<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Keynote talk given at the “Cinema of Sensations” International Conference organized by the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, between the 25th and 27th of May, 2012. (The photos of Laura Marks illustrating the article were taken by Dorel Găină, and are reproduced here with the permission of the artist.)</abstract>

Thinking Like a Carpet: Embodied Perception and Individuation in Algorithmic Media

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Keynote talk given at the “Cinema of Sensations” International Conference organized by the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, between the 25th and 27th of May, 2012. (The photos of Yvonne Spielmann illustrating the article were taken by Ágnes Pethő and Ferenc Boné, and are reproduced here with their permission.)</abstract>

Seeing to Believe – Sensing to Know From Film Form to Perceptual Environment

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The overblown rhetoric concerning the “digital revolution” conceals deep continuities between traditional and new forms. As the example Monsters, Inc. shows established forms of narration can be used together with new forms of computer generated images. The complexities of this constellation are described by an analysis of the film.</abstract>

schroeter@medienwissenschaft.uni-siegen.de

Visuality and Narration in Monsters, Inc.

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Jean Epstein wrote many books during his life, but some of them were left unpublished. This unpublished corpus is of significant importance to understand his work and thinking. In this essay I address three of these books: Ganymède (a book on male homosexual ethics), Contre-pensées (Counter-Thoughts), a compilation of short essays on a wide variety of topics), and L’autre ciel (The Other Heaven), a literary work. My main purpose is to better understand a major motif in Epstein’s thought: the human body. These writings show how his interest in physiology was profound and very important during his whole life, and how he always emphasized the material side of any psychology, identity, or thought. Secondly, they address the topic of artificiality and humanity. Epstein claims that what is specifically human is to evolve through specialization and reification, even if it were against nature. And thirdly, they fully disclose the inherent sensuality of some Epstein texts (for instance his descriptions of close ups); one of the major subjects of L’autre ciel is male homoeroticism. These unpublished writings shed new light on Epstein’s film writings and must be considered in order to do a complete account of his work and thought.</abstract>

Geography of the Body: Jean Epstein’s Poetics and Conceptualization of the Body in his Unpublished Writings

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> When, through highly atypical financial and creative means, French filmmaker Agnès Varda’s first feature film The Pointe Courte (La Pointe courte, 1954) first appeared on cinema screens, a fragment of contemporary commentators thought it hampered by “defects,” “blunders,” and “follies.” Its perceived infirmity compounded further by a “rather irritating intellectual dryness,” implying contact with the film may cause itching. A more material, rather than intellectual engagement with the film, then, may offer a means to overcome such reservations; a piste this article pursues. In doing so, I draw on the thought of contemporary French thinker Jean-Luc Nancy and his proposition that all images are flowers and the mobilised look such thinking engenders which oscillates between an optical gaze and a haptic graze. A look mobilized thanks to the contact it makes with wood’s textured, internal ornament and which undoes the material myopia by which the film’s existing critical landscape has itself been hampered. </abstract>

Avoid Contact with the Eyes and Skin, May Cause Irritation: Agnès Varda’s La Pointe courte (1954)

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This article investigates how, in her documentary The Gleaners and I (Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse, 2000), French director Agnès Varda relies on the establishment of haptic vision in order to merge the experience of her own body with the representation of another “body,” that of people living at the margins of society and gleaning for food. In so doing, the article will bring out the director’s social and aesthetic concerns by positing that Varda turns to a sensuous depiction based on the textural properties of the image to deter any form of instrumental vision regarding the representation of the body and its connections to pre-determined norms of conduct. The article will show that, in its portrayal of a socially and economically alienated group of people, as well as in the rendering of her aging body, Varda’s miseen- scène brings forth a tactile form of knowledge that calls for a humanistic approach, thus defusing any form of mastery of the gaze over the image.</abstract>

Haptic Vision and the Experience of Difference in Agnès Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000)

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The paper presents the author’s research on the representation of painters and sculptors, their models and their art works in Italian silent cinema of the 1910s and early 1920s. This research deals with both the combination of optical (painterly) vs. haptical (sculptural) cinema. It also problematizes art versus the real, as well as art conceived from cinema’s own perspective, that is within the conventions of European and American cinema. In addition to research in these filmic conventions the author compares how the theme manifests itself within different genres, such as comedy, crime and adventure films, diva films and strong men films. Examples are : Il trionfo della forza (The Triumph of Strength, 1913), La signora Fricot è gelosa (Madam Fricot is Jelous, 1913), Il fuoco (The Fire, Giovanni Pastrone, 1915), Il fauno (The Faun, Febo Mari, 1917), Il processo Clemenceau (The Clemenceau Affair, Alfredo De Antoni, 1917) and L’atleta fantasma (The Ghost Athlete, Raimondo Scotti, 1919). I will relate this pioneering study to recent studies on the representation of art and artists in Hollywood cinema, such as Katharina Sykora’s As You Desire me. Das Bildnis im Film (2003), Susan Felleman’s Art in the Cinematic Imagination (2006) and Steven Jacobs’s Framing Pictures. Film and the Visual Arts (2011), and older studies by Thomas Elsaesser, Angela Dalle Vacche, Felleman and the author. </abstract>

Of Artists and Models. Italian Silent Cinema between Narrative Convention and Artistic Practice

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This essay examines the ways in which the representation of the body in painting is the starting point of a broader reflection on the plasticity of the medium in two French autobiographical films. In Histoire d’un secret (Story of a Secret, 2003) by Mariana Otero and Leçons de ténèbres (Tenebrae Lessons, 2000) by Vincent Dieutre, the body is indeed at the centre, albeit in very different ways. The first is a documentary about the director’s mother who died of the consequences of an illegal abortion in the late sixties. She was an artist and her paintings, many of which depict lascivious female nudes, pervade the film. The second is a self-fictional essay that weaves together narrated episodes of the film-maker’s story as a homosexual and drug addict with close-ups of Caravaggist paintings which tend to focus on bodies in pain. Whether prefiguring death and embodying the absent body through the latent evocation of maternity in the first case, or looking back into figural art in the second, both films point to the plasticity of the medium through the representation of matter, that is, paint and, ultimately, the body. The way in which both film-makers resort to light, the close-up, and, as far as Dieutre is concerned, the diversity of film formats, embodies what Deleuze defines as the haptic gaze to explore cinema’s own materiality. In addition, the presence of the paintings introduces the issue of intermediality which modestly points to a mise en abyme of the broader question of cinema’s shifting ontology. </abstract>

The Body as Interstitial Space between Media in Leçons de Ténèbres by Vincent Dieutre and Histoire d’un Secret by Mariana Otero

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The essay examines films and video installations that present the figures of suffering bodies and trigger strong dysphoric sensations through empathy: Karaoke (1998) by Donigan Cumming, Last Days (2005) by Gus Van Sant, and Drunk (2000) by Gillian Wearing. In addition to strong pathemic strategies that intensify the reception of the image, these artworks also contain counter-pathemic elements that distance the viewer from pathos. These long, moving, close examinations of pathemic physical states not only project the viewer into a frozen, insistent, and fascinated gaze at the suffering body and place him or her in a mirrored passive position but also offer an opportunity to move from sensation to sentiment, and then to sensitivity toward and experience of various stages of the empathetic response. </abstract>

Sensations of Dysphoria in the Encounter of Failing Bodies: The Cases of Karaoke by Donigan Cumming, Last Days by Gus Van Sant, and Drunk by Gillian Wearing

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The restricted vocabulary that is often applied to discuss Contemporary Brazilian Cinema (aesthetics of hunger, marginality, national allegory, identity, bad consciousness) reveals a sort of generalizing approach that ignores the films’ singularities and overlooks diverse affiliations. Works by young Brazilian filmmakers such as Irmãos Pretti, Eduardo Valente, Rodrigo Siqueira, and Sérgio Borges are a real challenge for the critic inasmuch as they escape this vocabulary and propose other questions. The films made by this young generation bypass traditional themes like urban violence and historical revisionism, thus demanding we rethink the political potency of Brazilian Cinema. Moreover, these films are not concerned with images of Brazil, pointing out to a post-identity politics that go beyond narratives of nation, class, or gender. This proposal aims at discussing this Brand New Brazilian Cinema (Novísssimo Cinema Brasileiro) and its affective realism. No longer a referent for a sociological truth about Brazilian society, realism is taken as something that the image does, i.e., as an affect that challenges the viewer’s response-ability. This paper discusses two films (No meu lugar [Eye of the Storm, Eduardo Valente, 2009] and O céu sobre os ombros [The Sky Above, Sérgio Borges, 2010]) in order to assess the political relevance of the notion of realism, in its relationship with affect. </abstract>

Affective Realism and the Brand New Brazilian Cinema

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> In the last two decades there has been an international resurgence of realistic films, i.e., films directed by filmmakers who believe in the ontological power of reality and, at the same time, in the capacity of the medium’s expressive scope for building a story without undermining the viewer’s impression of reality. On the one hand, this new movement is a rehabilitation of the cinematic Realism that throughout the history of film has touted cinema as an open window to the real world, a view particularly exemplified by Italian Neo-Realism. On the other hand, this new trend has given new life to the Realist film theories championed mainly by André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer. Bazin defines the Realist style as “all narratives means tending to bring an added measure of reality to the screen” (1971, 27). In the article titled Neo-Neo Realism (2009), A. O. Scott discusses a number of filmmakers whom he categorizes within the new Realist trend in contemporary American independent cinema. Among these is Ramin Bahrani, director of the film Chop Shop (2007). Bahrani is a USborn filmmaker of Iranian origin, based in New York. Abbas Kiarostami is one of his main points of reference. Kiarostami, as Scott notes, “refined the old Neorealist spirit through the 1990s and into the next decade.” Bahrani himself acknowledges this influence with his desire to make “an Iranianstyle movie here in New York.”</abstract>

The New Realistic Trend in Contemporary World Cinema: Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop as a Case Study

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Incongruent film music is a soundtrack, either diegetic or nondiegetic, which expresses qualities that stand in contrast to the emotions evoked by the events seen. The present article aims at covering two interconnected areas; the first is comprised of a critical recapitulation of available theoretical accounts of incongruent film music, whilst the second part of the paper offers an alternative, embodied-cognitive explanation of the audio-visual conflict which arises from this particular type of incongruence. Rather than regarding it as a phenomenon that works through disrupting conventions, we stress a perceptual-cognitive reason behind incongruence’s emotional strangeness. </abstract>

Unsettling Melodies: a Cognitive Approach to Incongruent Film Music

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 24 (2023): Issue 1 (November 2023)

Volume 23 (2023): Issue 1 (May 2023)

Volume 22 (2022): Issue 1 (November 2022)

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Volume 20 (2021): Issue 1 (November 2021)

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Volume 18 (2020): Issue 1 (October 2020)

Volume 17 (2019): Issue 1 (October 2019)

Volume 16 (2019): Issue 1 (August 2019)

Volume 15 (2018): Issue 1 (October 2018)

Volume 14 (2017): Issue 1 (December 2017)

Volume 13 (2016): Issue 1 (December 2016)

Volume 12 (2016): Issue 1 (September 2016)

Volume 11 (2015): Issue 1 (December 2015)

Volume 10 (2015): Issue 1 (August 2015)

Volume 9 (2014): Issue 1 (December 2014)

Volume 8 (2014): Issue 1 (September 2014)

Volume 7 (2013): Issue 1 (November 2013)

Volume 6 (2013): Issue 1 (August 2013)

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

 Film and Media Studies publishes papers in English in various fields of Film and Media. The printed and online versions of the journal are identical.   Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies was founded in 2009 and since then has published one or two issues annually. The Executive Editor of the journal is Professor Ágnes Pethõ, assisted by Lecturer Melinda Blos-Jáni. The journal has an international editorial board comprising prestigious scholars within the field coming from Romania, Hungary, The United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, China, and The United States. It operates on a system of double blind peer review and welcomes original, previously unpublished research articles by scholars from all over the world.   The journal publishes articles addressing the most exciting questions emerging from recent researches within the field of film and media studies, and its mission is to promote works of promising young researchers working on their PhD theses or on post-doctoral projects alongside prominent scholars and internationally acclaimed authors in the field of film and media studies. Throughout the years, the journal has disseminated results of several major research projects executed at the Sapientia Hungarian University and has also published selections from papers written for the widely acclaimed international film and media studies conferences convened by the editors and organized by the Film, Photography and Media Department of the Sapientia Hungarian University in Cluj-Napoca (Romania).   The journal publishes articles in all areas of film and media studies. Within this general area, however, we there is a special emphasis on the following topics either from a theoretical point of view or in the form of in-depth case studies:    newest trends in world cinema and the cinemas of Eastern Europe,   questions regarding intermediality or media convergence in cinema and new media,   the relationship between image, body and sound in moving images,   the relationship between fiction and reality in cinema,   moving images in the context of the called "post medium" condition.      Rejection Rate    30%      Archiving   Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.   Plagiarism Policy   The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process.   Article Processing Charge (APC)   The journal does not have article processing charges (APCs) nor article submission charges. 