Iluminace, 2025 (vol. 37), issue 1
Articles
From Post-Communist to Post-Human Care. A Comparative Study of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Eden
György Kalmár
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):5-25 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1802 
On basis of a comparative close reading of two paradigmatic Eastern European films about precarious lives and acts of care, this article explores the relationship between three distinct but interrelated phenomena: (1) the early 21st century experience of increased precatity and vulnerability, (2) certain philosophical or theoretical trends (such as care ethics and critical posthumanism) that aim to conceptualize this new state of insecurity, and (3) new Eastern European cinematic trends that can be understood as responses to the first two phenomena. The article’s starting hypothesis is that socially committed Eastern European art cinema responds...
The Clash of Sino-Tibetan Propaganda On-screen. A Case Study of Tibetan Exile Movie Theatre
Martin Špirk
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):27-47 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1804
Different self-presentation strategies constantly compete on the battlefield between two propagandas using various media — documentary films and docudramas are among the most used persuasive tools to convey and disseminate a specific worldview through the mediation of selected information and analysis. The target audience of the films is influenced by techniques to maximize the effect of propaganda, including the emphasis on the credibility of the information conveyed, specific truth claims concerning the topic discussed, and, finally, the very nature of the visual message itself, which gives the impression of an authentic depiction of reality....
Polish Contemporary Cinema. Between Right-wing Cultural Policy and Netflix Imperialism
Anna Wróblewska
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):49-71 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1798
This article is the first synthesis of the social, political and economic conditions of Polish cinema in recent years and their influence on the current shape of Polish cinema. This shape is changing dynamically all the time, although the direction of the changes is not obvious at the moment. In many respects the situation of Polish cinema has been exceptional in recent years. But the processes or elements of the processes described in this article are reflected in the internal markets of Central and Eastern Europe. This situation should prompt researchers to analyse the impact of the external and internal environment on national film markets in this...
Visual Expansions in Narrating Contemporary Conflicts and History. The Possibilities of Virtual Reality (VR) Films
Agnieszka Kiejziewicz
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):73-91 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1803
This article focuses on Virtual Reality films depicting contemporary conflicts, with an emphasis on building viewer-screen relations and considering the cinematographic elements establishing the emotional reaction to the films. Analyzing the visual and narrative architecture of chosen Virtual Reality productions, the author explains correlations between the level of immersion and the viewer’s experience from the perspective of film and media studies. Furthermore, the author uses multimodal critical theory as the primary methodological tool to focus on modes experienced through different sensual channels during the 360° screenings. Moreover, it...
Move on Down. Precarity in Contemporary Hungarian Cinema
László Strausz
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):95-98 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1800
This video essay engages with the topic of precarity in feature films produced in Hungary around and after the regime change of 1989, which launched tectonic social transformations leading to widespread instability. The essay confronts precarity as downward intragenerational mobility from an economic and social perspective from the final years of state socialism until the present. As an audiovisual product, the video documents the author’s efforts to move beyond the disembodied voice of academic texts and experiment with accent as a marker of social entanglement.
Apparatus Theory, Post-Cinematic Dispositifs, and the Algorithmic Interpellation of the Subject
Jiří Sirůček
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):99-121 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1799
In the 1960s and 1970s, film studies scholarship linked to psychoanalysis and Marxism attempted, under the umbrella of apparatus theory, to examine the ways in which cinema reproduces capitalist power and ideologically affects the perceiving subject. Rather than analyzing the narrative configurations of films, its proponents focused on the hidden effects of the cinematic apparatus itself, and the ways in which it inscribes itself imperceptibly into the unconscious of viewers and interpellates them. Building on the insights of apparatus theory, this text asks how the analytical inputs of this thinking and its theory of the constitution of the subject...
Historical Development of Terminology of Czech Animated Film in the Period 1919–1990
Dita Stuchlíková
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):123-149 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1801
The terms used to describe animation techniques and the form of animation itself have evolved over the course of history and changed considerably, resulting in the existence of synonyms, imprecise definitions, and loose and unanchored use of terms. Through understanding the history of terminology, one can understand the perception of individual techniques and animation in the domestic environment over the years, and the influences that have shaped their concepts and perceptions. This understanding facilitates orientation in the inconsistent use of terminology over almost a century internationally.
Reviews
Godzilla versus King of the Monsters
Rudolf Schimera
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):151-159 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1805
Book Review: Dan Krátký, Král monster! Filmy s Godzillou v letech 1954 až 1965 (Brno: MuniPress, 2023).
Audiovizuální itineráře hudebních videí v současném mediálním ekosystému
Miroslava Papežová
Iluminace 2025, 37(1):160-165 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1806
Book Review: Tomáš Jirsa – Mathias Bonde Korsgaard, eds., Traveling Music Videos (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023).