Page 132 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 132
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
ical existential forms, which are transmitted by ‘concrete’ individuals of a
given social formation, encompasses much more than just observation of
their speech and deeds. It must penetrate to the mechanism that produces
the existential forms of subjective individuality in which such a mechanism
is to be found” (Rotar, 1985: p. 33).
The period in which Slovenian film entered its modernist form (the
1960s to the early 1980s), brought a significant change of register with re-
gard to topics, as well as in view of its messages. Contrary to the earlier pe-
riod, Slovenian film became much more aware of itself as an agent within
national culture. A range of various indexes of modernity entered the work
of reconstructing identity in the imagery of films, which were still based on
traditional and modernist local literature. Instead of emphasizing the peas-
ant roots of the Slovenian nation (i.e., ethnicity), there was a shift towards
the construction of an almost non-existent bourgeois past, with all imag-
inable components, from characters of frustrated intellectuals to brothels.
Films that were not preoccupied with the problems of the closed “na-
tional (ethnic) universe” were rather rare. Such films, shot in the 1960s, ap-
peared to be sophisticated, existentialist, and very particular. They flirt-
ed with French New Wave cinema, and finally some similar (yet different)
films appeared as alternative film in the 1980s. Slovenian cinema was the
first among Yugoslav cinematography to join other Eastern European
trends, which in final analysis, especially in view of aesthetics and topics,
does not differ very much from the contemporary Western European au-
teur film. It should be added here that in his film Robar-Dorin in part also
reacted to this tradition of modernism, represented most visibly by Boštjan
Hladnik. In his “post-modernist” montage, Robar-Dorin turns this current
of Slovenian film from certain universal topics to local problems – only to
confront the phenomena of nationalism.
Having said all this, the film Rams and Mammoths represented a
transgression of the established institutionally supported form of film pro-
duction in Slovenia. For the group of critics formed around the journal
Ekran in the late 1970s and 1980s, who for a long time were silently ignored
in the public arena, this transgression was more or less expected. The ba-
sic structure of the film, which is discernible in a “polyphonic” montage,
resembles a sociological method. The film nevertheless retains its specific
cinematic form, but this form benefits from sociology in the sense that it in-
tensifies its suggestive potential, compared to films determined by artistic
mannerism. Even measured against the “traditional” criteria of aesthetic
130
ical existential forms, which are transmitted by ‘concrete’ individuals of a
given social formation, encompasses much more than just observation of
their speech and deeds. It must penetrate to the mechanism that produces
the existential forms of subjective individuality in which such a mechanism
is to be found” (Rotar, 1985: p. 33).
The period in which Slovenian film entered its modernist form (the
1960s to the early 1980s), brought a significant change of register with re-
gard to topics, as well as in view of its messages. Contrary to the earlier pe-
riod, Slovenian film became much more aware of itself as an agent within
national culture. A range of various indexes of modernity entered the work
of reconstructing identity in the imagery of films, which were still based on
traditional and modernist local literature. Instead of emphasizing the peas-
ant roots of the Slovenian nation (i.e., ethnicity), there was a shift towards
the construction of an almost non-existent bourgeois past, with all imag-
inable components, from characters of frustrated intellectuals to brothels.
Films that were not preoccupied with the problems of the closed “na-
tional (ethnic) universe” were rather rare. Such films, shot in the 1960s, ap-
peared to be sophisticated, existentialist, and very particular. They flirt-
ed with French New Wave cinema, and finally some similar (yet different)
films appeared as alternative film in the 1980s. Slovenian cinema was the
first among Yugoslav cinematography to join other Eastern European
trends, which in final analysis, especially in view of aesthetics and topics,
does not differ very much from the contemporary Western European au-
teur film. It should be added here that in his film Robar-Dorin in part also
reacted to this tradition of modernism, represented most visibly by Boštjan
Hladnik. In his “post-modernist” montage, Robar-Dorin turns this current
of Slovenian film from certain universal topics to local problems – only to
confront the phenomena of nationalism.
Having said all this, the film Rams and Mammoths represented a
transgression of the established institutionally supported form of film pro-
duction in Slovenia. For the group of critics formed around the journal
Ekran in the late 1970s and 1980s, who for a long time were silently ignored
in the public arena, this transgression was more or less expected. The ba-
sic structure of the film, which is discernible in a “polyphonic” montage,
resembles a sociological method. The film nevertheless retains its specific
cinematic form, but this form benefits from sociology in the sense that it in-
tensifies its suggestive potential, compared to films determined by artistic
mannerism. Even measured against the “traditional” criteria of aesthetic
130
