2.5: Film. Between Image and Meaning
A film can be read in many ways: as a social phenomenon, as a text of culture, and as a cinematographic invention. Cinema is not only a space for the artistic expression of the director and the experience of the viewer, but also an image and a message, constructed from many codes – verbal and iconic signs, movement, sound, narration, and the interplay of points of view. Throughout the history of cinema, both its artistic forms and rules of interpretation have changed in accordance with the conventions of poetics and cultural transformations.
As an image, film is both a reproduction of reality and its construction. It creates the illusion of the existence of a world, but as a multi-coded message, it is subject to interpretation. It can be read as a simple story about events or as a system of signs in which meaning cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. Reading a film consists in assigning meaning to its components and depends on the viewer’s competence and the cultural codes they use.
Research on film involves recognising its form, cultural contexts, and ways of constructing meaning. Analysis of the history of Polish and world cinema as well as the social and political contexts of the work of directors such as Krzysztof Kieślowski, Wojciech Jerzy Has, Andrzej Wajda, and Jerzy Skolimowski allows us to show cinema as a field for negotiating meanings, ideas and values. The variability of film languages – from auteur cinema and documentaries to social trends – requires flexible research methods that combine humanistic reflection with careful reading of the image.
A separate area of reflection today is film canons and the mechanisms of their creation, in which the recognition of some films as important comes at the expense of other phenomena that remain on the margins. Instead of focusing exclusively on film texts and the achievements of “great directors”, researchers are turning their attention to B-movies, films created in small communities, including indigenous ones, and productions that operate outside the festival circuit. An analysis of funding sources, distribution and circulation mechanisms reveals that the divisions between artistic and commercial cinema, as well as between “good” and “bad” films, are historical and institutional in nature, rather than objective. This approach allows us to grasp the complexity of contemporary cinema as a space for forming and confronting meanings, interests, and values.
An important element of the research on film are also meetings with active filmmakers, including Andrzej Titkow, Rafael Lewandowski, and Janusz Zaorski – focusing on production practice and analysis of the creative process. Cinema appears here as a dynamic phenomenon: a cultural text, image-movement, social practice, and field of interpretation that constantly demands new tools of description.
Film as a cultural experience
One of the directions of film research is an approach that combines the analysis of film form with an anthropological and cultural studies perspective. Cinema is viewed here as a cultural practice – a way of describing collective experiences, memory, and identity – rather than solely as an autonomous work of art. This perspective allows us to situate film in a broad social and historical context, taking into account both its language and the ways in which it functions in culture and community, changing its meanings along with the historical and social context.
Film recycling
Material research into the history of film production can lead to unexpected discoveries. Wojciech Jerzy Has’s film Pamiętniki grzesznika (1985), an adaptation of James Hogg’s 19th-century novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, was made using the same set of cameras and lenses that Francis Ford Coppola had previously used during the production of Apocalypse Now (1979). Considering the stylistic and philosophical similarities between the two films and the fact that Has’s crew was aware of the pedigree of the equipment used, this historical detail enriches the possible interpretations of the work.
↑ FROM THE TOP. 1 The Horse in Motion, a historic series of photographs taken by Eadweard Muybridge, 1878. It proved that at a certain point during a gallop, an animal lifts all four hooves off the ground, which was impossible to see with the human eye (source: Wikimedia Commons) 2 35 mm film cameras used in the early days of sound cinema – equipped with soundproof covers (blimpy) and camera dolly systems that enabled smooth moving shots (source: Wikimedia Commons)
↓ Professional digital camera (Sony Venice 2 type) – used in film and television productions; interchangeable lens system and extensive rigging enable precise framing and working with a shallow depth of field (source: pexels.com)