The article provides a comparative analysis of images of Russia in the contemporary Polish and Swedish documentary films. In both countries, representations of Russia have deeply-rooted political and historical connotations. Over the last decade, there has been a visible shift in Poland towards new ways of talking about Russia in documentaries, largely as a result of a younger generation of artists taking up the subject. Is a similar transformation visible in the work of Swedish documentary filmmakers? In an effort to answer this question, the author of the article points to similarities and differences in the Swedish and Polish documentary films about Russia, and in doing so, moves beyond divisions along national and generational lines.
The article focuses on the main artistic and economic strategies in the Nordic cinema and television in the last decade. The author analyses transnational turn on the Scandinavian movie market and describes the most important fields of academic researches connected with the Idea of North, Arctic studies and new wave of genre films from Norway, Iceland, and Finland. The last part of the text also discusses the order and subjects of the articles presented in the Nordic issue of Panoptikum.
After having been a Danish colony since 1721, Greenland obtained Home Rule in 1979, extended in 2009, and since then it has set the course for a full independence. Despite the fact that Greenlandic independent film production does not have a long genealogy, Greenlanders have been a very keen object of film representations since the very beginning of the history of cinematography, at least in the Danish context. Drawing on the theory of representation within critical discourse analysis of a.o. Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, the article presents an analysis of representations of Greenland in the European cinematography (with a special focus on Danish film productions) as well as the Greenlandic self-representations in the independent Greenlandic film productions. While Greenlanders in the early European films were primarily construed as less civilised, childlike and therefore needing to be protected and educated in order to reach a higher level of cultural and technical development, with the indigenous movements in the ’70s and the Greenlandic fight for home rule, they began to be represented as victims of the Danish colonization and its post-war policy of accelerated modernization. Contrary to those images, Greenland’s own film productions mostly focus on radically different issues mostly concerned with youth urban identities and local attachment rather than the colonial past and its aftermath.
The article focuses on the development of “Swedish sin” in the twentieth century. The author deliberates on how the way of exposing nudity and sexuality in the Swedish cinema has changed over the years. He observes that it was Arne Mattson who broke down a cultural taboo by depicting the images of young and naked females, just a few years after World War II. Pictures of intercourses between the lovers shocked audiences in Western Europe, as well as in the United States. Although at that time the biggest authorities (with Ingmar Bergman ahead) started their fight for freedom of speech, the Swedish cinema soon began to be stigmatised and seen as obscene. It was related to the emerging of so-called “golden era of the Swedish porn” which had started in 1971, right after the abolition of porn prohibition. The author examines the chosen works of several important Scandinavian researchers to emphasise that what most people recognise as “Swedish sin” at the beginning used to mean idyllic love.
The aim of this article is to analyse mutual behaviours, life situations and experiences that heroines of Lars von Trier’s so-called Depression Trilogy share. These female characters are created in such a way that they are unable to function as parts of society or follow some stereotypical roles attached to femininity. They neither understand patriarchal organization of the world nor accept other women who want to follow rules created by men. The author of this article emphasises on the importance of two paradigms of femininity present both in von Trier’s Depression Trilogy and his previous films. The first one is demonic, sexual, free and insane, and the other one – social, obedient to masculinity, ruled by stereotypes of women. The protagonists of Depression Trilogy are unable to fulfil their roles as mothers and wives, which is a consequence of the fact that they feel limited when some rules are imposed on them. They treat their femininity and sexuality rather as natural powers, which means they should be classified into the first of the abovementioned paradigms.
Tadeusz Szczepański, znawca kina skandynawskiego, autor obszernej monografii Ingmara Bergmana i książki o Janie Troellu, wydał obecnie historyczną pracę Kino nordyckie. Pierwsze stulecie (2020), która obejmuje czasy od kina niemego przez okres klasyczny i kino nowej fali po koniec XX w. Ujęcie to uwzględnia złożony fenomen kulturowy, jakim jest kino powstające w pięciu krajach: Szwecji, Danii, Norwegii, Finlandii oraz Islandii. Autor wyodrębnia cechy wspólne, ale także specyfikę narodową cechującą poszczególne kinematografie nordyckie. Postacią kluczową jest w tym wywodzie Ingmar Bergman, jego twórczość, a także wpływ, jaki wywarł na kino tego regionu.
EN
Tadeusz Szczepański, Polish expert on Scandinavian cinema, author of an extensive monograph on Ingmar Bergman and a book about Jan Troell, has now published the historical work Kino nordyckie. Pierwsze stulecie [Nordic Cinema: The First Century] (2020), which covers the time span from silent cinema, through the classical period and new wave cinema, till the end of the 20th century. His approach takes into account the complex cultural phenomenon of this cinema emerging in five countries: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland. The author distinguishes the common features of Nordic cinematographies, but also their individual national specifics. The key figure in this historical presentation is Ingmar Bergman: his work, as well as the impact he has had on the cinema of this region.
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