Subjectivity-Inducing Mechanisms in Contemporary Estonian Art Film
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BALTIC SCREEN MEDIA REVIEW 2014 / VOLUME 2 / ARTICLE Article Darkness on Screen: Subjectivity-Inducing Mechanisms in Contemporary Estonian Art Film MARTIN OJA, Tallinn University Baltic Film and Media School, Estonia; email: [email protected] 76 DOI: 10.1515/bsmr-2015-0016 BALTIC SCREEN MEDIA REVIEW 2014 / VOLUME 2 / ARTICLE ABSTRACT The main purpose of the article is to bring more clarity to the concept of art fi lm, shedding light on the mechanisms of subjective reception and evaluating the presence of subjectivity-inducing segments as the grounds for defi ning art fi lm. The second aim is to take a fresh look at the little- discussed Estonian art cinema, drawing on a framework of cognitive fi lm studies in order to analyse its borders and characteristics. I will evaluate the use of darkness as a device for creating meaning, both independently of and combined with other visual or auditory devices. The dark screen, although not always a major factor in the creation of subjectivity, accompanies the core problem both directly and metaphorically: what happens to the viewer when external information is absent? I will look at the subjectiv- ity-inducing devices in the fi lms of two Estonian directors, Sulev Keedus and Veiko Õunpuu. For the theoretical back- ground, I rely mostly on Torben Grodal’s idea about the subjective mode as a main characteristic of art fi lm, and the disruption of character simulation as the basis for the fi lm viewer’s subjectivity. INTRODUCTION tions and projects in order to gain support. For Estonian cinema, the last two decades Additionally, considering the context of spe- has been a time of seeking its identity and cifi c fi lm types, we can observe the strong continuously recreating its language, which international position of independent Esto- has been characterised by a renewal of its nian animation. We can speculate that ani- positions both in technical and stylistic mation has been attracting a signifi cant part terms. The early 1990s brought a change of of the experimental energy, mainly leaving paradigm – the Soviet modes of production feature fi lms with the task of fi nding a bal- were disrupted and new types of practices ance between the popular and the peculiar. and organisations (e.g., private fi lm compa- The style of a limited number of Esto- nies instead of state-governed production nian fi lmmakers can be described as hav- units) had to emerge. Now a model of Euro- ing art cinema properties according to the pean-style state co-fi nancing through the seminal work by David Bordwell, “The Art Estonian Film Institute and Culture Endow- Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” ([1979] ment of Estonia is quite well established. 1999), Narration in Fiction Film (1986) and The post-Soviet feature fi lms have his later works on continuity editing, e.g. mostly been story-driven for the same rea- Intensifi ed Continuity: Visual Style in Con- sons as elsewhere – fi nancing feature fi lms temporary American Film (2002), as well as is at least partially a business undertaking characteristics more recently defi ned by involving risks and calculations, requiring Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell (2012). I rather conservative, tried and tested solu- will focus on the fi lms by Sulev Keedus – 77 BALTIC SCREEN MEDIA REVIEW 2014 / VOLUME 2 / ARTICLE Georgica (Estonia, 1998) and Letters to Recent years have seen a blurring Angel (Kirjad Inglile, Estonia, 2011), and of the formal conventions between main- Veiko Õunpuu – Autumn Ball (Sügisball, stream and art cinemas, though many of Estonia, 2007) and The Temptations of the institutional differences (in modes of St. Tony (Püha Tõnu kiusamine, Estonia, production, distribution and exhibition) 2009). Works by other directors, such as remain in place. With today’s globalisation, Marko Raat, Rainer Sarnet, and Kadri art cinema has become a transnational Kõusaar, also contain elements relevant to phenomenon as the international cultural art fi lm, but these seem to be less promi- fi lm plays to a niche market, with the direc- nent in creating subjectivity. These works, tor regarded as a brand (Kuhn, Westwell as well as the subjectivity in Soviet Estonian 2012: 19). The relative vagueness of defi - cinema, would no doubt provide an interest- nition and blurring of borders mentioned ing fi eld of study for the future. above calls for a new, more technical under- The concept of art fi lm seems unavoid- standing of art fi lm. able in fi lm studies, since it also functions First, I see some problems emerg- as a labelling tool in various institutions of ing from the convergence of art fi lm and cinema. The Oxford Dictionary of Film Stud- auteur cinema. Leaving aside the post- ies defi nes art cinema as fi lm practices modern attempts to fend off the Author in having certain aesthetic properties, most favour of the Text, and various approaches importantly loose, episodic, or elliptical nar- emphasising collective authorship (e.g., ration, as well as image and sound that take Sellors 2007), even if we do not necessar- precedence over plot. These properties are ily try to locate the meaning of fi lm at the usually attributed to the artistic vision of point of reception, several contradictions the director as the auteur. The boundary can be pointed out. A director, or even a between art cinema and avant-garde fi lm producer, of a blockbuster can be treated has seemed fuzzy, especially given their as a brand (thus having signifi cant autho- shared roots in modernism (Kuhn, West- rial connotations) by a marketing system, well 2012: 18), but it has also been observed as well as by the viewer/consumer. Prob- that art fi lm is “neither mainstream nor ably one of the freshest and most provoca- avant-garde” (Galt, Schoonover 2010: 5). tive point made by François Truffaut and This allows us to posit art fi lm somewhere other French fi lm critics involved in the between mainstream and avant-garde. periodical Cahiers du cinéma in the mid- Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover dle of 1950s was recognising certain Hol- draw attention to the problems of defi nition lywood directors as auteurs. The fi lms of that art film poses for film scholarship: the arguably the most vivid example of “Is art cinema a genre, in the way that auteurship, Alfred Hitchcock, were popular mainstream criticism often uses the term? studio productions and cannot be consid- A mode of fi lm practice, as David Bordwell ered to be representations of art fi lm per claims? An institution, as for Steve Neale? se. The existentialist adjectives of freedom A historically unprecedented mode of exhib- or authenticity assigned to the works of iting fi lms, in Barbara Wilinsky’s terms? Is it auteurs (e.g., Stam 2000: 83) could eas- … a language able to disarticulate excess, ily characterise art fi lms as well, but I pro- style and politics from taste and to map pose that this link will cause, at least in the promiscuous hybridity of cinematic the context of this article, some confusion forms?” (Galt, Schoonover 2010: 6) Galt and and blurriness. As Graham Petrie has pro- Schoonover see this plurality not just as an vocatively observed, “the auteur theory ambiguity of art fi lm as a critical term, but was essentially an attempt to by-pass the as a central part of its specifi city, a posi- issue of who, ultimately, has control over tive way of delineating its discursive space a fi lm. [---] By distilling something called (ibid.). Transcending categories seems to be “personal vision” from a fi lm, and market- in the nature of art fi lm. ing this as the “essence” of its success, it 78 BALTIC SCREEN MEDIA REVIEW 2014 / VOLUME 2 / ARTICLE was hoped to evade all the sordid and tedi- environment, or creating the viewer’s sub- ous details of power confl icts and fi nan- jectivity in art fi lm mode. cial interests that are an integral part of Keedus, and especially Õunpuu, have any major movie project.” (Petrie [1973] repeatedly been called art-house directors 2008: 110) An even more relevant reason by the media and fi lm criticism, but with- to leave auteur cinema aside and focus on out much deeper analysis of the relevant the art fi lm would be that the latter is more details in their style. Peeter Torop is one attributable to fi lm text and the mode of of the few to describe how Keedus’s poet- its reception, allowing us to be more tech- ics gains its idiosyncrasy and universality nical. Thus I suggest that a more explicit at the same time. Using the sensitive con- distinction between auteur cinema and art fl uence of visual and auditory information, cinema should be made, seeking presuma- the author consciously sets his text into an ble ways for defi ning art fi lm by the means intertextual relationship with Tarkovsky’s of disembodiedness (Grodal 2009: 208), Stalker (Сталкер, Russia, 1979), among and via the latter, by viewer’s subjectivity. others (Torop 1999). On the one hand, it It is signifi cant that while David Bor- proves that many specifi c elements in fi lm dwell’s benchmark works “The Art Cinema work rather unambiguously without further as a Mode of Film Practice” and Narra- explanation, powered by the shared cultural tion in Fiction Film still touch upon author- time-space and psychological properties ship, they do so rather casually, having their of the audience, carrying the connotation emphasis on textual aspects. At the cen- of “art”, “art house”, “independent”, “sub- tre of Bordwell’s approach is the view of art jective”, or sometimes just “weird”.