Słowa kluczowe

Synagogue art |wall paintings |interior decoration |national redemption

Streszczenie

This article compares the interior paintings in the ‘Ades and Ohel Moshe synagogues, both of which are non-Ashkenazi, in the Naḥlaot neighborhood in Jerusalem. Although the synagogues were decorated 50 years apart, there are similarities in the painted motifs and drawing schemes, but also some differences. I suggest that these differences reflect the development of a Jewish concept of national redemption during the 50 years that elapsed between the adornment of the two synagogues.

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Zionism |Israeli cinema |nationalism |national cinema |popular culture

Streszczenie

The article examines Israeli cinema as a critical participant in the local drama of national ideology and national identity. Israeli filmmakers have engaged in enunciating the national culture, in the context of the medium’s history, political ideologies, and the tension between high art and popular culture. The historical review of Israeli films shows dramatic changes over the years from nationalistic propaganda to radical critique and post-Zionism. Israeli cinema appears now to seek a constructive and fruitful dialogue with the viewers. In the recent wave of popular films, the national ideology is more conscious of its past mistakes and inherent deficiencies; its presentation of national identity is less narrow and more open to alternative types, thereby suggesting new vistas of national culture.

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identity |autobiography |photography |referentiality |figures of alterity |Adi Nes |Israel |army

Streszczenie

This paper demonstrates the way an autobiographer shapes his/her identity in the creation of his/her narrative. The autobiographer’s struggle in his/her understanding of the self is sometimes evident in the work. This project focuses specifically on the work of Adi Nes, an Israeli photographer. His photographs demonstrate the ways in which he feels like an outsider in Israel, as both a member of the Sephardic community and a homosexual. His photographs are staged, and he uses figures of alterity by projecting himself into his images with the use of models, which may lead the viewer to question the referentiality, or truthfulness, of each image. While demonstrating his identity through personal experience and memories, his images are created in the context of a stratified society, demonstrating the power dynamics of the military and the different groups that reside within Israel. The paper draws on images from three series – “Boys” (2000), “Soldiers” (1994–2000) and “Prisoners” (2000).

Słowa kluczowe

culture |memory |narrative |science |narration |tradition |personality |intelligentsia |contemporary life |Talmud |message |identity

Streszczenie

This analytical study by Marek Hendrykowski is an attempt to re-read one of the most valuable contemporary films of Israeli production, Footnote, written and directed by Joseph Cedar. The author paid particular attention to the specific way of conducting a seemingly dependent narration, skillfully combining the image of external reality with the sphere of thought and the feelings of the main character.

Słowa kluczowe

war |trauma |terror |terrorism |Israel cinema |Second Intifada

Streszczenie

The public discourse in Israel regarding events such as the Holocaust, war, or terror attacks mostly failed to embrace the trauma caused by such events, and to integrate their effects in the collective memory. According to trauma theoreticians, the location of trauma in the discourse is related to the character of trauma as a non-narratable memory, since personal trauma exist in the void, thus marking a missing memory. This paper explores the notion of trauma in contemporary Israeli cinema as it was reconstructed during and after the Second Intifada (2000–2008). The paper focuses on feature films reflecting on experiences of terrorist violence, among them Avanim (2004), Distortion (2004), Frozen Days (2006), The Bubble (2006), 7 Minutes in Heaven (2009). These films embrace parallel elements structuring a worldview, in the private as well as the collective sphere, thus shaping the surroundings as a mirror of the self and the subjective traumatic experience as a reflection of a complex social reality.A particular focus of our analysis will also be on aesthetic strategies that cinematically express rupture and distortion of terrorist violence and trauma, especially moments of suddenness and disruption in contrast to duration and circular repetition, elements of a specific temporality of trauma that also shaped the narration and style of recent Israeli war films, such as Waltz with Bashir (2008) or Beaufort (2007).

Słowa kluczowe

Ludwig Blum |Michael Kovner |Baruch Nachshon |Reuven Rubin |Mordechai Ardon |Nachum Guttman |Oded Feingersh |Ron Gang |Larisa Bersky |Marcel Janco |Mordechai Levanon |Pamela Sharni

Streszczenie

Israel is tiny in its dimensions, yet huge in the spectrum of its landscapes. It is ancient in its history, yet young as a state. In honor of the 70th independence day of the State of Israel, celebrated in 2018, this paper presents a mosaic of 12 landscape paintings, from the country’s most southern point to the most northern one, by Israeli artists who represent, in diverse styles, the state’s geographic and historic wealth in a visual-artistic sense.

Słowa kluczowe

posthumanism |bio art |new media art |laboratory |tissue culture |Collectivity |Ars Electronica |art world |Guy Ben-Ary |SymbioticA

Streszczenie

The present paper deals with the work of an Israeli artist, Guy Ben-Ary. His work is a prime example of artistic practice in the field of bio art. Bio art provokes critical thinking about the place and role of people in today’s world. The main purpose of the article is to describe changes in contemporary artistic practices within the framework of art as a laboratory, the aim of which is to study reality.

Słowa kluczowe

sztuka |film |percepcja |artysta |Hugo Münsterberg |kreatywność |mózg |uwaga |kognitywistyka |neurobiologia |umysł |Lew Kuleszow |eksperyment naukowy |neuronauka

Streszczenie

The history and theory of art have often shown, before the era of neurobiology, cognitive psychology and cognitive science, that great artists are unconscious neurobiologists, activating with their art the areas of the brain of recipients that cause aesthetic experience, and using in their works the principles of perception or optical illusions, unknown to ordinary mortals, and sometimes also to creators at the level of consciousness. The following considerations are intended to approximate and, to some extent, to rehabilitate and save film creators and theoreticians who are being forgotten, the ones who, long before the discoveries of the cognitive sciences, considered theoretically and carried out empirical experiments aimed at showing and explaining the mysteries of human perception and the influence of the film on the viewer. I will present the profiles of the two pioneers of pre-cognitive thought on the basis of film studies: Hugo Münsterberg and Lew Kuleszow. I will show that half a century before neuroscientific research, they dealt with the cognitive processes of human cognition. I will present the contemporary state of cognitive sciences to illustrate the pioneering and legitimacy of visions, intuitions and achievements of the above creators, who are underestimated and forgotten by time and the achievements of “cold” science, although neuroesthetics researchers who have been involved in the problem of perception of works of art and rehabilitation of the merits of the past in the area of neuroscience for some time cannot be denied their achievements. Ignoring their contribution and achievements in the science of cognition, especially as to this day they are continued in research laboratories, in my subjective opinion, equals the potential underestimation of Leonardo da Vinci’s contribution to medical science or Darwin’s to research emotions.

Słowa kluczowe

modernizm |kino chorwackie |Branko Ivanda

Streszczenie

Croatian film of the 1960s is colored by the poetics of auteurial cinema which was already emerging in the previous decade, but dominated in the 1960s, both in the production of cinema (both fiction films and animation), but also in the reception of these films with independent and ambitious critics. The text discusses the production modes of the era in Croatia and Yugoslavia, as well as several aspects of the poetics of cinematic modernism (its history and the importance of innovation), with Branko Ivanda’s feature debut Gravity (Gravitacija), in which all sorts of stylistic experiments blend well with traditional motifs and cinematic procedures, anticipating Ivanda’s auteuristic oevure.

Słowa kluczowe

psychoanalysis |Death & the Maiden |Weimar cinema |Melancholy |Fritz Lang

Streszczenie

In the silent Weimar films of Fritz Lang, the heroines have sudden encounters with Death, conceived both as an allegorical figure and as an unexpected violent end of the life of their fiancé, husband or loved one. The nameless Maiden, the main heroine of Der müde Tod (The Weary Death, known in English-language countries as Destiny, 1921), while looking for her fiancé, who was kidnapped by Death, tries three times to regain his life and finally, overcome by Death, commits suicide. Two queens of Burgundy in Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungs, 1924), Kriemhild and Brunhild, motivated by resentment and vengeance, as well as by unfulfilled love, finally appear to be zombie-like self-destructive monsters, destroying the social and political order, and the lives of many human beings. The paper, with the use of the psychoanalytic concepts of melancholy and the mourning “not-worked-out” by the persons who have lost their loved ones, analyses the ambiguous attitudes and self-destructive acts of these “women in black”.

Słowa kluczowe

serial |neoserial |soap opera |serial nowej generacji

Streszczenie

Modern television series are a product of quality television and thus significantly differ from the models that have been deeply rooted in serial culture since the very beginning of the media’s existence. In the past, television formats were thematically subject to the requirements of television broadcast programming. They were characterized by five-act structures, with climaxes forced by television stations to occur before subsequent commercial breaks. At that time, the dominating category constituted series with an episodic structure closed within one episode. This resulted in the appearance of the currently widespread procedurals. Nonetheless, the three-act structure of sitcom plots dominates nowadays, in the post-network era. Another significant feature of the post soap is its narrative complexity (Mittell), which, in addition to formal procedures, often uses quotes, and autotematic references. The purpose of this article is to analyze the narrative complexity of new generation TV series, called “post soap”. A new genre of TV series has been examined through the examples of a popular show: Ślepnąc od świateł (2018).

Słowa kluczowe

documentary film |self-immolation |history of Poland

Streszczenie

One of strongest acts of personal protest in the communist era was self-immolation, which was the subject of two Polish documentaries. Maciej Drygas in Hear My Cry invoked the figure of Ryszard Siwiec, who immolated himself on September 8, 1968 as a sign of protest against the Soviet army invasion of Czechoslovakia. In his documentary, Drygas shows a fragment of the film with the burning man, juxtaposing it with the testimony of witnesses to the tragedy and the account of the family. This documentary restores the memory of the whole society, who due solely to the film, learned about the radical gesture of a common man. Holy Fire by Jarosław Mańka and Maciej Grabysa in turn invokes the heroic but forgotten Walenty Badylak, who immolated himself in March of 1980 in Cracow as an expression of his objection to distortion of the truth about Katyń. Both acts of self-immolation had for many years been perceived as totally futile acts, while the directors show that the self-immolation of these now has a deep and symbolic meaning. In my analysis, I shall invoke historic and cultural contexts, conduct a multifaceted interpretation of self-immolation act and discuss the complex imagery included in the films.

Słowa kluczowe

ciało |Carlos Saura |Nakarmić kruki |kino hiszpańskie

Streszczenie

This article aims at providing an analysis of Carlos Saura’s Cria Cuervos [Raise ravens, 1976], focused mainly on the temporal and spatial structures of the film. It explores the dimensions of bodily presence, especially the means of representing spectral body in cinematic image.