Iluminace, 2019 (vol. 31), issue 1
Film Archives and Sharing

Film Archives and Sharing

Matěj Strnad

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):25-26  

The editorial of this special issue, inspired by the FIAF Congress in Prague, presents a collection of texts exploring various forms of sharing in film archiving, from international exchange and cooperation with universities to the digitization of Jan Kříženecký's works, intergenerational knowledge transfer, and data management of collections.

Tracing Past Exchanges between European and South American Cinematheques. A Key to Understanding the Impact of Sharing

Beatriz Tadeo Fuica

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):27-43 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1603  

The aim of this article is to contribute to uncovering and analyzing film exchanges between the French cinematheque and the cinematheques in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Montevideo (Uruguay) in the aftermath of World War II. In addition to providing a brief history of the creation of the South American institutions, this article studies specific titles that travelled between these three countries. On the one hand, it explores how films that arrived from the south allowed for the recovery of titles thought to be lost and contributed to the programs of the French cinematheque. On the other hand, it examines how the selection that was sent from the north...

Sharing Knowledge between University and Cinémathèque. The Autant-Lara Personal Archive for Research Projects

Alain Boillat, Frédéric Maire

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):45-57 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1604  

This paper discusses the modalities of collaboration between the Cinema Department of the University of Lausanne and the Cinémathèque suisse in three fields of activity: academic education, research (developed by researchers in the context of exchanges with archivists) and scientific and cultural mediation (with centralised management). In the autumn of 2009, the two Vaud institutions set a shared goal on the basis of a specific inventory of intensifying their collaboration by encouraging research on the vast collections, and, in that way, valorising them nationally and internationally. Currently seven research projects have already been financed...

Professional vs. Fan Cultural Criticism. Qualitative Analysis of Semantics and Normativity in Evaluation of Films

Pavel Zahrádka

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):5-23 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1601  

The article deals with the reconstruction and comparison of language games played by professional film critics and film fans evaluating film works. As part of this reconstruction, I focus on a pragmalinguistic analysis of semantics and normativity of evaluative judgments, which is methodically based on the analysis of relevant written reviews and semi-structured interviews with reviewers. My research shows that professional film critics and fans play essentially the same language game of the art lover, in which evaluative judgements rely on the speaker's personal taste. The most striking difference between the language games of both types of respondents...

Active Archive. An Interview with Michael Loebenstein

Marie Barešová

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):59-63  

An interview with Michael Loebenstein, director of the Austrian Film Museum, focuses on comparing the institutional functioning of state archives and independent museums, the current tasks of the FIAF federation in the field of digital preservation and knowledge sharing, and the I-Media Cities project, which uses digital technologies to research the relationship between film and urban space.

We Never Took Deconstruction Seriously Enough (On Affects, Formalism, and Film Theory). An Interview with Eugenie Brinkema

Jiří Anger, Tomáš Jirsa

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):65-85  

An interview with film theorist Eugenia Brinkema introduces her methodology of radical formalism, which, in polemic with contemporary affect theory, emphasizes the necessity of detailed reading of aesthetic forms and structures, applying these theoretical concepts to the analysis of horror films, pornography, and questions of the ethics of violence.

The Complicated Journey of Film Archiving (Jan Trnka: Český Filmový archiv 1943-1993. Institucionální vývoj a problémy praxe)

Petr Bednařík

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):112-115  

Petr Bednařík's review presents Jan Trnka's publication Český Filmový archiv 1943–1993 (The Czech Film Archive 1943–1993), which, based on thorough archival research, maps in detail the institutional changes and practical activities of this memory institution. In addition to the clear structure and valuable international context, the reviewer points out the absence of professional profiles of some leading figures.

Kaleidoscopic History of Photography by a Doyen of Operative Photography (Nadar: Když jsem byl fotografem)

Martin Charvát

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):116-119  

Martin Charvát's review presents the Czech edition of the memoirs When I Was a Photographer, in which the pioneer Nadar captures the beginnings of the medium, his experiments with aerial and underground photography, and the atmosphere of Parisian life in kaleidoscopic and reflective texts. The reviewer also highlights the editorial work and afterword by Tomáš Dvořák.

We Will Never Have Perfect Data. An Interview with Thelma Ross

Ladislav Cubr, Matěj Strnad

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):87-90  

An interview with FIAF Cataloguing Committee Chair Thelma Ross, conducted by Ladislav Cubr and Matěj Strnad, addresses the issue of standardization and sharing of metadata in film archives. In the context of the publication of the new FIAF cataloguing manual, it discusses the flexibility of descriptive models, the potential of linked open data, and the challenges associated with opening up archival data to users.

Satan's Best Ceremony: The Identification of Three Films by Jan Kříženecký

Jaroslav Lopour

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):91-103 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1608  

The text revisits the filmography of Czech cinema pioneer Jan Kříženecký, using digitization and archival research to identify and date three films – To nejlepší číslo (The Best Number), Satan's Ride on the Railroad, and The Consecration of the Cornerstone of the Jubilee Church of St. Anthony in Prague VII – and clarifies their original function as film advertisements in performances at the Smíchov Arena.

The Digitization of Jan Kříženecký's Films

Jeanne Pommeau, Jiří Anger

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):104-107 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1609  

The text by Jeanne Pommeau and Jiří Anger describes in detail the principles of digitizing Jan Kříženecký's films, emphasizing the preservation of the historical value and authentic materiality of the original materials, including their technical imperfections and specific colors, rather than attempting to digitally clean up the image.

Vláčil František (1924-1999)

Petr Hasan

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):108-111 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1610  

Petr Hasan's text presents director František Vláčil's personal archive, stored at the National Film Archive, as an essential research source which, in addition to valuable autobiographical fragments and correspondence from the normalization period, contains unique original drawings, screenplays, and photographic documentation related to his films.

Response to the text "Patchwork" by Václav Macek

Martin Palúch

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):120-126  

Martin Palúch's text is a polemical response to Václav Macek's review, in which the author defends the methodological foundations and terminological anchoring of his monograph Censorship and Documentary Film after 1989 and, using specific examples, refutes the reviewer's objections concerning the definition of censorship in a democratic society and the interpretation of individual film cases.

Share That Knowledge! Finding Strategies for Passing on Knowledge Across Generations of Archivists

Nadja Šičarov, Janneke van Dalen

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):127-132 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1614  

The text presents an international research project initiated at the FIAF symposium, which aims to analyze and systematize the process of transferring expert and tacit knowledge between generations of audiovisual archivists through methods of archival ethnography and action research, thereby addressing challenges associated with technological developments and organizational changes.

New Acquisitions of the NFA Library

Iluminace 2019, 31(1):133-135