Kwartalnik Filmowy

Deadline: December 31, 2020

No. 113 (Spring 2021)

We accept articles – in Polish or in English language – concerning subjects as announced below, as well as papers not strictly connected with the main topic of the volume, especially if they are related to history of Polish cinema, film theory or issues from the area of film and media studies that are underresearched so far. We also accept reviews of the books on film published in Poland or concerning Polish cinema and media.

Film as an idea, i.e. creating a mediated image that would reproduce movement, is as old as culture. On the other hand, the development of film technology, first as a photochemical, then electromagnetic, and finally a digital process, is the relatively short albeit tumultuous history of film as a medium. The art of cinema is always entangled in the technological process of creating a work, which brings both limitations and the freedom of artistic expression. This entanglement concerns all films, even the famous Zen for Film (1965) by Nam June Paik, because in fact – as the author himself has shown – there is no other possibility of artistic expression here, although, as can be easily seen, the concept itself is perfectly translatable into other recording technologies. Filmmakers sometimes try to conceal the materiality of their works, focusing on creating an illusion of reality. For others, the surface, the tape, the material substance already constitutes the film itself – as in the case of Man Ray, Stan Brakhage or Julian Antonisz. One may wonder where this materiality is today, in the age of digital effects and virtual existence of cinema.

The technological context calls for revisiting the fundamental question: what is film? After all, even in the age of a multiple ways of recording, we can still talk of a coherent history of the art of motion pictures. To what extent, then, are these technologies complementary or aesthetically significant in the creative process?

Examples of thematic areas:

• the history of film technology, also as the history/archaeology of cinema
• film technology and aesthetics
• the influence of the technological process on the shape of the film work v. the influence of the works themselves on the technological development
• film technology vis-à-vis notions such as original, copy, image recording
• digital remastering and related aesthetic problems
• using mixed film technologies as a conscious creative process
• technology and film theory
• the second life of film
• the cult of novelty and audio-visual perfection
• image (and sound) manipulation – the manipulative potential of image (and sound)
• image surface v. depth
• film as material substance
• technological limitations/innovations