<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967) is one of the most written about avant-garde films. It has served as “a blue screen in front of which a range of ideological and intellectual dramas have been played out,” as Elizabeth Legge put it in a book-length study of the film, whose recent publication testifies to the continuing relevance of the film (Legge 2009). This paper takes Annette Michelson’s article, Toward Snow, one of the first and most often cited encounters with Snow’s cinema, as its point of departure (Michelson 1978). Michelson sees the film as a reflection which reveals the cinema as a temporal narrative medium. Drawing on Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness, she argues that this reflection on the medium is at the same time a reflection on the structures of consciousness. However, the paper also draws on the work of Gilles Deleuze, whose two-volume study of the cinema has opened up new possibilities for thinking about time and the cinema (Deleuze 1983, 1985). The paper is not an interpretation of Deleuze. It appropriates and puts to work his idea that the cinema is not essentially a narrative medium; but a medium that disrupts linear time, making visible a non-chronological dimension of time, which fragments the subject and exposes it to liminal situations. Wavelength, I argue, reverses the flow of time, to make visible an abyss at the heart of time, which shatters the unity of the subject</abstract>

Revisiting Michael Snow’s Wavelength, after Deleuze’s Time-Image

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The paper compares how two theorists of media arts, Mark B. N. Hansen and Laura U. Marks, interpret the relation of Deleuze’s time-image to corporeality. Both argue that some novel types of images - in film and media art - engage the body in new and also more intensive ways than traditional cinema did. While they remain committed to Bergson’s theory of perception, their works offer different readings of how the Bergsonian concepts of Deleuze’s film philosophy can be applied to new media: on the one hand, to the non-signifying, affective properties of Hansen’s digital image in contemporary media arts, and on the other, to Marks’s - in the last instance, memory-signifying - haptic image, which she discussed initially in connection with video art and experimental film. In New Philosophy for New Media (2004), Hansen asserts that “Deleuze’s neo-Bergsonist account of the cinema carries out the progressive disembodying of the [body]”, which “reaches its culmination in […] what he calls the ‘time-image,’” and calls for “a rehabilitation of Bergson’s embodied concept of affection.” While Marks also offers some criticism on Deleuze, she suggests that his “theory of timeimage cinema permits a discussion of the multisensory quality of cinema,” and undertakes to examine “how the body may be involved in the inauguration of time-image cinema.” Besides arguing that both tendencies are present in Deleuze to varying degrees, I attempt to contextualize the divergences in their lines of thought by looking at the types of media and selection of works they examine, as well as the possible theoretical commitments that might guide these selective strategies</abstract>

From a Tactile Epistemology to the Ontology of Affect: Two Readings of Deleuze’s Time-Image in Film and New Media Theory

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Considered as one of the main figures of the avant-garde lyrical cinema, Stan Brakhage questions perception. His language of inquiry constantly confronts the spectator with the limits of visual experience of the world and the multiple possibilities of their transgression. Critically addressing one of his short films, Visions in Meditation n°l (1989),1 this analysis aims to discuss the way movement may become a principle of perception, that is to say, according to Gilles Deleuze’s definition - a mode of transgressing the frame of representation. Reappropriating the cinematographic grammar and submitting it to a vibrating movement, Brakhage invents a rhythm which paves the way for a transcendental experience, meanwhile proposing a reflection on the meditative possibilities of the film in terms of the image in meditation. Gilles Deleuze’s way of thinking of cinema in Cinema 1: Movement-image, as well as Slavoj Žižek’s writings on cinema, allows one to consider movement in its cinematographic and philosophical meaning, a project which in Brakhage’s case seems to be primordial</abstract>

(Re)framing Movement in Stan Brakhage’s Visions in Meditation N°1

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">The article examines how documentary film is transformed when distributed through video sharing web sites. The conspiracy-theoretical production Loose Change (2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009) is used as a case study of how the mediation process connected with net-based distribution affects the materiality of film and alters our conception of both visual evidence and genre. With a point of departure in the media theory of Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin and their twin concepts of immediacy and hypermediacy it is discussed how the film culture on the internet develops new media institutions and establishes what could be described as “live” archives. A concluding reflection illustrates how this type of film is part of an ongoing media-determined and cultural transformation of the documentary genre, a process that places its historical and political content halfway between fact and fiction</abstract>

The Never-ending Disaster: 9/11 Conspiracy Theory and the Integration of Activist Documentary on Video Websites

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> As a possible cross section of cinematic narratology and the theory of intermediality the following essay assesses some of the effects of foregrounding the single, intermedial image within film. Specific figurations of intermediality that are experienced via the consciousness of single images, or some kind of “imageness” (i.e. as “intermedial references”) are presented as well as the modes in which they can interact with the narrative structure of a film. This interaction ranges from a momentary interference with the narrative structure of a film to disrupting it altogether; it may consist in constituting the gravity centre of a plot, or even in becoming the “canvas” for a palimpsest of narrative modes and narratives</abstract>

The Vertigo of the Single Image: From the Classic Narrative “Glitch” to the Post-Cinematic Adaptations of Paintings

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">British director Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (1940-) share several technical similarities in their filmmaking, most notably an interest in the visual language of still photography, painting and other visual arts, specifically light and colour. They also often comment on the art of film-making and the subject position of the audience as voyeur within their films. With respect to Orientalism - the philosophical and cultural construction that the West overlaid on the East - Powell and Kiarostami can be profitably compared. Powell appears to have accepted uncritically the notion that the East could be characterized by exotic and sensuous otherness, an attitude that is revealed in his approach to The Thief of Bagdad (1940) as escapist fantasy and Black Narcissus (1946) as a farewell to India. Kiarostami, on the other hand, a “real Oriental,” not only rejected the Orientalist paradigm (while simultaneously drawing on its original language and symbols), but also refused to respond to it in the way that other Muslim artists, particularly in the post-Iranian Revolution period, consciously attempted to build a nonwestern cinematic art. His Taste of Cherry (1997), however, does draw on some of the same cultural elements that were borrowed and distorted by the European intellectuals who promulgated the Orientalist and postcolonial world-view</abstract>

Michael Powell’s The Thief of Bagdad and Abbas Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry: Two Faces of Orientalism

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille was a progenitor of Paramount Pictures, a seminal cofounder of Hollywood, and the master of the American biblical epic; but whose pioneering achievements and filmic practices still remain grossly unappreciated today. One of his aesthetic trade secrets was the “deep focus construction” of his on-screen characters, that is, the engineering of pertinent correspondences between his characterizations and the actors’ idiosyncratic traits and/or previous roles to deepen the naturalistic resonance of authenticity. A brief review of the critical literature and an examination of selected DeMille films, particularly The Ten Commandments (1923 &amp; 1956), was performed to illustrate this casting principle; utilizing humanist film criticism as the guiding analytical lens. It was concluded that DeMille was a far defter biblical filmmaker than hitherto appreciated. Further research into DeMille Studies is highly warranted, warmly recommended and already long overdue</abstract>

The “Deep Focus Construction” of Selected Characters within Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923 &amp; 1956) and Elsewhere

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The Bollywood remake of the American weepie Stepmom (Chris Columbus, 1998) is a fine and rather recent example of the intercultural remake phenomenon, a study topic that is gaining more and more attention. With the aim of suggesting conclusions generally applicable to intercultural remakes, starting from the genre, through characterization, film style and narrative, the present paper examines the remake process in the case of We Are Family (Siddharth Malhotra, 2010) and Stepmom</abstract>

Mothers, Stepmoms and the Brave New Family. Intercultural Remake and Melodrama: an Analysis of the American Stepmom and its Bollywood Remake

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> The article reads John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) from the perspective of the (im)possibilities of cinematic meaning. The horror film seems to be an especially fruitful field for such studies, since its aestheticpsychological mechanism usually aims at destroying the kind of spectatorial position necessary, at least according to semiotic and postsemiotic theory, for the generation and reading of meaningful signs. Placing the film in the theoretical context of such scholars as Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Kaja Silverman, Steven Shaviro and Todd McGowan, I attempt to analyse the ways the film disables the production of semiotic meaning and rewrites some of the well-established concepts of film theory. I call into play Barthes’s concept of the punctum, McGowan’s cinema of intersection, Lacan’s later theory of the sinthome, Silverman’s post-Lacanian ideas about the cinematic gaze and the spaces of spectatorship, and Shaviro’s provocative insights about affective cinema so as to indicate how a film may prove its quality precisely at the points where it does not make sense</abstract>

Halloween and the Limits of Cinematic Meaning

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Finnish television was launched by a commercial company in 1956. TES-TV, the first television station, was later followed by a programming company called Tesvisio and joined by the television channel of YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company. The TES-TV/Tesvisio years are a unique period in television history, since they witnessed the creation of a connection between commercial television and the arts. In this article I aim to study early Finnish television aesthetics by analyzing television as art and also the relations between television and other art forms. My focus is on the representations of high and low culture and the search for a television style. TES-TV aired both popular programmes and high culture, like ballet, while on Tesvisio, these cultural extremities were gradually replaced by a middle-brow culture. The early programming included both filmed and live material, which had a contribution to the evolution of Finnish television aesthetics. The television style was further developed by Tesvisio’s first professional set designer and his experimental work. Therefore I claim that in these commercial companies television was seen as an art form in its own right, not only as a mediator of art</abstract>

Arts and Advertising: Aesthetics of Early Commercial Television in Finland

AHEAD OF PRINT

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

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

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

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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. 