Film History

Edited by Rimgaila Salys

The early years of the twenty-first century have been an exciting transitional period in Russian cinema, as the industry recovered from the crises of the late 1990s and again stepped onto the global stage. During these years four generations, from the late Soviet directors through post-Soviet and New Russian filmmakers to the Russian millennials, have worked in varying visual styles and with diverse narrative strategies, while searching for a new cinematic language. Financing and distribution models have evolved, along with conservative politics driving Ministry of Culture regulation. This reader is intended both for contemporary Russian cinema courses and for modern Russian culture courses that emphasize film. It does not attempt to establish a canon for the period but seeks to provide undergraduate students with an introduction to significant Russian films released between 2005 and 2016 that are also available with English subtitles. The twenty-one essays on individual films provide background information on directors’ careers, detailed analyses of selected films, along with suggested further readings both in English and Russian.

Learn more & purchase: https://www.academicstudiespress.com/filmandmediastudies/the-contemporary-russian-cinema-reader

This study explores the basic transformations of the Holocaust-memory in France on the basis of French fiction films that are to be identified as part of cinematography of the Holocaust. The chosen approach that can be described as a history of memory referring to models of collective memory in cultural science studies. The aim is to specify the change of collective memory at the level of the particular filmic narratives and - by doing so – to identify and to analyze the long term development and ruptures in the French culture of remembrance since 1945. 
The empiric part of this study is preceded by methodological reflections that on the one hand permit a clear and differentiating application of the terms used in the current cultural studies of collective memory. On the other hand this chapter should help to conceive the material of research “Fiction Film” as primal source for historical science. The investigation is divided into five chronological parts and involves altogether a sample of 50 films into the general study before electing cases for deeper analyses.
The first section (1945-69) which is generally well covered by the research to date is paying particular attention to the creation and the formation of different formations of collective memory in France, a process that has left its prints in the early films about the Holocaust. The focus is laid on the complex relationship of national memory and other political collective memories as well as particular social memories which is forming the background of the creation of a Holocaust-memory in a strict sense at the begin of the 1960ies.
The second – primarily concerning the 1970ies – section is dealing with a central momentum of modification of collective long term memory in France. The cinema of this period is to understand as prominent forum of discourses which does not only reflect the ongoing transformation from Résistance dominated memory into a Holocaust dominated memory but also significantly stimulating this shift. Film as one influencing value in a public-democratic sphere of collective memory is documenting on various (visual + narrative) levels the decline of the herocentric national remembrance towards a transnational victim based Holocaust memory. In the following third period which is located in the 1980ies and 1990ies this fundamental transformation is continuously specified and at the same time showing consequences. In the broader context of continuous medialization and politicization of the Holocaust on an international level the study is concentrating on three elements of the transformation in collective Holocaust remembrance: Universalization, Americanization and Victimization.
The fourth section is for a moment dislocating its focus, as it turns from the production of French film to the public and intellectual reception of the most successful international Holocaust films in the 1990ies as well as the continued dispute over the appropriate representation of the Holocaust.
The last part of the empiric part is locating and defining current tendencies in the filmic representation of the Holocaust in French cinema. The author is taking into account films presented until the year 2010.
Besides a general description of the sometimes very divergent evolution of the cinematic-taking reference to the Shoah in France, the study continues to relate selected examples to general phenomena of social intercourse with the past, especially the "Patrimonialisation" (Pierre Nora), and the Sacralization and the Re -politicization of history.
The diachronically oriented investigation - so far are sparse on the subject of research - and the wide coverage radius of empirical data prove - regarding the reconstruction and analysis of individual changes and constellations of collective memory formation - as very fruitful. Result of the present study is a extended and comprehensive history of the Holocaust Memory in France since 1945.

1924 kam Greta Garbo aus Stockholm nach Berlin, um in dem Großfilm der Trianon, DIE ODALISKE VON SMOLNY unter der Regie von Mauritz Stiller mitzuwirken. Kaum weniger spektakulär als der Plot dieses Films war der Skandal, der sich um die Produktion des schwedischen Stars drehte und Garbos deutsche Karriere vorzeitig beendete. Bilder vom Norden erzählt die Geschichte der spannungsvollen Beziehung zweier Filmnationen, die Weltgeltung beanspruchten und mehr als einmal miteinander in Konflikt gerieten.

In diesem Buch wird erstmals der Stellenwert der audiovisuellen Medien für die Herstellung und Popularisierung von Wissen aufgezeigt. Der historische Rahmen der Studie erstreckt sich dabei von den kinematographischen Bewegungsstudien in Psychiatrie und Physiologie Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Einsatz von Video in den sozialpsychologischen Experimenten der 1970er Jahre. Mit dem Gebrauch von Bewegtbildern zu Zwecken der Kontrolle, Aufzeichnung und Demonstration veränderte sich die gesamte Experimentalkultur der Wissenschaft. Vor dem Hintergrund flexibler medienkultureller Kontexte transformiert sich das Labor zusehends in ein Filmstudio des Wissens, in welchem die Versuchsanordnung am Storyboard entworfen, die epistemischen Gegenstände in Szene gesetzt und die Probanden gecastet werden.

In this book, Nariman Skakov explores the phenomenon of spatio-temporal lapse in Tarkovsky's cinema - from 'Ivan's Childhood' (1962) to 'Sacrifice' (1986). He argues that dreams, visions, mirages, memories, revelations, reveries, and delusions are phenomena which present alternative spatio-temporal patterns; they disrupt the linear progression of events and create narrative discontinuity. Each chapter is dedicated to the discussion of one of Tarkovsky's seven feature films and, in each, one of these phenomena functions as a refrain. Skakov discusses the influence of the flow of and lapses in space and time on the viewer's perception of the Tarkovskian cinematic universe. He opens and closes his original and fascinating book on Tarkovsky's cinema by focusing on the phenomenon of time that was discussed extensively by the filmmaker in his main theoretical treatise 'Sculpting in Time,' as well as in a number of interviews and public lectures.

Many of us have by now watched the new Netflix release, Outlaw King. And many on social media have had questions about the film, the period and its history. As I have written elsewhere “historical accuracy” is a problematic consideration, not least because medieval sources never provide a truly “accurate” portrayal of the past. All historical sources, upon which films like Outlaw King are based, were written with a specific purpose in mind, for a specific audience, and with the intention of telling one very specific version of history. This makes it no more accurate, then, than anything we see on the screen. Still, we historians work to interpret the history that has come down to us. As such, we can at least compare Outlaw King to the prevailing historical narrative to sort out what is likely from what is fantasy...

Directed by David Mackenzie and starring Hollywood’s Chris Pine, more usually found in blockbuster franchises such as Star Trek and Wonder Woman, Outlaw King is one of a number of medieval historical dramas soon to make their way to our screens. But, just as the trailer for the upcoming Mary Queen of Scots film prompted criticism across social media for apparent historical inaccuracy after it appeared to show Mary and Elizabeth meeting face to face (an event most historians agree never took place), so too will Outlaw King find itself under similar scrutiny...

A survey of Stanley Kubrick’s unfinished films generally includes Napoleon, Aryan Papers and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. A few extra projects are commonly included as well: One-Eyed Jacks, The German Lieutenant and The Burning Secret. Three more scripts have enjoyed media recognition recently, after the announcement of their tentative production: Lunatic at Large, The Down Slope and God Fearing Man. But this only scratches the surface of the extensive range of cinematic interests that Kubrick manifested. The following article lists all the projects the director considered, developed and abandoned in his career. A study of Kubrick’s work that encompasses his unsuccessful endeavors could help us better understand his tastes, methodology and the necessary ingredients that would make a good film according to Stanley Kubrick.

Liz Watkins, University of Leeds. contact: e.i.watkins@leeds.ac.uk  'Threads of Colour and Meaning in the Film Work of Nicolas Roeg and Anthony Richmond', Guest blog for the Eastmancolor Revolution and British Cinema 1955-1985. https://eastmancolor.info/2018/07/25/threads-of-colour-and-meaning-in-the-film-work-of-nicolas-roeg-and-anthony-richmond/ From the vibrant hue of a detail that punctuates the image to a single colour that envelopes the screen, the chromatic, in films by Nicolas Roeg, signals a greater acuity than cosmetic distraction. In Roeg's work I would find both an attention to a central paradox of cinema – a photographic inscription of an image by light as permanent record of a fleeting moment – and an experimental approach to photography and editing that has frequently been described as fragmented and labyrinthine (Roeg 2013, p.5, p.29; Houston 1973, p.205). However, my initial textual analysis of Don't Look Now, found that the colour red demanded an attention to the materiality of the film. Colours fade and colour balances shift: cyan and yellow dyes diminish emphasising the red hues. In viewing a 1973 Eastmancolor circulation print it seemed that the degradation of the image underscored the effects of lens flare as an element of film style (Watkins 2015). What I want to suggest is that Roeg's approach to colour combines a fascination with photographic materials and effects, filmmaking practices honed through his work as cinematographer for directors including Roger Corman, François Truffaut, and Donald Cammell, and experimentation with the possibilities of different colour technologies, lighting and editing. From a stated interest in the 'retained image', which Roeg describes as much like the indexicality of the photographic (associated with Bazin's concept of the death mask), to the complexity of a film form structured through layered flashbacks, Roeg's work examines the disquieting of belief systems and social structures. The thread that can be tracked through the labyrinthine form of Roeg's film work – social order and its enactment – is underscored by a tension in the organisation of colour, as it shifts between the lighting and design of classic cinema (bright reds, yellows set forth against greys and browns, else contrasting hues) and a spontaneity of camera movement and naturalistic lighting. For example, Roeg has cited classic Technicolor designs (c.1940-1950) as an influence for his cinematography on The Masque of the Red Death (Corman, 1964) and Fahrenheit 451 (Truffaut, 1966). In The Masque of the Red Death the progression of colour rooms (blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet), drawn from Edgar Allen Poe's text, is interspersed with a vibrant red hue as something that spills and consumes from within. A thread of colour can be tracked throughout the film, from the plague of the Red Death outside the castle, to the fantasies that consume from within it (Branigan 2017, p.121): its meaning lies in its movement. For Fahrenheit 451, shot on Eastman Color, Roeg recalls Truffaut's request for the 'artificial and glossy' colour schemes associated with the studio lighting of three-strip Technicolor (Petrie 1996, p.136). The film contrasts colour details – red fire engines – with a background of naturalistic hues. Roeg's references to Technicolor design are interlaced with a broader cultural shift in the visual style of 1960s filmmaking. As Duncan Petrie has written in his essay on British Cinematography, the 1960s saw a transformation from 'hard-edged, high-contrast lighting to a softer, more diffused use of illumination; from carefully composed images and minimal camera movement to a much freer, more mobile and spontaneous visual register; from the aesthetics of classicism to a much more self-conscious use of form appropriate to a decade associated with a new emphasis on spectacle and sensation' (Petrie 2018: p.204). Petrie's argument, that the availability new lenses and increased light sensitivity of film stocks facilitated 'a new topography and environment' (Petrie, p.210) links film technologies and aesthetics with a decade characterised by social and political change. However, I want to suggest that Roeg's collaborations with cinematographer Anthony Richmond further erode the dominant teleological form of a film history that has been determined by technological innovations (see Elsaesser's critique, 2016) and concepts of authorship. Roeg's work with Richmond – Walkabout (1970/1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and Bad Timing (1980) – combines naturalistic colour with photography considered experimental to commercial cinema: inverse images, slow motion, and mirrors extend and complicate the filmed space to convey dystopian landscapes.[1] Each of these films utilises lens flare, and shots which 'fall away into underexposure on the actors in the background' concealing the peripheral areas of the image. Richmond has linked these characteristics in Don't Look Now to the increased sensitivity of film stock (Richmond 1976; Watkins 2015). The effects of lens flare – causing the overexposure of the film as the light refracts on the camera lens and effaces the legible composition of the image – persists as the filmic expression of disorientation, intoxication and cultural displacement in contemporary works – Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1976) – shot by Russell Boyd for director Peter Weir. Boyd combines time-lapse sequences of dark clouds, backlit with golden sun and reflected in the windows of a skyscraper (The Last Wave) and slow-motion, high angle and 360˚shots in Picnic at Hanging Rock. The diminished hues of each overexposed image disquiets otherwise familiar landscapes. The entanglement of film technologies and aesthetics testifies to the persistence of filmmaking practices beyond the perceived obsolescence of a colour process such as three-strip Technicolor and questions the borderlines of national cinemas.[2] The selection of film stock was significant to colour design of Performance (1970), a film which Roeg co-directed with Donald

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.

Home on the Range (Will Finn and John Sanford, 2004) concluded what had been, for Disney, a stylistically progressive sequence of theatrically released features defined in this article as the Neo-Disney period that broke with the hyperrealist conventions most commonly associated with the studio's output. It is this critically neglected sequence of films, comprising Fantasia 2000 (James Algar et al., 1999), The Emperor's New Groove (Mark Dindal, 2000), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, 2001), Lilo and Stitch (Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, 2002), Treasure Planet (Ron Clements and John Musker, 2002), Brother Bear (Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker, 2003) and Home on the Range, which provide the focus of this article. By analysing the artistic and narratological composition of these films, this article seeks to demonstrate that the studio's feature animation is more heterogeneous and progressive than received notions of Disney allow for.

Using a neoformalist approach to the study of film and television, this paper analyzes the American Animated Cartoon, arguing that it shows particular traits and narrative strategies; and thus it can be considered a genre that deals with specific cultural dilemmas.

Cette étude retrace l’histoire de la couleur cinématographique, des origines au numérique, en la considérant dans le cadre d’un champ d’expériences spectatorielles et sociales, portant une attention particulière aux relations avec la culture scientifique, matérielle et visuelle de la couleur.

This study focuses on the history of cinematographic color, from origins to the digital age, by addressing it within a wider field of spectatorial and social experience, with particular emphasis on relationships with scientific, material and visual color culture.

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).

The crisis of documentary representations that began in 1980s has resulted in the reemergence of reenactments-documentary strategies that had been excluded from documentary film practices in 1960s due to their tendencies to intervene to the reality instead of capturing the life as it is. Reenactments act as the fictionalized reconstruction of the past events. They tend to show a subjective point of view and challenge the sense of believability that is strongly associated with documentary cinema. The goals of this paper are to explore the role that technological changes have played in the development of reenactments in the film; to analyze how reenactments communicate real past experiences without representing reality itself, and to answer the questions if there's a place for reenactments in contemporary cinema.

The cuteness of cats, and people’s devotion to appreciating that cuteness has established cat videos’ value in the digital marketplace. As such, cat videos are emblematic of the shifts and transformations brought to cinematic production, distribution, and exhibition in the Internet age. This paper unpacks the cat video phenomenon investigating the ways that the cat video formula reflects and revises forms and aesthetics that have been characteristic of amateur cinematic practice throughout film history and links that history to recent scholarship on the superflat. A close reading of two cat videos suggests the cat video’s adoption of the cinema of attractions model suggests that online video spectators are oriented toward affective connections with commercial interfaces.

In this (very early) research paper, I explore the history of product placement, and argue that the famous deployment of Reese's Pieces in Spielberg's beloved feature film, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, while not a rupture, marks a significant pivot point in the development of the practice.

Representations of childhood and playing spaces are the focus of my analysis of three film adaptations of Erich Kästner’s “Emil and the Detectives”. Erich Kästner’s novel is a so-called Berlin novel for children. Therefore, the different filmmakers took up the challenge to create the feeling of an international metropolis where a group of children is chasing an evil robber. In the three German adaptations, this happened very differently and always in the context of the times. 1931 focuses on the modern, noisy and frantic metropolis where the children find latitude in urban wasteland. The Berlin of 1954 finds itself as a city between heaps of ruins and new public housing. And in 2001, Berlin is a multicultural megacity where girls rule and everything is possible. However, in 2001, the children are much more limited in their freedom of movement.

the Censors proves that there is always something new to discover about "The Master of Suspense." The Alfred Hitchcock Wiki, https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Hitchcock lists over 200 books on Alfred Hitchcock and his films, the majority published within the past twenty years. This number does not include thousands of articles, reviews, interviews, nor The Hitchcock Annual, an intermittently printed journal. With these enormous repositories of information at hand one might wonder what remains to be said, but Hitchcock and the Censors offers new insights. It is informative even for post-production professionals who are familiar with Hitchcock's mastery of editing, creative use of sound, and memorable music. Most editors have likely studied the shower scene in Psycho (1960) ad infinitum. For the list of The Motion Picture Editors Guild 75 best edited films, including several directed by Hitchcock see the May/June 2012 issue of Cinemontage. While he may not have handed out ...

This paper investigates the possible disappearance of the screen with the evolution and design
pressures of viewership in mind. It begins with the complexities of the screen. This includes
the aspect ratio wars of cinema’s widescreen and the square television standard which changed
in favour of the cinematic. This leads onto the constraints and imposed aspects formed from
the additional orientation change of smartphones and tablets. The successive changes have led
to an attempt at established forms of viewing with wearable screens which provide relief from
the health risks of using handheld devices which are unique to the current generation.
Augmented reality, an extension of the real world with additional overlays provides new
experiences with practical uses to visualise new and unseen possibilities. One of the earliest
forms established for consumers is the overlaying of information onto live sports broadcasting
to increase user’s enjoyment and understanding. Smartphone cameras augment reality using
their cameras for user created visual content, with new possibilities for location based mobile
games in real-time user environments. The educational values of this form of viewing are
investigated, including the latest and future heads-up displays and head-mounted devices.
Virtual reality is mediated with immersive screens for three-dimensional experiences in 360-
degrees. The potential exists for a new medium of 360-degree video and photography for
consumer content creation. Real world applications of virtual reality are investigated beyond
the established gaming genre of this form of viewing. Head-mounted displays include motion
controls for new interactive screen abilities with potentially limitless possibilities. The screen
is in fact not disappearing as future technologies appear to suggest. It has evolved into the next
dimension, beyond the screen as it is known.

Der Begriff des Interface kategorisiert die Ausprägungsstufen einer kommunikationsstabilisierenden Schnittstelle als Interaktionsmechanismus, wobei die Interaktion von maschinellen Komponenten (Hardware, Software) sowie die vielfältigen Interaktionen zwischen UserIn und Maschine zur Geltung gebracht werden.

This chapter focuses on first ten years of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia. It explores the changing roles that the festival played vis-a-vis the Czechoslovak government's foreign and domestic policy, vis-a-vis recasting of Czechoslovak national identity, and vis-a-vis global economic,cultural, and political ambitions of the Soviet Union and the Soviet film industry.

The Spanish Civil War was a tacitly forbidden topic in Hollywood controlled by the self-censorship of the Hays Office and the PCA. Therefore, American film companies only produced three films about warfare at the same time as it was developing (1936-1939). This article analyses the historical content and the ideological discourse of The Last Train From Madrid (James Hogan, 1937), the first approach of Hollywood to the war in Spain. This is a minor film, which has been barely studied by film analysts and is still commercially unavailable. Nevertheless, it is so relevant since that it was the first view offered to the American public on Spanish belligerency in a fiction film. Such point of view was the result of the restraint exercised by the self-censorship, which summarized in a deliberate impartiality and in a distant and apolitical position. Their filmic effects were the absolute ambiguity and confusion. As a result, this picture is a clear reflection of the official attitudes of neutrality and non-interference shared by both Hollywood’s self-censorship system and the United States Government, and it establishes itself as a prediction of what happened in history: the non-intervention of democratic Western countries in the Spanish conflict.

KEY WORDS: The Last Train From Madrid (James Hogan, 1937) – Spanish Civil War –Hollywood –Film self-censorship – Hays Office – PCA – Political discourse – Ideology – Neutrality

The German film industry represented the only serious competition in the 1920s in central Europe to the Hollywood majors. Determined to eliminate threats to its hegemony, Paramount and MGM conspired to destroy or at least control the UFA, Berlin's largest film combine.