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Dagnostaw Demski in cooperation with A. Kassabova, I. Sz. Kristöf, L.Laineste and K. Baraniecka-Olszewska
study of Yugoslav cinema, the movies offered new possibilities of message transmis¬
sion. Interpreting film, we can also start from the influence of films on the specta¬
tors and the message films transmitted to audiences. Hayden White notes that
there are some similarities in construing a story in text and in film. Every written
story emerges as a result of condensation, transfer, symbolization, and selection.
And these are the very same processes that determine the shape of representation in
the film. As White wrote, medium is different, but the way of creating the message
remains the same (1988: 1195).
The cinema, more than written and photographic discourse, is adapted to the
faithful representation of certain aspects of surrounding reality, such as the land¬
scape, the place, the atmosphere, emotions and complex events like war or battles.
Film, through movement, extends the transmission of both additional sensory data
and additional elements arising from the “confrontation of characters”, dialogue,
dramatic events—transmitting dramatic messages through dialogue (Kassabova;
Lachowicz). In other words cinema represents a kind of relationship; an interac¬
tion between sides; an exchanging of glances, gestures, words. Relationships can be
shown in a more detailed way and in a different manner than in static media, and
in this way they aim to convey reality precisely as it is happening or has happened.
It seems that “grasping the motion”, film and television use the same technol¬
ogy but are completely different media in terms of building the techniques of com¬
munication. Cinematography is an art of writing movement and also of recording
movement. Ihe narrative is based on a series of gestures arranged in accordance
with the logic of time and space. A smaller screen, due to its size, has less power to
resemble reality compared to cinema. In the focal period, TV was not suitable yet
for the presentation of a rapid and complicated action. Television’s style of pres¬
entation was primarily of not fast but of fragmented narration (both textual and
visual), and thus, it left viewers a moment to doubt the version of presented events.
TV made viewers, however, believe in it. An opportunity to watch television from
neighboring countries (Sorescu-Marinkovi¢), for example, made viewers see the
differences and the different narrations of television programming. Opportunities
to see Soviet movies and American movies in the cinema (Kaser) also allowed audi¬
ences to see a variety of versions of depicting reality.
We should, however, be aware of a distinction between the concrete and its
representation in media. Often “the ‘truthfulness’ of the sequence is to be found
not at the level of concreteness, but rather at another level of representation, that
of typification. The sequence should be taken to represent a type of event. The
referent of the sequence is the type of event depicted, not the two discrete events
imaged, first, the firing of a shell and then, its explosion” (White 1988: 1197). In
this sense, Ildikó Sz. Kristóf analyzes a certain shift of representation in the images
and movies from the 1960s and 1970s. The truth of the presented scenes springs
from the depiction of certain characters whose historical significance was due to the
type of action taken at a specific time and place. The same role of media representa¬