Radomir D. Kokeš

The database FILM-SHOT-COUNTER assembles and offers results of my own „cinemetric“ measurements of films and television episodes. I achieved those measurements by counting film shots by hand-clicker, processing the number of shots in particular software, or making a shot-by-shot analysis. To calculate the average shot length (i. e. ASL, a concept created by Barry Salt), I measure the film’s length in seconds (24fps in the case of sound films) and then divide it by the number of counted shots.

In my database, it is possible to find more than 3800 measurings of more or less contemporary films and television episodes from many countries. Besides the fact that you can find hundreds of ASL measurings of movies from the last decades here, the database is unique for at least three other reasons. Firstly, it includes an almost total number of preserved films of Czech silent cinema and at least 33 % of Czech sound cinema production from each year till (so far) 1933. Secondly, it covers a large number of films from Eastern European countries. Thirdly, it consists of many entirely rare silent films from the 1910s all around the world. Since I am updating the database regularly, it will continue growing more prominent.

It is necessary to point out that very ASL values are not the final results of any research. Those values are meant to be used as tools for further analysis. For what kinds of research may ASL be used? In the case of a particular film, the very ASL value will help us get a rudimentary awareness of its editing pattern, but it will not tell much more. When analyzing a particular movie, it is, therefore, much more helpful to observe the ASL’s variations during its course (for example, the ASL of individual scenes, sequences, blocks, or acts).On the other hand, by the force of ASL values or shot counts, we can gain a lot of various and inspiring suggestions for stylistic research in the case of groups of films. An acquaintance of ASL values can facilitate the juxtaposition of various film or television works of a period, region, genre, company, or particular filmmaker. The mere fact that certain films of a particular director (or period, region, company, genre, etc.) have identical or similar ASL values may not be a priori remarkable. That is because an identical or similar ASL value can be caused by a significantly different configuration of longer or shorter shots. However, it is worthwhile to consider the similarities in the case of relatively high and low ASL values – assessed against the background of the relevant norms. Nevertheless, more remarkable and predictable is when we find out that certain films of a particular director (or period, region, company, genre, etc.) have significantly different ASL than the others. These different ASL values imply a notable variability of creative choices that filmmakers made. Since that, we can put forward many research questions. I believe that my database offers extensive and reliable background for such questions.

In 2020 I added two entirely new parameters to the database, offering slightly different quantitative perspectives and comparative options than the existing ones. The first new parameter is the average number of cuts per minute of the film (CPM), which may be easier for some users to imagine than the average shot length in seconds. The second, in my opinion, a much more important new parameter is the number of cuts per hour of the film (CPH), which allows the detection of long-term trends and massive comparability. I work with this parameter in two forms in my database: optimally (a) in the form of the exact number of cuts per the first hour of the measured film; and (b) in case I do not know this number, in the proportional number of cuts per hour of the film. The exact number of cuts per hour is noted in the database with precision per unit of shots and is based on my own measurement (at a projection speed of 24fps). The proportional number of cuts per hour has been rounded to „fifties“ and „hundreds“. I’ve made hundreds of control tests of such a calculation in the cases of movies with already known the exact number of cuts per hour, and it’s relatively accurate in terms of broader trends. For the time being, I have decided to state the number of cuts per hour only for sound films because we can speak with certainty about the standardization of the projection speed in their case.

The chapter has two aims. First, it wants to move towards writing an aesthetic history of Czech cinema from the perspective of the poetics of cinema. The first section of the chapter introduces the methodological background of such research. In a critical debate with existing approaches, the second section formulates more general hypotheses about the typical features of Czech silent and early sound films. The third section is then a more focused case study of the first film shot in Barrandov Studios. This analytical part also discusses both one particular genre tradition and the thoughtful embedding of the extraordinary technical options of Barrandov Studios into relatively longer-term stylistic continuities. Second, the chapter aims to sketch the possibilities of its concept of regional poetics, proposing and illustrating with an example of Czech cinema in the period preceding and immediately following the opening of Barrandov Studios in 1933. The notion of regional poetics refers to the analytical and historical research regarding what is typical for a particular area: as such, it inquires a corpus of feature-length film works, each of which was predominantly made in a specified territory, predominantly in the official language of that territory, and for standard commercial distribution within that territory.

Norm as a tool of structural analysis and writing of aesthetically based history is a concept designed by Czech structuralist Jan Mukařovský. For several decades, American film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson have been handling this notion. After a review of the original concept, the article follows three main goals: (1) The broadest aim is to reconstruct specific roles the concept played in the process of establishing the so-called neoformalist poetics approach. By returning to Mukařovský's starting points, we should be able to more clearly understand how his concept of norm was employed and transformed by neoformalist poeticians in order to solve the problems of film studies as an academic discipline on the one hand and problems in formulating concrete research projects on the other. (2) The more particular goal is to point out certain shifts in neoformalist poeticians' handling of the concept of norm after they formulated the classical Hollywood cinema model. The concept of norm was initially used by them as a tool for bottom-up research of the stylistic history of cinema, as a hollow category for its unbiased explanation. However, consequently it has also become a somewhat filled category applied rather top-down as an interpretative background for assessing its alternatives. (3) The final goal is to answer the question why this re-assessment and interrogation of roles played by norm in neoformalist poetics matters now. By returning to the original concept of norm and by the treatise of its changing functions for film study, the article aims to remind us of the usefulness and flexibility of this research tool. As is suggested in the last part of the article, we still know too little about historical poetics of so-called regional cinemas. If we want to understand them properly, the concept of norm is highly worthwhile – but only if is reached by bottom-up research as the hollow category for the unbiased explanation of certain cinematic phenomena.

This article focuses on the films HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) and HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U (2019). Both handle the spiral narrative, which is recognised by the article as a specific storytelling pattern with a protagonist stuck in an iterative segment of space, time and causality – and this protagonist is not only fully aware of this situation but also tries to deal with it. What for other unaware characters is a closed loop is for the protagonist an open experience with an odd number of turns of time spiral. The spiral narrative is known mostly from high-budget films such as GROUNDHOG DAY (1993) or EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014). Nevertheless, as the article explains, it occurs in dozens of other theatrical films, VOD films, television films or television shows. However, what are the reasons why, when there is an extensive set of works to choose from, does the article takes just the doublet of HAPPY DEATH DAY films? (1) On their example, the article discusses author's general hypothesis about spiral narrative works as a series of applications of the innovative narrative schema as an aesthetic tool. Such a hypothesis consists of three broader dimensions: (a) the aesthetic dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as a part of the art work; (b) the creative dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as part of the problem-solution process of filmmaking; (c) the production dimension, i.e. the spiral schema as a part of the competition of audiovisual production. (2) An even more important reason, though, for selecting just these two films has been the fact that HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U is a sequel of HAPPY DEATH DAY. In the "post-classical era" of global franchises, sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots and transmedia storytellings, this does not seem to be exceptional. However, in the context of the spiral narrative, this is an unprecedented step that raises several questions the article asks.

2020 COMMENTARY: I wrote this item as a blog-post thirteen years ago as an undergraduate student, so there are a lot of flaws, errors, and naivety. Simultaneously I can see also some decent remarks in this text. What is important, it had been written two years before Warren Buckland's PUZZLE FILMS were published, and without a deeper awareness of THE WAY HOLLYWOOD TELLS IT written by David Bordwell. So I had found it worth to attempt a framework for my better understanding of these films which I have been considered remarkable. Moreover, although Christopher Nolan became one of the most commented film directors, the other three films I am analysing were somewhat forgotten. So this little piece can shed some light on them, I hope.

Despite the fact it had a lot to do with my youthful analytical enthusiasm when I wanted to see new ways of telling stories everywhere around, I still consider the 2005-2008 period of Hollywood filmmaking extraordinary. So many reasonably unusual films were shot. Not just the ones roughly analysed in the item (THE PRESTIGE, LADY IN THE WATER, DOMINO, STRANGER THAN FICTION), but also films like ZODIAC, SPEED RACER, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, SYRIANA, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK and many others - all of them told their stories in more or less unusual ways. We can say that they "teased" boundaries of classical narrative trajectories. Their classical aspects were provocatively combined with quite a new narrative or stylistic challenges. These challenges did not unequivocally serve to classical ones but became the dominant ones (in the formalistic sense).

It certainly was not an unified trend, not at all. However, it is possible to consider it as a kind of temporary creative milieu in the searching for fresh approaches to (classical) storytelling.

The book aims to effectively describe, explore and explain serial fiction. Provided approach – serial fiction poetics – aims to (1) present a systemic explanation of serial fiction, (2) capture a variability of artistic possibilities of serial narrative and, (3) offer tools for the analysis of actual serial works. Its concept of seriality serves as foundation for the first and second aims; it remains as mere background for analytical hypotheses with regard to the third aim. Serial fiction poetics assumes the presence of a space-time continuum, which is created by the work through interaction with its audience. This is process is termed a fictional macroworld: narrated stories take place within its conditions and settings. Each episode of a serial constitutes an episodic world; seriality denotes a relationship between the state of affairs in a macroworld at the end of a current episode and the state of affairs in the macroworld at the end of the previous one. Depending on the intensity of connectedness between these two states and the relations of fictional characters to them, the book presents a typology of seriality, which serves as a functional and heuristic categorization, yet not as a substantive one: a separate, a non-sequential, a semisequential, a sequential, a disrupted. The book is divided into three parts. The first part of the book gives a systemic explanation of seriality, using the five types top-down. The second part of the book explores variable possibilities of serial narrative. The third part of the book attempt to offer the greatest possible degree of aesthetic sensitivity towards those works analysed and those explanations presented. The three parts develop and transform, with respect to these three aims, which differ from each other but are also interrelated, only to answer the questions posed, in correspondence with the individual dimensions of serial fiction poetics, in ways that are at the same time systematic and aesthetically sensitive.
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Každý den čteme, posloucháme či sledujeme všeliká vyprávění na pokračování, která se vracejí k týmž postavám, příběhům či světům. Jak jsou vystavěna? Kterak vedou naši pozornost? Lze jim vůbec porozumět coby samostatným dílům? Odpovědi hledá filmový teoretik Radomír D. Kokeš (autor knihy Rozbor filmu) na příkladu televizních seriálů, jež vysvětluje právě skrze jejich vnitřní uspořádání, práci s divákem a hledání jednotného přístupu k různorodým dílům. Výklad je rozdělen do tří oddílů a jeho názornost posiluje množství rozmanitých příkladů, dílčích rozborů i rozsáhlejších podrobných analýz seriálů, které čtenář zná či možná bude chtít poznat. Kniha Světy na pokračování nabízí zcela nový pohled na fenomén seriálového vyprávění, jímž může zaujmout odborníky stejně jako fanoušky.

ROZBOR FILMU / FILM ANALYSIS [English summary]

Radomír D. Kokeš (Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2015)

The book focuses on possibilities of analyzing a film as a system. Its aim is to deal with the process of asking questions in such a way that their answers will contribute to convincing solutions of exactly formulated tasks related to the structure of a film work. It is not a broadly conceived exposé of numerous kinds of analyses of numerous types of films; it rather follows the method of in-depth study of a limited scope of issues. As such, it consists of four sections. Each of these sections offers different questions and answers, presents different findings to the reader and follows different methods of work with the explication. All sections logically follow from the others, and thus analysed topics reappear in various contexts, as well as complement and develop each other. An invariable background of the explications in the book is formed, first, by aesthetic norms of the classic Hollywood film, second, by traditions of the Czech cinema and third, by Kristin Thompson’s and David Bordwell’s neoformalist poetics.

(1) The first section is titled TO OBSERVE and it presents the basic tools for an analysis of a work of art. It sees the work as a system, where it distinguishes between basic components of narrative, style and the fictional world. It explains each of these components separately on specific examples. It gives special attention to the films: A Close Shave (GB, 1995) and Once upon a Time in the West (USA/Italy, 1968). The subject matter of the explication is a film work.

(2) In the second section, TO PLAN, the book approaches to discussion and writing about film as a way of issues-solving. It explains the importance of finding, posing, and answering question about the structure of a film. It gives examples of the films Titanic (USA, 1997) and Bloody Sunday (GB/Ireland, 2002). For a better understanding of the topic it deals with, it offers a conception of two types of theses: centripetal and centrifugal. The subject matter of the explication is the analysis as such.

(3) The third section TO WRITE AND READ / TO READ AND WRITE is the most guiding one, as it focuses on practical aspects of analytical writing, theoretical coherence and the field of recommended publication, which can help to enhance this sensibility. The subject matter of the explication is a written analytical text.

(4) The final section APPENDIX: THREE ANALYTICAL FORMATS AND A READER makes it easier to understand on a higher level the various ways of structuring analysis and its functions. It presents three formats of such texts: an analytical essay, an analytical study, and poetological study. Adaptability to analysed issues follows primarily from six case-studies of the films Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Czechoslovakia, 1966), Arsenic and Old Lace (USA, 1944), Speed Racer (USA, 2008), Memento (USA, 2000), Smugglers of Death (Czechoslovakia, 1959) and A Tooth for a Tooth (Austria-Hungary, 1913). Each of these more or less comprehensive studies deals with a different issue, asks different questions and (intentionally) addresses readers with different levels of experience. The subject matter of the explication is a unity of approach on the one hand and a variety of issues-solving on the other hand.
The book aims to show the widest range of the explanatory possibilities of its approach, which it labels a poetics of fiction. When working with its case-studies, it repeatedly proceeds in the chapters from formally playful films (like A Close Shave, Titanic, Speed Racer or Memento) to structurally complex works (like Once Upon a Time in the West, Bloody Sunday or Smugglers of Death). This enables it to cover a wide range of challenges, which one can encounter in the process of an analysis of (not only audio-visual) works. And finally, the last chapter introduces the theme of a historiographic dimension of the book. It presents original research of the beginnings of Czech cinema.

The field of an analysis of a film authorship is rather suppressed in the explications, although it remains crucial and as such it is primarily dealt with in the second section of the book, which can thus be also seen from this perspective as an original contribution to authorial poetics and questions of a realistic effect in the work of the director Paul Greengrass.

Given the reasons stated above, Film Analysis wants to be (a) a comprehensible guide to the analytical process of a wide readership (especially students of programmes in history and theory of the arts, cinephiles and beginning critics), (b) a collection of original analyses, which explain a variety of issues related to structures of film from the perspective of the poetics of fiction, and (c) a source of helpful tools for not only film analysis, but also the analytical process as such (for example, kinds of theses or analytical formats).

ENGLISH SUMMARY

The book "Worlds To Be Continued. Analysing Possibilities of Serial Narrativity" (in Czech "Světy na pokračování. Rozbor možností seriálového vyprávění") is built upon the assumption that fictional stories presented as serials have been a longstanding part of nearly everyday experience with narrative arts; capitalizing on the case of TV shows, it presents the intellectual framework, research background and analytical tools to effectively describe, explore and explain serial fiction.

The approach is theoretically grounded in serial fiction poetics, which aims to (1) present a systemic explanation of serial fiction, (2) capture a variability of artistic possibilities of serial narrative and, (3) offer tools for the analysis of actual serial works.

The original concept of seriality serves as foundation for the first and second aims; it remains as mere background for analytical hypotheses with regard to the third aim. Serial fiction poetics, as presented here, assumes the presence of a space-time continuum, which is created by the work through interaction with its audience. This is process is termed a fictional macroworld: narrated stories take place within its conditions and settings. Each episode of a serial constitutes an episodic world; seriality denotes a relationship between the state of affairs in a macroworld at the end of a current episode and the state of affairs in the macroworld at the end of the previous one. Depending on the intensity of connectedness between these two states and the relations of fictional characters to them, the book presents a typology of seriality, which serves as a functional and heuristic categorization, yet not as a substantive one.

(1) In the case of a separate seriality type, no fictional characters share the state of affairs at the end of the current episode with the state of affairs at the end of the previous one (e.g. The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964).
(2) In the case of a non-sequential seriality type, the current episode shares at least one fictional character with the state of the macroworld at the end of the previous one, without any open connection between these episodic worlds on the level of narrative causality (e.g. Columbo, 1968-2003).
(3) In the case of a semisequential seriality type, episodic worlds represent rather closed narrative units but they include at least one causal line of events, which continues in the state of affairs in the following episode (e.g. most of House, M.D., 2004-2012).
(4) In the case of a sequential seriality type, there are prevalent causal connections among episodic worlds on various levels (e.g. most of Dallas, 1978-1991; Pride and Prejudice, 1995; Stranger Things, 2016-?).
(5) Lastly, in the case of a disrupted seriality type, the standing linear composition of episodic worlds is problematized; instead of a line, it creates a network of relations among fictional elements in both states of affairs in a macroworld, where the currently valid state of affairs in a macroworld is being rewritten or retrospectively changed (e.g. Arabela, 1980-1981; Day Break, 2006; Lost, 2004-2010).

Worlds To Be Continued is divided into three parts, which are all based on analyses of a sample of roughly four hundred television serials from various countries and times.

1. SERIALITY AS A SYSTEM

The first part of the book gives a systemic explanation of seriality, using the five types top-down, and in these contexts, it describes ways of mediating information (a narrative outline) and issues of identifying fictional entities across episodes (a fictional macroworld arrangement). Both aspects turned out to be functionally related, and they expose a logic of an inner composition of seriality as a specific kind of fictional representation. The first part stands for a theoretical-descriptive dimension of the serial fiction poetics. It deals with relationships of seriality within a theoretical frame and, while considering its systemic transformations, it aims at a clarity of explanations.

2. SERIALITY AS A REGISTRY OF POSSIBILITIES

The second part of the book explores variable possibilities of serial narrative. It approaches the types of seriality from its material, bottom-up, as it explores preferred registries of artistic solutions both within the types of seriality and in the crime serial as a mode of fictional worldmaking. In these contexts, it studies (1) narrative process through an original question-based model of the analysis of a work, one which is not based on knowledge of a whole work, as in various other narratological concepts, because knowledge of this kind cannot be assumed in case of a serial work. The second part further focuses on (2) a fictional macroworld dynamics, which it explains through an original composite model, understanding a fictional macroworld as a dynamic interaction between various areas of a macroworld (microworlds and subworlds); this dynamics can be utilized to explain its happening. The second part of the book stands for a descriptive-analytical dimension of the serial fiction poetics. It deals with the art of seriality in a creative frame, explores registries of preferred artistic solutions, and aims at a productive depiction of a field of possibilities.

3. SERIALITY AS ANALYTICAL BACKGROUND

It was deemed necessary in the last, analytical part of the book to limit the range of types of seriality considered appropriate for research interest. Despite the descriptive potential of the typology, it represents a limiting set of categories for a dynamic analysis, disregarding the fact that one serial work often uses various types of seriality in a variety of patterns (e.g. Doctor Who, 1963-1988; The X Files, 1993-2016). What is specifically focused upon in the third part of the book are those tools which have so far constituted the basis for an analytical framework (narrative outline, fictional macroworld arrangement, question-based model of a narrative process, and composite model of macroworld dynamics) or its auxiliary categories (a cultural encyclopaedia, immersive spectatorship, and analytical spectatorship). The last two chapters attempt to offer the greatest possible degree of aesthetic sensitivity towards those works analysed and those explanations presented. An analysis of the serial 24 (2001-2010) explores tactics applied to achieve clarity and coherence within a very diverse system of narrative situates the work in the contexts of complex serials and those of action films of motion. The closing analysis of Mr. Bean (1989-1995) as a serial addresses the more general question of how can we systemically analyse the narrative and macroworld of serials that seemingly consist of a number of rather independent sketches. The third part of the book considers the analytical dimension of serial fiction poetics. It explores issues related to the explanatory potential of analyses of individual serial works within an aesthetic frame and aims at a maximum degree of adaptability in relation to the artistic uniqueness of these works.

The three parts of Worlds To Be Continued develop and transform, with respect to these three aims, which differ from each other but are also interrelated, only to answer the questions posed, in correspondence with the individual dimensions of serial fiction poetics, in ways that are at the same time systematic and aesthetically sensitive.

ROZBOR FILMU / FILM ANALYSIS [english summary]

Radomír D. Kokeš (Brno: MuniPRESS, 2015)

The book focuses on possibilities of analyzing a film as a system. Its aim is to deal with the process of asking questions in such a way that their answers will contribute to convincing solutions of exactly formulated tasks related to the structure of a film work. It is not a broadly conceived exposé of numerous kinds of analyses of numerous types of films; it rather follows the method of in-depth study of a limited scope of issues. As such, it consists of four sections. Each of these sections offers different questions and answers, presents different findings to the reader and follows different methods of work with the explication. All sections logically follow from the others, and thus analysed topics reappear in various contexts, as well as complement and develop each other. An invariable background of the explications in the book is formed, first, by aesthetic norms of the classic Hollywood film, second, by traditions of the Czech cinema and third, by Kristin Thompson’s and David Bordwell’s neoformalist poetics.

(1) The first section is titled TO OBSERVE and it presents the basic tools for an analysis of a work of art. It sees the work as a system, where it distinguishes between basic components of narrative, style and the fictional world. It explains each of these components separately on specific examples. It gives special attention to the films: A Close Shave (GB, 1995) and Once upon a Time in the West (USA/Italy, 1968). The subject matter of the explication is a film work.

(2) In the second section, TO PLAN, the book approaches to discussion and writing about film as a way of issues-solving. It explains the importance of finding, posing, and answering question about the structure of a film. It gives examples of the films Titanic (USA, 1997) and Bloody Sunday (GB/Ireland, 2002). For a better understanding of the topic it deals with, it offers a conception of two types of theses: centripetal and centrifugal. The subject matter of the explication is the analysis as such.

(3) The third section TO WRITE AND READ / TO READ AND WRITE is the most guiding one, as it focuses on practical aspects of analytical writing, theoretical coherence and the field of recommended publication, which can help to enhance this sensibility. The subject matter of the explication is a written analytical text.

(4) The final section APPENDIX: THREE ANALYTICAL FORMATS AND A READER makes it easier to understand on a higher level the various ways of structuring an analysis and its functions. It presents three formats of such texts: an analytical essay, an analytical study and poetological study. An adaptability to analysed issues follows primarily from six case-studies of the films Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Czechoslovakia, 1966), Arsenic and Old Lace (USA, 1944), Speed Racer (USA, 2008), Memento (USA, 2000), Smugglers of Death (Czechoslovakia, 1959) and A Tooth for a Tooth (Austria-Hungary, 1913). Each of these more or less comprehensive studies deals with a different issue, asks different questions and (intentionally) addresses readers with different levels of experience. The subject matter of the explication is a unity of approach on the one hand and a variety of issues-solving on the other hand.
The book aims to show the widest range of the explanatory possibilities of its approach, which it labels a poetics of fiction. When working with its case-studies, it repeatedly proceeds in the chapters from formally playful films (like A Close Shave, Titanic, Speed Racer or Memento) to structurally complex works (like Once Upon a Time in the West, Bloody Sunday or Smugglers of Death). This enables it to cover a wide range of challenges, which one can encounter in the process of an analysis of (not only audio-visual) works. And finally, the last chapter introduces the theme of a historiographic dimension of the book. It presents an original research of the beginnings of Czech cinema.

The field of an analysis of a film authorship is rather suppressed in the explications, although it remains crucial and as such it is primarily dealt with in the second section of the book, which can thus be also seen from this perspective as an original contribution to authorial poetics and questions of a realistic effect in the work of the director Paul Greengrass.

Given the reasons stated above, Film Analysis wants to be (a) a comprehensible guide to the analytical process of a wide readership (especially students of programmes in history and theory of the arts, cinephiles and beginning critics), (b) a collection of original analyses, which explain a variety of issues related to structures of film from the perspective of the poetics of fiction, and (c) a source of helpful tools for not only film analysis, but also the analytical process as such (for example, kinds of theses or analytical formats).

At the most general level, this article wants to answer the question of what it requires to write an aesthetic history of Czech cinema. As such, it tries to sketch possibilities of a research project on a poetics of Czech cinema illustrated through an example of Czech cinema to the period around the opening of Barrandov studios in 1933. The poetics of cinema explores construction principles of film works regarding (a) their relationship to individual works and groups of works, and (b) their relationship to particular empirical conditions of the creation of these works in synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

The article argues in accordance with these starting points that an internal cohesiveness of a research corpus is key for such a research project. However, Czech cinema represents a very diverse group of films. What is more, it is hard to decide what categories all the films fall into, let alone get a convincing corpus based on them. Yet, as is discussed in the first part of the text, if we define the research corpus based on a dominant language, dominant place of production and preferred distribution type, we can arrive at a logically consistent corpus of so-called regional cinema. In other words, it is possible to create a group of films that aim at functionally comparable goals.

In the second part, the article begins from the long-term perspective, by a polemics with such explanations of poetic approaches to regional cinemas in comparison to Hollywood cinema on the one hand, or international stylistic tendencies on the other. The first argument is that in the case of Czech cinema, in the 1930s studio requirements for systematic work and standard procedures were confronted with practices, preferences, and systems of norms from periods when filmmakers adopted them in an unsystematic way and with no externally prescribed standards. The second argument is that there were several parallel dominant systems of feature film norms in the 1920s that did not tend towards unification. They follow a different creative logic than in the case of international norms.

The third part of the article comes back to the question of the relationship between creative and studio continuities from a more short-term perspective in the analysis of the first film made in the Barrandov studios, Murder on Ostrovní Street from 1933. The article asks the following question: To what measure and in what ways is Murder on Ostrovní Street a project representing a stylistic continuity or, discontinuity, in its relation to films made in previous years? The text demonstrates that although the film was supposed to perform a variety of self-conscious film techniques, it did so in continuity with conventionalized practices of Czech films and filmmakers from previous years.

The fourth part of the article, the epilogue, reflects from previous findings to more general reflections on how research into so-called Czech regional poetics can contribute to the overall knowledge of an aesthetic history of Czech cinema.

Tato studie o práci výjimečného filmového badatele Adriana Martina byla napsaná při příležitosti vydání českého překladu jeho knihy Mizanscéna a filmový styl (2019, NAMU). Text nejdříve stručně charakterizuje Martinovu specifickou pozici v souvislostech dějin myšlení o filmu. V následujících kapitolách jej pak zasazuje jak do specifických kontextů australských, kde jeho přístup hrál významnou roli, ačkoli vlastně vždycky působil jako solitér stojící spíše mimo etablované instituce, tak obecněji do kontextů obecněji mezinárodních, do nichž vstoupil zejména v novém tisíciletí a rychle se adaptoval na mnohé výzvy, které přinášelo online publikování. V závěrečné části se článek analyticky zaměřuje právě na knihu Mizanscéna a filmový styl, již funkčně srovnává s dvěma jinými podobně ambiciózními publikacemi, které volí vůči ní alternativní cesty (Johna Gibbse a Davida Bordwella).

Film Acting, Czech Silent Cinema, and Questions of the Film Style Research / This article focuses on formally analytical research of film acting and raises two questions. (1) To what degree it is a feasible approach towards film acting outline and how does it explain the continuities and discontinuities of a stylistic history of Czech silent cinema till 1922? (2) To what degree such aim is or is not attainable with the help of existing knowledge in the field of international film style historiography? In its first part, this study follows top-down argumentation. It reflects the already existing interpretative frameworks associated with the early history of film acting, mainly in large foreign cinemas (for example the American and the French). These are related to the cinematic practices of Czech cinema in this particular era on one side, and the constructive principles of preserved Czech films from the late teens and early 1920s on the other. Instead of mechanically identifying the similar or even the same features, this article attempts to critically examine the validity, usability and explanatory value of these interpretative frameworks vis-à-vis the stylistic history of Czech cinema. The second part of this article reverses the previous process of the argumentation as it moves from the bottom to the top. It focuses on a thorough stylistic and narrative analysis of particular Czech films on the background of identified period filmmaking practices in Czech cinema. The article thus offers a synchronic explanation of certain stylistic aspects of a one year of Czech film production (1918) and discusses three three-reels films with a strong female protagonist: Čertisko (The Little Rascal), A vášeň vítězí (And the Passion Triumphs), and Učitel orientálních jazyků (The Oriental Languages' Teacher). In connection with these films, the article analyzes the principles of the acting techniques, explores the questions of cinematic staging and, above all, explains their functions in particular film works, which are compared one to another and put in a broader historical context.

Spiral as an Innovative Schema of Film Storytelling / This article deals with a specific pattern of audiovisual storytelling, where a character is stuck in an iterative segment of space, time and causality, is aware of that and tries to find a way to deal with it. It introduces the term "spiral narrative" for this narrative pattern known from films such as the 1993 Groundhog Day. It identifies it as an innovative schema which helps American film and television creators to defamiliarize various amounts of already established models of narrative development. The first part of this article defines the spiral narrative schema on the one side and the so-called loop narrative schema on the other side, explaining several aesthetic norms in films that exploit the spiral narrative schema. It also inquires into the possible ways in which spiral narratives can affect the viewers as well as the aesthetic sources of the spiral narrative schema as such. The second part brings a much more specific explanation using reasonably detailed analyzes of three films (the short 12:01 PM shot in 1990, the television film 12:01 from 1993, and the already mentioned Groundhog Day). These three analyzes reveal a historical trajectory, which might functionally explain the process of the establishment of the spiral narrative as an innovative auxiliary pattern in popular American audiovision.

The article looks at a number of significant features of the film theory and criticism of the poet and representative of Czech interwar avant-garde Vítězslav Nezval. Nezval tends to be somewhat marginalized as an author of texts on cinema in comparison with Karel Teige but, considering these features and frameworks, he represents a quite unique, albeit somewhat elusive, phenomenon in the history of Czech film theory. First of all, an unexpected and significant turn of thought in his interpretation of the phenomenon of cinema occurred within just one year. The turn was (a) rhetorical. In contrast to his earlier abstracting and theorizing approach, he later adopted an approach considerably critical, instructive and more focused on specific filmmaking practice. The turn was also related to (b) values. He proposed a concept of photogénie in 1925 which was focused on the abstract and visual qualities of cinema and employed the subject matter and story as devices in order to make the work more approachable to a wider, less aesthetically sensitive, audience. Nezval reversed the ratio, however, in 1926 and made the subject matter and quality of story construction the main driving force. Second, The article has attempted to support the claim that Nezval’s film theory has affinities, during both these phases, with certain aspects of the theoretical thinking of both Russian literary formalists and Czech literary structuralists. This may have been caused by the shared influence of constructivism through Karel Teige, through encounters with Roman Jakobson, or simply because of a tendency towards practical thinking about (film) art. This practical thinking was also related to an interest in discovering the logic of the inner mechanisms of work and its production.

Ač vychází ze zasazení proslulé postavy Tuláka do Chaplinovy takříkajíc nedlouhometrážní filmové tvorby, soustřeďuje se tato stať spíše na otázky spojené s jeho pozdějším celovečerním dílem. Věnuje se postupným proměnám pojetí a hlavně promyšleného opouštění konceptu Tuláka ve smyslu Chaplinova (a) hereckého pojetí ústřední postavy i jeho vztahování se k ostatním hercům, (b) zasazování ústřední postavy do celku filmového vyprávění.

This article, through a systemic analysis of the film and its complex comparison with other Cinderella adaptations, as well as with domestic film traditions, attempts to find the answer to the question connected to why Three Wishes for Cinderella was able to gain such international understanding and popularity. The answer is seen in the central thesis of layering. On the level of a fictional world the film effectively uses two layers of its ordering: non-private and private ones. On the level of narration, the film takes the viewer's attention along two lines over the course of events: the top and the bottom ones. In the top line Cinderella and the Prince seem to be considerably passive, whereas the dramatic actions are conducted by authorities: the King and the Queen announce a ball with the aim of marrying the Prince, Cinderella's stepmother along with her daughter systematically prepare for the ball. In the bottom line, the viewer concurrently watches the gradual approximation of the main heroes, their meeting at the ball is mainly the narrative peak witin the long-term courting process. Lastly, the article examines the tactics unfolding from the principle of layering on the level of a film style. It focuses firstly on the ways of staging action during longer shots, when the spatial relations are complicated with the help of sudden changes in the focal distance. Secondly, it tries to explain how the apparently discrete  levels of stylistic means cooperate during the creation of an expressive special-making impact. Thirdly, it points to seemingly elusive moments, when the objective intermediation is temporarily disrupted. In other words, layering is used as a kind of label for a set of tools and tactics. All of them are rooted in a wider context of the previous adaptations of the fairy-tale (as for narration and world of fiction), or in the context of a history of film style (long takes, use of long lenses, etc.).

The study on the one hand analyses in detail the television series Modré stíny (Blue Shadows), and on the other hand it does so on the background of more general phenomena: A. The television cycle Detectives from the Holy Trinity, of which Blue Shadows is a part, while deviating from some of its norms; B. the narrative and stylistic trends of contemporary Czech and international television crime fiction, with which Blue Shadows surprisingly does not appear to communicate; C. the history of Czech detective films with focus on a specific narrative tradition recognized by this article and labelled restrained detective film, which has developed at least since 1940s. With its narrative solutions, Blue Shadows seem to be an unusually intense variation on the restrained detective fi lm: detectives never get to understand the background of investigated events, the solution cannot be deduced from presented clues, and the aim of narration is, above all, to observe the very ramified structure of fictional macroworld. At the same time, the rarity of the composition of Blue Shadows lies in the gradual shift in emphasis from the investigation (first two episodes) to the private aspects of characters in the team of the superintendent Výrová (second two episodes). I claim that the central principle of narration in Blue Shadows is suppressing the expected and emphasizing the unexpected elements, and it is possible to think similarly about the self-conscious stylistic organization of the series — it expectedly provides spectator with elements necessary to comprehend the story but clearly does not follow the principle of functional equivalence in the set of preferred artistic solutions and emphasizes decorative aspects of stylistic construction, which is revealed especially in the way filmmakers approach to dialogues among characters.

Desátá kapitola z knihy SVĚTY NA POKRAČOVÁNÍ. KOKEŠ, Radomír D. "Anatomie fazole: logika vývoje osobnosti, makrosvěta a osnovy Mr. Beana". In Týž. Světy na pokračování: Rozbor možností seriálového vyprávění. Praha: Akropolis, 2016, s. 163-178, 194-195.

OPRAVA: Strana 175 - "V první epizodě postava Beana ještě není příliš soudržná a trojice zobrazených situací se způsoby řešení či jejich rozvíjení významně nesouvisí, takže jsou v osnově provazovány jednoduchými, vizuálně sjednocenými motivy [...]." -> "V první epizodě postava Beana ještě není příliš soudržná a trojice zobrazených situací se způsoby řešení či jejich rozvíjení významně nepodobá, takže jsou v osnově provazovány jednoduchými, vizuálně sjednocenými motivy [...]."

"Through the Pub Glass. Early Film Culture (not only) in Brno". ABSTRACT: This article focuses on the beginnings of Brno film culture until 1912, especially on the period of time up to 1904, that seems to be defined by a more general inclination of early travelling cinematographers to the systematic use of pubs or, broadly, eating places for the purposes of film screenings. After 1904, this modus of staging did not entirely subside and marked a significant return in the late 1900s as a suburban alternative to the emerging permanent cinema theatres and projections in the town squares; however, some new patterns of travelling film screenings began to prevail, namely in shacks and tents. This study puts these observations within the context of contemporary spatial transformations of the city, operation of catering and hospitality establishments and other technical attractions.

Časopis Respekt mě záhy po oznámení úmrtí badatele a spisovatele Umberta Eca požádal o osobně laděný nekrolog, který jsem nicméně pojal současně jako intelektuální výzvu k akademičtěji pojatému eseji o badateli, který mě významně ovlivnil a jehož práci důvěrně znám. Nešlo tedy o "žánrově" odpovídající rekapitulaci, jako spíše o snahu nabídnout interpretační rámce, skrze něž lze mimořádně bohatou badatelskou kariéru Umberta Eca číst. A třebaže text vznikl během půldruhé hodiny a je zejména v úvodu osobní až příliš, jeho východiska, otázky i argumenty shledávám i s odstupem plausibilními - a touto cestou je zpřístupňuji k další diskuzi.

Neoformalismus? Coby určující pro východiska, postoje, možnosti a vůbec rozpoznávání tzv. neoformalistické filmové analýzy se zpravidla považuje studie z roku 1988 "Jeden přístup, mnoho metod". Ve svém krátkém "úvodovém" článku se vůči této zavedené praxi ostře vymezuji, když vysvětluji, proč je (nejen) s ohledem na práci Kristin Thompsonové důležité rozlišovat mezi neoformalistickou filmovou analýzou jako programem a neoformalistickým filmovým analyzováním jako badatelským postojem.

The analytical study demonstrates how the process of storytelling in the film employs techniques and centripetal tactics in order to lead the viewer’s attention in a comprehensive and intelligible way despite the complex network of information provided by the film and their rapid presentation. In doing so, it uses an inner logic of splitting the narrative into four blocks, within which the motifs of the first allow for the development of the second and third but return only in the fourth. Each block employs a different model of work with information and different techniques of composition, thanks to which the hectic system of the work does not repeat itself in a tiresome way, but rather develops in a spiral. A comparison of the beginning and ending of the film reveals that the film, on the background of spy games, action clashes and travelling around the world, approaches the largely intimate motif of inner reconciliation. The dominant construction principle of the system of the work is the effort to present the information provided by the film and ongoing action as taking place at present. In its concluding part, the study relates the explicated systemic traits of The Bourne Supremacy to three more general frameworks. Firstly, the relation of the film to the trilogy is explained, claiming that every new film in the series develops the techniques of the preceding one. Secondly, The Bourne Supremacy is assessed from the perspective of aesthetic norms of action films in the period 2002–2008, against which the Bourne trilogy seems to be narratively and stylistically progressive. Thirdly, the features of the trilogy analyzed in the study are related to analytically inferred tradition of the so-called action films of motion, which according to this study has been developing at least since the 1930s and against which the Bourne trilogy appears thoughtfully evolutional rather than radically revolutionary.

English: The present study deals with the analysis of narrative and style in the film production in the Czech lands between 1911‒1915; it presents, in particular, a comparison of two distinct narrative trends, one present in the films of the Kinofa company and the second one represented by the films made with ASUM with special regard to the former ones. The analysed material is perceived from two different perspectives: vertically, from top to bottom (the general argument is demonstrated on a restricted sample of extant films) and the other way round (a thorough analysis of one example verifies the validity of the general argument). The nature of the Czech cinema in the given period is being drawn against the background of the silent era, as well as the aesthetic norms of the isochronal international cinema.

Czech: Studie nabízí poznání organizujících principů stylu a vyprávění ve filmech kinematografie českých zemí natočených v letech 1911-1915. Ze dvou vypozorovaných trendů se studie zaměřuje na jeden spojený s výrobnou Kinofa, kdy druhý trend výkladu slouží jako komparativní materiál. Soustřeďování na Kinofu přitom umožňuje zaujmout dvě perspektivy: shora-dolů (platnost tezí je demonstrovaná na souboru dochovaných děl) a zdola-nahoru (zevrubná analýza jednoho díla odhaluje platnost tezí ve specifické podobě jednoho systému). Poznání o povaze kinematografie v českých zemích ve zkoumaném období je současně vztahováno (a) k její povaze během celého němého období, (b) k mezinárodním estetickým normám v soudobé kinematografii.

Analytická, spíše interpretačně založená studie z roku 2006, která se věnuje narativní poetice a sdílené povaze fikčních světů (diegeze) jihokorejského režiséra Kim Ki-duka. Neúměrné množství cizích slov je daní za to, že jsem článek napsal coby student prvního ročníku vysoké školy. Z hlediska analytického porozumění tomu, proč byl tehdy Kim Ki-duk vnímán jako velmi progresivní a inspirativní režisér, nabízí nicméně pár stále platných argumentů.

KOKEŠ, Radomír D. "Mezi Drsňákem a Časem: Narativní a diskurzivní diskrepance uvnitř homogenní diegeze". Kino-Ikon: Časopis pro vedu o filme a pohyblivom obraze, 10, č. 1, s. 255-265.

Conference Paper. Part of my research project Historical Poetics of Czech Cinema (1911-1938): Punctual Analytical History of Film Style and Narrative. My research results from the presumption that better understanding of centripetal poetics of so called small nation cinema (without international expanding and norm-establishing ambitions) can possibly bring fresh insight into the world cinema’s film style history. At the first glance the Czech cinema seems to be relatively unimportant, but its inconspicuousness could be surprisingly interesting and fruitful even for international public. That would happen not just by exploring systems of all preserved films, but also under the necessary condition of answering right research questions. Needless to say that finding such questions could be much more difficult than answering them.

In my dissertation, I have presented an original model of the poetics of serial fiction, which represents a noetic position of a kind in my conception. The poetics of serial fiction finds its expression as such a position in two ways. It focuses (a) on formal aspects of construction and shape of series, and (b) on the level of semantic spatial-temporal macrostructure labelled as the fictional world. This way, the poetics of serial fiction is able to satisfactorily capture even mutually considerably different compositional constructions of the works, as well as explain gradual creation of the work’s fictional world and the course of events within.

In the introduction, I present three levels of my research. The first one is the pure level, which regards seriality as a theoretical problem. The second one is the descriptive level, which dynamically relates the first one to a collection of particular works, which correspond to the seriality mode. The third one is the analytical level referring directly to particular works, while taking into consideration their creation at a particular time, on a particular place, and within a particular context. Individual levels of research were viewed through two epistemic perspectives of the poetics of serial fiction, which are fictization (chapter two) and the fictional macro-world (chapter three). Chapters two and three have an identical structure.

The initial parts of chapters two and three introduce the rather static tools, which have placed five types of seriality into a system of relations between the descriptive and pure levels: means of information mediation (fictization) and qualities of fictional entities (fictional macro-world). In the latter part of the chapters, I present the rather dynamic tools that reveal further relations between the descriptive and analytical levels when applied to the five types of seriality: a questioning model (fictization) and micro-worlds, sub-worlds, and narrative currents (fictional macro-world). Explanatory possibilities of the poetics of serial fiction and its tools in the case of the analytical level are demonstrated in chapter four, which analyses the series 24 Hours.

Seriality is defined through the relationship between the state of affairs in the macro-world at the end of a current episode and the state of affairs in the macro-world at the end of the previous one. Five types of seriality are derived, depending on the level of mutual connection and relationships among psycho-physical fictional entities in the macro-world at the end of a current episode and the end of the previous one. The dissertation then proves (a) a gradual decrease of episodic worlds autonomy and (b) a gradual increase of the fictional macro-world importance as a referential frame for fictional entities’ relational qualities. Through the point of view of its five types, seriality is thus revealed as an internally ordered phenomenon.

Although the dissertation predominantly focuses on seriality as a theoretical construct, it concurrently regulates this construct with qualities of individual works and vice versa. For this reason, I wish to believe that despite it is a theoretical construct, it can by analogy speak of real qualities of serial fiction when this is seen as a specific category of works of art. This does not need to merely concern television serial fiction, because a lot of the presented findings about seriality are valid for serial fiction regardless the medium – film, radio, graphic novels and literary fiction. Questions connected with such extension of the validity of conclusions are however beyond the limits of research, which this dissertation specifies.

Norm as a tool of structural analysis and writing of aesthetically based history is a concept designed by Czech structuralist Jan Mukařovský. For several decades, the American film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson have been handling this notion. After a review of the original concept, the article follows three main goals: (1) The broadest aim is to reconstruct specific roles the concept played in the process of establishing the so-called neoformalist poetics approach. By returning to Mukařovský’s starting points, we should be able to more clearly understand how his concept of norm was employed and transformed by neoformalist poeticians in order to solve the problems of film studies as an academic discipline on the one hand and problems in formulating concrete research projects on the other. (2) The more particular goal is to point out certain shifts in neoformalist poeticians’ handling of the concept of norm after they formulated the classical Hollywood cinema model. The...