Page 156 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 156
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
that supports a claim about small cinematographies in the region as being
parts of so-called world cinema. Of course, this chapter was not meant to
present all evidence, which could be attained only in a longer and exhaus-
tive research. Still, we can say that multiple effects of social, cultural, po-
litical and technological changes are contributing impulses to an interest-
ing range of small cinematographies, which are further important for their
specific features, due to the region’s turbulent history and cultural resourc-
es. The political signifiers within the structure of film narratives are gen-
erally shifted so that they project a perspective of a pluralistic democratic
future, but in some instances, as mostly narrative arts always have been do-
ing, present insights and warnings concerning social and political realities.
Let me conclude these considerations by making a special point about one
recent film, directed by Béla Tarr, a well-known and accomplished Hun-
garian author. A Torinói ló (The Turin Horse – 2011) proves my point exact-
ly because of its elementary cinematic approach to the film narration and
its topic. The uncompromising aesthetics of long takes and slow rhythm se-
quences compose a film, which could be apprehended as a philosophical es-
say or even less: as an alignment of reflexive visual aphorisms. Of course,
the film makes no secret of its indebtedness to philosophy since the voice-
over initiates the movie by telling the anecdote about Nietzsche and his at-
tempt to help a horse submitted to an ill-treatment by his owner; the voice
then directs the audience’s attention to the horse and its fate. This introduc-
tion gives way to a repetitive visual contemplation pointing towards the ul-
timate problems of ontology and human existence by following the gloomy
miserable routine of father and daughter, exposed to a common life with
their old horse in an unceasingly windy steppe. This black and white film,
it could be said, echoes recent contemplations by authors from Deleuze to
Donna Harraway concerning the decentring of subjectivity in view of rec-
ognising environmental positioning of living creatures, including animals
and humans on different registers of knowledge and science. As much as
any political signifier seems absent from this meditative film, it is exactly
this absence, which marks the problem of a transformation of the Balkans
in accordance with its best reflexive traditions in the antiquity. Therefore, a
possibility alone for such a film to be created in one of the Balkan countries,
otherwise known for its rich cinema in the context of its middle European
cultural position, is a statement of the inner strength and a potential scope
of the small cinematographies of the Balkans.
154
that supports a claim about small cinematographies in the region as being
parts of so-called world cinema. Of course, this chapter was not meant to
present all evidence, which could be attained only in a longer and exhaus-
tive research. Still, we can say that multiple effects of social, cultural, po-
litical and technological changes are contributing impulses to an interest-
ing range of small cinematographies, which are further important for their
specific features, due to the region’s turbulent history and cultural resourc-
es. The political signifiers within the structure of film narratives are gen-
erally shifted so that they project a perspective of a pluralistic democratic
future, but in some instances, as mostly narrative arts always have been do-
ing, present insights and warnings concerning social and political realities.
Let me conclude these considerations by making a special point about one
recent film, directed by Béla Tarr, a well-known and accomplished Hun-
garian author. A Torinói ló (The Turin Horse – 2011) proves my point exact-
ly because of its elementary cinematic approach to the film narration and
its topic. The uncompromising aesthetics of long takes and slow rhythm se-
quences compose a film, which could be apprehended as a philosophical es-
say or even less: as an alignment of reflexive visual aphorisms. Of course,
the film makes no secret of its indebtedness to philosophy since the voice-
over initiates the movie by telling the anecdote about Nietzsche and his at-
tempt to help a horse submitted to an ill-treatment by his owner; the voice
then directs the audience’s attention to the horse and its fate. This introduc-
tion gives way to a repetitive visual contemplation pointing towards the ul-
timate problems of ontology and human existence by following the gloomy
miserable routine of father and daughter, exposed to a common life with
their old horse in an unceasingly windy steppe. This black and white film,
it could be said, echoes recent contemplations by authors from Deleuze to
Donna Harraway concerning the decentring of subjectivity in view of rec-
ognising environmental positioning of living creatures, including animals
and humans on different registers of knowledge and science. As much as
any political signifier seems absent from this meditative film, it is exactly
this absence, which marks the problem of a transformation of the Balkans
in accordance with its best reflexive traditions in the antiquity. Therefore, a
possibility alone for such a film to be created in one of the Balkan countries,
otherwise known for its rich cinema in the context of its middle European
cultural position, is a statement of the inner strength and a potential scope
of the small cinematographies of the Balkans.
154
