Sci-fEAST: Science fiction genre in Polish and Czechoslovakian cinema

This article is based on research done as part of Sci-fEAST: the Science Fiction Genre in Central and Eastern Europe project initiated by the students of Charles University in Prague and continued also by the academic staff of the University of Łódź since September 2012. The goal of the project was to create a comprehensive database of science fiction films specific for particular national cinemas and so far all of the Czech and Polish full-length feature films have been collected. It is planned that the Hungarians and Slovaks will join the project as well, adding to the database both works of Hungarian cinema and films made after the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The http://www. sci-feast.eu webpage, also available in English, is being gradually updated as new TV-productions as well as short-feature films are added. The latter, especially in the case of Polish cinema, constitute a significant part of all the works of the genre. This freely accessible database provides descriptions of the films together with technical data and a short synopsis of the plot, but its intended purpose is to be a discussion platform (of thought exchange) between the particular universities and scholar communities.This book was financially supported by the National Programme for the Development of Humanities: project “Cinema: Intercultural Perspective. Western-European Cinema in Poland, Polish Cinema in Western Europe. Mutual Perception of Film Cultures (1918–1939)”

Sex in the city: the rise of soft-erotic film culture in Cinema Leopold, Ghent, 1945-1954

Since the 1990s, film studies saw a disciplinary shift from approaches favoring a textual and ideological analysis of films to a broader understanding of the socio-cultural history of cinema under the banner of new cinema history. This turn not only allowed for ‘niche’ research domains to flourish such as film economics or cinema memory research, or for new empirical and critical methodologies to be applied to film and cinema history. This change in researching and writing film/cinema history also shed light on previously marginalized, neglected or uncharted film cultures and histories, burgeoning scholarship in for instance (s)exploitation cinema. This contribution examines a peculiar part of post-war local film culture in the Belgian city of Ghent, more precisely the one around the city-center soft-erotic cinema Cinema Leopold (1945-54). The research is based on a programming and box-office database compiled from archival sources and contextualized by other data (internal and external correspondence, posters,…) coming from the business archive of Octave Bonnevalle, Cinema Leopold’s founding pater familias (material kept in the State Archives of Belgium; RAB/B70/1928-1977). The database now contains information on 625 film titles shown between 1945 and 1954, out of which 233 were unidentified (due to lack of information). Although the database is at times crippled by source inconsistencies, it is extremely rich in documenting the everyday practices of a cinema that gradually turned into a soft-erotic movie theater. The database allows for some remarkable findings concerning shifts in the origin of films, their production years, genres, censorship and popularity. The key finding is that Cinema Leopold started out after the Second World War with a child-friendly, mainstream Hollywood-oriented film program, as did most cinemas in Ghent, but its profile slowly tilted towards more mature audiences and provocative film genres. These included French ‘risqué’ feature films containing some forms of nudity like Perfectionist/Un Grand Patron (Ciampi, 1951) and documentaries on venereal diseases like the successful Austrian Creeping Poison/Schleichendes Gift (Wallbrück, 1946), but also auteur movies such as Bergman’s Port of Call/Hamnstad (1948) were shown. It is interesting how Leopold walked a fine line between innovative, bold European art-house cinema, soft-erotic ‘didactic’ movies and flat-out commercial soft-porn. By 1954, Leopold had gathered a loyal crowd, which kept the cinema alive until 1981 despite the several law suits and trials. This micro-history offers a remarkable example of the post-war flourishing of alternative, yet profit-driven cinema circuits, riddled with media controversies and censorship

Unusually Gothic : Robert Sigl's Laurin (1987)

Marcus Stiglegger revives a lost Gothic treasure in this brief discussion of Robert Sigl's Laurin—a rare case of German genre film-making and the heir to FW Murnau's legacy. Phantastic genre cinema is very rare in contemporary Germany—especially in the 1980s, the time when Italian horror reached another peak with Dario Argento's Opera (1985). The cliché of the German "easy comedy" ruled mainstream film production at the time, and so it appeared a kind of miracle when 27-year-old writer/director Robert Sigl was awarded the Bavarian Film Prize in 1988 for his debut feature: the Gothic horror fairytale Laurin

Deconstructive humour: subverting Mexican and Chicano stereotypes in ‘Un Día Sin Mexicanos’

a long time, US cinema developed unshakeable stereotypes of Mexican ‘otherness’, with characters of Mexican cultural and ethnic heritage stigmatised as criminals or as sensual objects of desire. Filmmakers in Mexico, meanwhile, treated Mexican Americans as misfits who belonged nowhere, or ignored them and their complex experience completely. The emergence of a distinct ‘Chicano cinema’ in the 1960s allowed for the development of a more powerful set of images of Mexican Americans, exploiting the very tool of communication that had been used against them, and for the circulation of a more productive and reflective dialogue around the questions of identity, agency and resistance that arise. This article focuses on the use of humour as a subversive tool to deconstruct certain myths and stereotypes of Mexican and, to a certain extent, Mexican American (or, Chicano) identity in Sergio Arau’s popular debut feature, Un Día Sin Mexicanos (2004). The “Mexicans” referred to in the film’s title and used in much of its dialogue stand metonymically for all Hispanic immigrants, whether recently arrived, or born in the US and of Hispanic descent, including Chicanos. Its narrative was inspired by the introduction of controversial anti-immigration legislation in California in 1994, and the Californian State is here made representative of anywhere in the US where there is a Mexican or Chicano population. This essay situates the film within the context of a growing Chicano population in the US and a high level of immigration from Mexico itself. It asks to what extent the feature version, which takes the form of satire, offers a critique of the Mexican immigrant experience, and of discrimination more broadly against Hispanic minorities. In so doing, it explores the ways in which the politics of resistance that are so often aligned with these experiences are inscribed in its narrative form

Film franchise. From the theme to the TV show (based on the True Stories

The TV series True Stories (Prawdziwe Historie) is an example of contemporary commercial cinema. It is located on the border of documentary film and an attractive version of fictional cinema. In specific circumstances, it can be treated as a commercial product, but not only in the sense of film production and distribution, but more broadly, as a recognisable brand on the domestic cinema market, containing all the elements of industry know-how, as well as significant and commonly seen features of a film style that guarantees both turnout and financial success. In a sense, therefore, this phenomenon can be considered in terms of a film franchise which offers creators, most often beginners, a proven business patent in the form of a coherent television series, but also giving the possibility of a safe feature debut and the space for creative exploration.The TV series True Stories (Prawdziwe Historie) is an example of contemporary commercial cinema. It is located on the border of documentary film and an attractive version of fictional cinema. In specific circumstances, it can be treated as a commercial product, but not only in the sense of film production and distribution, but more broadly, as a recognisable brand on the domestic cinema market, containing all the elements of industry know-how, as well as significant and commonly seen features of a film style that guarantees both turnout and financial success. In a sense, therefore, this phenomenon can be considered in terms of a film franchise which offers creators, most often beginners, a proven business patent in the form of a coherent television series, but also giving the possibility of a safe feature debut and the space for creative exploration

Renewing Film’s Public Emphasis

A review of Patricia White Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms (Duke University Press, 2015)

«The Karma of Chicken Curry». Tibetan Masala films and youth narratives of exile

This essay offers a preliminary study of the cultural translation practices by young Tibetan exilic filmmakers in India, whose films, rather than rejecting the masala formula offered by Bollywood, have tentatively adapted it to the expectations of a Tibetan diasporic audience looking for a cinema capable of attending to the escapist needs of their minds while simultaneously catering to the intimate dreams of their hearts. I contend that Tashi Wangchuk and Tsultrim Dorjee’s first long feature Phun Anu Thanu (Two Exiled Brothers, 2006) is as an original film that presents a new offer on the menu of Tibetan diasporic films, a kind of spicy curry that has been advocated as a timely necessity and a yet-to-be-fulfilled desire