Introduction

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">German Expressionism, although often viewed as a uniquely German phenomenon, was part of a broader crisis affecting the European avant-garde at the time of the First World War. The experience of modernity, so proudly displayed at events like the Universal Exposition of 1900, inspired both hopes and fears which were reflected in the works of artists, writers and musicians throughout Europe. The outbreak of the war was welcomed by many exponents of the avant-garde as the cathartic crisis they had anticipated. The letters and diaries of artists who hastened to enlist, however, reflected their rapid disillusionment. The war had the effect of severing cultural ties that had been forged prior to 1914. This did not prevent a parallel process of cultural evolution on both sides of the conflict. Those who survived the war, of diverse nationalities and artistic affiliations, produced works reflecting a common perception that modern civilization had resulted in humanity becoming a slave to its own machines.</abstract>

German Expressionism in Context: the First World War and the European Avant-Garde

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Prerogative of what Jung calls visionary art, the aesthetics of German Expressionist cinema is “primarily expressive of the collective unconscious,” and – unlike the psychological art, whose goal is “to express the collective consciousness of a society” – they have succeeded not only to “<italic>compensate</italic> their culture for its biases” by bringing “to the consciousness what is <italic>ignored</italic> or repressed,” but also to “<italic>predic</italic>t something of the future direction of a culture” (Rowland 2008, italics in the original, 189–90). After a theoretical introduction, the article develops this idea through the example of three visionary works: Arthur Robison’s <italic>Warning Shadows (Schatten,</italic> 1923), Fritz Lang’s <italic>The Weary Death</italic> aka <italic>Destiny (Der müde Tod</italic>, 1921), and Paul Leni’s <italic>Waxworks (Wachsfigurenkabinett</italic>, 1924).</abstract>

German Cinematic Expressionism in Light of Jungian and Post-Jungian Approaches

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The films of Guy Maddin, from his debut feature <italic>Tales from the Gimli Hospital</italic> (1988) to his most recent one, <italic>The Forbidden Room</italic> (2015), draw extensively on the visual vocabulary and narrative conventions of 1920s and 1930s German cinema. These cinematic revisitations, however, are no mere exercise in sentimental cinephilia or empty pastiche. What distinguishes Maddin’s compulsive returns to the era of German Expressionism is the desire to both archive and awaken the past. <italic>Careful</italic> (1992), Maddin’s mountain film, reanimates an anachronistic genre in order to craft an elegant allegory about the apprehensions and anxieties of everyday social and political life. <italic>My Winnipeg</italic> (2006) rescores the city symphony to reveal how personal history and cultural memory combine to structure the experience of the modern metropolis, whether it is Weimar Berlin or wintry Winnipeg. In this paper, I explore the influence of German Expressionism on Maddin’s work as well as argue that Maddin’s films preserve and perpetuate the energies and idiosyncrasies of Weimar cinema.</abstract>

From Weimar to Winnipeg: German Expressionism and Guy Maddin

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This article examines the modernist medievalism of Georg Kaiser’s <italic>From Morning to Midnight</italic> (<italic>Von morgens bis mitternachts</italic>), discussing the influence of the morality play genre on its form. The characterization and action in Kaiser’s play mirrors and evokes that of morality plays influenced by and including the late-medieval Dutch play <italic>Elckerlijc</italic> and its English translation as <italic>Everyman</italic>, in particular Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s <italic>Jedermann</italic>, first produced in Berlin in 1911. The medievalism of Kaiser’s play is particularly evident when it is compared to Karl Heinz Martin’s film version of the text, produced in 1920. The play’s allegory and message, though contemporary, are less specifically historically contextual than the film’s, while its central protagonist is more representative of generic capitalist subjectivity. The detective film shapes Martin’s adaptation, obscuring the morality play conventions and therefore medievalism of Kaiser’s earlier text.</abstract>

Modernist Medievalism and the Expressionist Morality Play: Georg Kaiser’s <italic>From Morning to Midnight</italic>

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The article looks at German Expressionist cinema through the eyes of contemporary, non-commercial filmmakers, to attempt to discover what aspects of this 1920s approach may guide filmmakers today. By drawing parallels between the outsider nature of Weimar artist-driven approaches to collaborative filmmaking and twenty-first-century non-mainstream independent filmmaking outside of major motion picture producing centres, the writers have attempted to find ways to strengthen their own filmmaking practices as well as to investigate methods of re-invigorating other independent or national cinemas. Putting their academic observations of the thematic, technical, and aesthetic aspects of Expressionist cinema into practice, Ells and Saul illustrate and discuss the uses, strengths, and pitfalls, within the realm of low-budget art cinema today.</abstract>

Shadows Illuminated. Understanding German Expressionist Cinema through the Lens of Contemporary Filmmaking Practices

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This article proposes a cognitive-narratological perspective on David Lynch’s <italic>Mulholland Drive</italic> (2001) and the numerous contrasting interpretations that this film has generated. Rather than offering an(other) interpretation of the film, we aim to investigate some of the reasons why Lynch’s highly complex narrative has gained a cult – if not classic – status in recent film history. To explain the striking variety of (often conflicting) interpretations and responses that the film has evoked, we analyse its complex narrative in terms of its cognitive effects. Our hypothesis is that part of <italic>Mulholland Drive</italic>’s attractiveness arises from a cognitive oscillation that the film allows between profoundly differing, but potentially equally valid interpretive framings of its enigmatic story: as a perplexing but enticing puzzle, sustained by (post-)classical cues in its narration, and as an art-cinematic experience that builds on elements from experimental, surrealist, or other film- and art-historical traditions. The urge to narrativize <italic>Mulholland Drive</italic>, we argue, is driven by a distinct cognitive hesitation between these conflicting arrays of meaning making. As such, the film has been trailblazing with regards to contemporary cinema, setting stage for the current trend of what critics and scholars have called complex cinema or puzzle films.</abstract>

Last Year at Mulholland Drive: Ambiguous Framings and Framing Ambiguities

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The article investigates two seemingly conflicting critical approaches of haptic and transgressive cinema, which emerged along with the corporeal turn in film studies, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While haptics operates with undistinguishable figures and demands extreme closeness and an active caressing gaze, transgression is usually seen from a distance and subverts the social, political and ethical order. The paper attempts an examination of the Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren’s Actionist films and enlightens how these two opposing strategies can be present together. Giving a detailed analysis of the films, the article describes an expanded definition of Linda Williams’s body genres, in order to create a new category of horror: the horror of materiality.</abstract>

Haptic Transgression. The Horror of Materiality in Kurt Kren’s Films

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Robert Bresson did not only distribute musical excerpts and sounds in his films, but also often conceived the whole film running in a general rhythm, including the repetition and variation of shots in their contents and length. David Bordwell (1985) considered Bresson’s films as examples of the style centred “parametric mode of narration.” More than that, after Jean-Louis Provoyeur (2003), we consider that many shots in Bresson’s films have a characteristic of “denarrativization,” a conception based on musicality, devoid of representational constraints. One example is the tournament sequence in <italic>Lancelot of the Lake</italic> (Bresson, 1974), in which visual and sound elements are repeated as a “cell” with variations in length, angle of shot and with addition or suppression of elements. The author also analyses some aspects of <italic>The Trial of Joan of Arc</italic> (1962), in which the rhythmic sensation is created by the procedure of repetitive alternation of image, speech and space.1</abstract>

Rhythms of Images and Sounds in Two Films by Robert Bresson

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">An (un)conventional encounter between humans and alien beings has long been one of the main thematic preoccupations of the genre of science fiction. Such stories would thus include typical invasion narratives, as in the case of the three science fiction films I will discuss in the present paper: the <italic>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</italic> (Don Siegel, 1956; Philip Kaufman, 1978; Abel Ferrara, 1993), <italic>The Host</italic> (Andrew Niccol, 2013), and <italic>Avatar</italic> (James Cameron, 2009). I will examine the films in relation to postcolonial theories, while attempting to look at the ways of revisiting one’s history and culture (both alien and human) in the films’ worlds that takes place in order to uncover and heal the violent effects of colonization. In my reading of the films I will shed light on the specific processes of identity formation (of an individual or a group), and the possibilities of individual and communal recuperation through memories, rites of passages, as well as hybridization. I will argue that the colonized human or alien body can serve either as a mediator between the two cultures, or as an agent which fundamentally distances two separate civilizations, thus irrevocably bringing about the loss of identity, as well as the lack of comprehension of cultural differences.</abstract>

Human-Alien Encounters in Science Fiction: A Postcolonial Perspective

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The article is based on 20 in-depth interviews with women professionals conducted for a more comprehensive study focusing on gender roles within the film and television industry in Turkey. This study examines the career possibilities for women, the experience of being a woman working in television and cinema, and the working environment, including work-life balance issues, experiences of discrimination and experiences of sexism. The hypothesis of this study is that film industry is male-dominated, and women have to struggle to be able to prove themselves in this industry in the 21st century in Turkey, where the position of women is made even more difficult by the gender role codes and the structure of Turkish society.</abstract>

The Experiences of Women Professionals in the Film Industry in Turkey: A Gender-Based Study

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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. 