Krzysztof Loska

The subject of the analysis is the feature-length debut of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Thai film director and video artist, allowing us to understand how the process of creating art can be combined with research work – in this case ethnography – making the camera a tool of cognition. Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) is a kind of epistemological and aesthetic experiment whose aim is to develop a new way of talking about reality by combining different voices and involving many people involved in the project in the creative process. The starting point of the article are methodological concepts proposed by representatives of research-creation (Erin Manning, Brian Massumi) and the idea of ethnographic surrealism as presented by James Clifford. Using a selected film example, I would like to show what the fabulation is all about as a narrative strategy and a tool for creating a collective artistic statement, which is also a research practice.

Andrzej Gwóźdź, Zaklinanie rzeczywistości. Filmy niemieckie i ich historie 1933–1949, Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, Wrocław 2018, s. 454.

Starting from a reflection on the traumatic experience of racism, the author of the article considers the possibility of transmitting the knowledge about the past and retrieving memory, and then points out how the relationships between the past, the present and the future are problematized, if we change the way we think about time, namely when it ceases to be perceived as something real or objective. The point of reference for further considerations is the HBO Watchmen series, made in 2019, which exemplifies the mechanism of prosthetic memory. According to the definition proposed by Alison Landsberg, prosthetic memory includes continuity and rupture. It is connected not only with the individual but the collective dimension as well, as it is related to the sphere of politics. In other words, it is a vehicle thanks to which we can travel to other places and times, and thanks to which the viewer may refer to important social and psychological issues.

Technological imagination and the question of identity in contemporary Japanese
Popular convictions as to character of Japanese culture are dominated by the orientalist stereotypes that include self-contradicting images of a society that is traditional and at the same time modern and technology-based. The ambiguous portrait of Japan seems to a certain extent justified, if one takes into account the transformation that took place throughout the 20th century and which gave rise to a new model of culture that was shaped thanks to a unique combination of various elements, both native and foreign. I am planning to focus on the impact of the mass media on the awareness and an everyday life of the Japanese people. Besides, I am going to consider the extent as to which the new environment has been transformed by the information revolution. For my research I shall use the contemporary cinema which perfectly reflects cultural issues of the nation in the process of the vehement social change, and which shows the hopes and fears of the future

The diaspora, memory and identity – the films by Ann Hui
The aim of this article is to present the works of Ann Hui, one of the most eminent film directors of the Hong Kong New Wave. In her fi lms Hui focuses on such issues as memory, ethnic minorities, intercultural communication, and the impact of political factors on the characters’ everyday life. These problems are often addressed from a subjective or even autobiographical perspective, like in her most significant work, Song of the Exile, to which I devote most of my analysis. The film is a perfect illustration of a basic feature of the Hong Kong cinema of the late 20th century, namely, a particular attitude to time, a nostalgia best expressed by a notion of déjà disparu, or a “conviction that all that is new and unique nowadays has already come and gone, and there’s nothing left but clichés and the scraps of memories of the things that never existed” (Ackbar Abbas). The longing for the past that stems from a sense of loss and necessity to reconcile with the passing of things appears to be a characteristic feature not only of Chinese fi lm art, but of Chinese culture as such.