Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- The Contributors
- Introduction: The Art of In-Betweenness in Contemporary Eastern European Cinema
- Part 1 Entangled Sens ations, Cinema in-between the Arts
- 1 Intermedially Emotional: Musical Mood Cues, Disembodied Feelings in Contemporary Hungarian Melodramas
- 2 Black-and-White Sensations of History and Female Identity in Contemporary Polish and Czech Cinema
- 3 Sculpture and Affect in Cinema’s Expanded Field. From Aleksey Gherman’s Hard to Be a God to Aleksey Gherman Jr’s Under Electric Clouds
- 4 Intermedial Densities in the Work of Jan Švankmajer: A Media-Anthropological Case Study
- Part 2 Immersions into Memory , Culture and Intermediality
- 5 Trickster Narratives and Carnivalesque Intermediality in Contemporary Romanian Cinema
- 6 Photographic Passages to th e Past in Eastern European Non-Fiction Films
- 7 Trauma, Memorialisation and Intermediality in Jasmila Žbanić’s For Th ose Who Can Tell No Tales
- 8 An Immersive Theatrical Journey through Media and Time in Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark
- Part 3 Refl ections upon Reality, Representation and Power
- 9 The Real and the Intermedial in Alexander Sokurov’s Family Trilogy
- 10 Th is is Not Magritte: Corneliu Porumboiu’s Theory of Representation
- 11 Intermedial Détrompe l’Oeil and Contemporary Polish Narrative Cinema
- 12 Superhero Genre and Graphic Storytelling in Contemporary Hungarian and Russian Cinema
- Index
10 - Th is is Not Magritte: Corneliu Porumboiu’s Theory of Representation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- The Contributors
- Introduction: The Art of In-Betweenness in Contemporary Eastern European Cinema
- Part 1 Entangled Sens ations, Cinema in-between the Arts
- 1 Intermedially Emotional: Musical Mood Cues, Disembodied Feelings in Contemporary Hungarian Melodramas
- 2 Black-and-White Sensations of History and Female Identity in Contemporary Polish and Czech Cinema
- 3 Sculpture and Affect in Cinema’s Expanded Field. From Aleksey Gherman’s Hard to Be a God to Aleksey Gherman Jr’s Under Electric Clouds
- 4 Intermedial Densities in the Work of Jan Švankmajer: A Media-Anthropological Case Study
- Part 2 Immersions into Memory , Culture and Intermediality
- 5 Trickster Narratives and Carnivalesque Intermediality in Contemporary Romanian Cinema
- 6 Photographic Passages to th e Past in Eastern European Non-Fiction Films
- 7 Trauma, Memorialisation and Intermediality in Jasmila Žbanić’s For Th ose Who Can Tell No Tales
- 8 An Immersive Theatrical Journey through Media and Time in Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark
- Part 3 Refl ections upon Reality, Representation and Power
- 9 The Real and the Intermedial in Alexander Sokurov’s Family Trilogy
- 10 Th is is Not Magritte: Corneliu Porumboiu’s Theory of Representation
- 11 Intermedial Détrompe l’Oeil and Contemporary Polish Narrative Cinema
- 12 Superhero Genre and Graphic Storytelling in Contemporary Hungarian and Russian Cinema
- Index
Summary
Porumboiu is a filmmaker obsessed with definitions and signs. (Alice Bardan2012: 127)
Minimalism, Realism, neo-Realism – these are the terms most often used to describe the Romanian New Wave in the critical and scholarly discourse. Maria Ioniță describes this ‘distinctive brand of realism’ as a ‘type of realism [that] demonstrates a gift for the patient observation of characters and surroundings, and an attraction towards the more unvarnished, marginal or muted aspects of reality’ (2015: 1 76). This emphasis on different aspects of Realism is definitely a novelty and a defining feature of films produced after 2000, especially when compared to the metaphorical-allegorical mode of expression that dominated the Romanian cinema of the 1980s and 90s. However, one of the main goals of this essay is to transcend the discourse of Realism on Romanian cinema, because if we consider Realism as a general characteristic for the whole New Wave, the meaning of the term will become too broad and the differences between filmmakers will disappear.
Though most scholars agree that despite some similarities, the cinema of Corneliu Porumboiu represents a distinctive voice within the Romanian New Wave, they are still reluctant to abandon the terminology and the theories of Realism. Andrei State (2014), for example acknowledges that Porumboiu’s cinema differs from the approach of other Romanian directors, but will only go as far as analysing his works through a more nuanced spectrum of Realism.Contesting this discourse on Realism, I will argue that Porumboiu is not a realist filmmaker, he is merely theorising the possibilities of Realism, more precisely those of the representation of reality. Although his stories are deeply rooted in the social realities of contemporary Romania, they provide a cinematic and narrative discussion of some major theories of representation. After analysing the most important topics and scenes where Porumboiu’s interrogations regarding representation can be identified, I will briefly investigate on the ‘philosophic’ nature of Porumboiu's cinema. I will try to answer the question whether his films can be interpreted as ‘direct theory’ – a term introduced by Edward S. Small (1994: 5) to describe the way in which experimental cinema can be seen as a kind of implicit philosophical discourse. Furthermore, do Porumboiu's films provide perhaps a substantial philosophy of audio-visual representation in cinema in a similar way as we see in René Magritte's ‘philosophical’ paintings, for example?
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- Caught In-BetweenIntermediality in Contemporary Eastern European and Russian Cinema, pp. 203 - 218Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020