winning competitions and we do not see in these films much in terms of sport activities. Sport is rather used to highlight the fact that during the period when these films were made it was possible to resist the pressure to do something good for ones country and exert oneself, and enjoy the ‘small stabilisation’. The filmmakers ultimately endorse such an attitude to life, by suggesting that those who are very ambitious (represented by coaches in two films) are anachronisms, harking back to the previous periods of Polish history and cinema.

The multi-layered transnationalism of Fran Palermo

Fran Palermo is an indie band based in Budapest which started performing in 2011, initiallyas a cover band, and has produced over 30 original songs and 2 LPs, Fran Palermo and RazzleDazzle, in 2015 and 2016 respectively, to significant critical acclaim. Its current line-up includeseight musicians, with Henri Gonzalez, a musician of Cuban and Spanish descent, being itsleader. This article considers the transnational character of Fran Palermo’s work in the contextof the history of pop-rock in Hungary and Eastern Europe at large, arguing that it doesnot fit the prevailing narrative of Eastern European music as imitator of a Western idiom. Thelyrics often engage with exotic landscapes, and are populated by tourist-like cliches, yet theway they are juxtaposed suggests that the band does not try to recreate realistically an experienceof travelling to the South, but rather plays with its representations. The large numberof instruments, including a trumpet, two saxophones and a conga, allows for the creation of a rich, eclectic sound. The music betrays a multitude of influences, from Anglo-American rock toSouth American and African music. The study draws on the idea of ‘world music’, understoodas a music produced in the periphery and offered for Western consumption. Our argument isthat Fran Palermo’s music complicates this idea, as it originates from the place which is neitherWest nor a typical East, and it is produced by neither Westerners nor ‘proper’ Easterners, neitheroutsiders nor insiders. We also use the concept of heterotopia to explain the textual characteristicsof Fran Palermo’s music

Introduction: Imagining the North of England

Mazierska sketches the dominant narrative of the North of England as that of an ‘oppressed region’, subordinated to the economically and politically powerful South of England, hence bearing similarity to the narratives of colonialism. She also argues that there is an expectation that the story of the North will be presented through the lens of realism. This especially refers to film: the most famous films and television programmes about the North of England are regarded as realistic and dealing with the plight of the working class. The introduction charts their history and locates this collection against the background of the existing research, promising to interrogate the ‘master narrative’ and add nuance to it, by ‘breaking up’ the North into smaller units on the one hand, and connecting them with more universal problems on the other.

Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology

In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine p ...