The Multi-mediatized Other | Chapter

'The Cultivation of Image in the Multimedial Landscape of the Polish Film Chronicle' in The Multi-mediatized Other: The Construction of reality in East-Central Europe 1945-1980. (Eds.) D. Demski, A Kassabova, I. S. Kristóf, L. Laineste and K. Baraniecka-Olszewska, L'Harmattan, 2017, pp.198-213

This chapter examines the Polish Film Chronicle (Polska Kronika Filmowa) as a multimedial medium through which images of social and political reality were constructed in post-war Poland. Rather than treating the Chronicle simply as a vehicle for propaganda or as a documentary record of contemporary events, the chapter considers how its particular combination of moving images, editing, narration, sound and visual conventions actively shaped what could be seen, understood and imagined as reality.

Focusing on the ways in which the Chronicle cultivated and organised images, the chapter explores the relationship between visual representation and the production of knowledge and authority. It considers how documentary images acquire meaning through their placement within wider sequences and narratives, and how the interaction between different media channels can produce particular understandings of people, places and social relations. Particular attention is given to the construction of difference and otherness, and to the ways in which categories such as nature and culture, tradition and modernity, or individual and collective identity are negotiated through the cinematic image.

The chapter argues that the power of the Polish Film Chronicle lies not only in what it explicitly communicates, but also in the ways its images establish particular forms of visibility and ways of seeing. Through processes of selection, framing, juxtaposition and repetition, the Chronicle contributed to the cultivation of a particular visual reality in which social and political meanings could appear natural, familiar and authoritative.


ISBN : 978-2-343-11863-5

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