DIGITAL HORROR – i ja u njemu

            Nedavno je iz štampe izašla knjiga Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon koju su priredili Linnie Blake i Xavier Aldana Reyes, predavači na Manchester Metropolitan Univerzitetu. Ovaj zbornik radova objavio je izdavač I. B. Tauris (London & New York) u okviru svoje serije „International Library of the Moving Image“, a jedan od 11 radova potpisuje i dr Dejan Ognjanović.

            Evo sadržaja knjige:

INTRODUCTION
1. Linnie Blake and Xavier Aldana Reyes, ‘Horror in the Digital Age’

SECTION 1. HAUNTED TECHNOLOGIES AND NETWORK PANIC

1. Steffen Hantke, ‘Network Anxiety: Prefiguring Digital Anxieties in the American Horror Film’
2. Steve Jones, ‘Torture Pornopticon: (In)security Cameras, Self-Governance and Autonomy’
3. Steen Christiansen, ‘Uncanny Cameras and Network Subjects’
4. Neal Kirk, ‘Networked Spectrality: In Memorium, Pulse and Beyond’

SECTION 2. DIGITAL HORROR AND THE POST/NATIONAL

5. Linnie Blake and Mary Ainslie, 'Digital Witnessing and Trauma Testimony in Ghost Game: Cambodian Genocide, Digital Horror and the Nationalism of New Thai Cinema’
6. Dejan Ognjanović, ‘“Welcome to the Reality Studio": Serbian Hand-Held Horrors’
7. Zeynep Sahinturk, ‘Djinn in the Machine: Technology and Islam in Turkish Horror Film’
8. Mark Freeman, ‘An Uploadable Cinema: Digital Horror and the Postnational Image’

SECTION 3. DIGITAL STYLISTICS

9. Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, ‘Night Vision in the Contemporary Horror Film’
10. James Aston, ‘Nightmares outside the Mainstream: August Underground and Reel/Real Horror’
11. Xavier Aldana Reyes, ‘The [•REC] Films: Affective Possibilities and Stylistic Limitations of Found Footage Horror'"

            Kao što iz naslova i sadržaja možete naslutiti, knjiga se bavi različitim aspektima horor filma u digitalnom dobu, odnosno najnovijim tendencijama u žanru, aktuelnim u poslednjih četvrt veka, ali naročito u poslednjih desetak godina, pod uticajem sve dostupnije tehnologije digitalnih video kamera i mobilnih telefona, sve rasprostranjenijeg video-nadzora, globalnih medija (naročito interneta), globalne paranoje u globalnom selu itd. Evo kako izdavač najavljuje knjigu:

„In recent years, the ways in which digital technologies have come to shape our experience of the world has been an immensely popular subject in the horror film genre. Contemporary horror cinema reflects and exploits the anxieties of our age in its increasing use of hand-held techniques and in its motifs of surveillance, found footage (fictional films that appear 'real': comprising discovered video recordings left behind by victims/protagonists) and 'digital haunting' (when ghosts inhabit digital technologies). 

This book offers an exploration of the digital horror film phenomenon, across different national cultures and historic periods, examining the sub-genres of CCTV horror, technological haunting, snuff films, found footage and torture porn. Digital horror, it demonstrates, is a product of the post 9/11 neo-liberal world view - characterised by security paranoia, constant surveillance and social alienation. Digital horror screens its subjects via the transnational technologies of our age, such as the camcorder and CCTV, and records them in secret footage that may, one day, be found.“

A evo šta o knjizi kažu recenzenti:

'Unflinching, diverse and incisive, Digital Horror is an essential collection not only in the field of horror studies, but also in its critical exploration of the dark side of technology.'

---Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Research at Swinburne University and author of Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality

'Found footage has become one of contemporary horror cinema’s signature formats and is associated with some of the most striking and disturbing horror films of recent years.  Digital Horror digs deep into this phenomenon.  It makes strong claims for the political significance of found footage horror as well as engaging with its aesthetic innovations.  Insightful and challenging throughout, this is a valuable addition to the ever-growing literature on the horror genre.'

---Professor Peter Hutchings, Northumbria University

'If your life is defined by the size of your social network, then this book is for you.  Digital Horror shows us precisely what’s at stake in the underside of our connectivity, and continually haunts us with the question, ‘what are you watching?’'

---Professor Steven Bruhm, Western University, Canada

            Što se tiče mog rada, on analizira filmove Život i smrt porno bande i Srpski film u svetlu teme zbornika, odnosno u kontekstu uloge video tehnologije, te kvazidokumentarističkog stila i snuffa u građenju njihove tematike i idejnosti, a naročito u svetlu tematike filmske (auto)viktimizacije, nacionalnih stereotipova, „balkanskog divljaka“, koncepta „srba“ (sic! s malim slovom), meta-filmskog preispitivanja nacionalnog identiteta i kinematografije, itd. Zapravo, još konkretnije, evo kako izgleda apstrakt ovog rada:

 ‘“Welcome to the Reality Studio": Serbian Hand-Held Horrors’ 

            This paper investigates two recent Serbian films, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang (2009) and A Serbian Film (2010), which caused a stir internationally with their unremitting, confrontational use of explicit imagery (pornography, splatter violence, snuff...). Both of them derive much of their effect through the use of pseudo-documentary style: The Life and Death... throughout, A Serbian Film occasionally. Both films also share the motif of snuff, though with somewhat different connotations.

            These are very consciously construed as meta-films: their protagonists are actors and directors, while filmmaking is the essence of their respective plots. The paper compares and contrasts the questions which rise from their films-within-films: "Who is making them?"; "With what purpose?"; and "What are the films about?"

            Both of these debuts come from young directors who grew up daily watching the brutal imagery from the war-torn Balkans in evening news of the 1990s. These videos are literally and metaphorically re-enacted in their films. They question the notion of reality, which is perceived as easily manipulated, edited and falsified. These two films embody telling confrontations between fiction (cinema) and documentary (reality?). 

The Life and Death... opens with the protagonist's video-diary, whose pseudo-documentary aesthetics envelops the rest of the film, thus aiming to represent the truth more truly than a more conventional cinema storytelling would. On the other hand, A Serbian Film uses documentary metaphor (porn videos and snuff) to criticize the pseudo-documentary "socio-realist" aesthetics of recent Balkan cinema as a construct and a lie, and embraces cinematic reality as its ultimate truth.  

            In the hands of Srdjan Spasojević and Mladen Djordjević, directors of these two films, video camera becomes a mirror used to question filmmaking itself. The camera serves to investigate the meaning of one's own role as a filmmaker and effects of the medium of film in the grim reality of an economically and morally devastated country. Both of these films push boundaries, not only of "good taste", but predominantly those of the cinematic medium and its ability to document reality, whether it is the "consensus reality" of TV news (but is there a consensus?) or the higher, artistic reality (ambiguous and often controversial). The Life and Death... and A Serbian Film attempt to break into (William) Burroughsian "reality studio", where "realism" is constantly produced and manipulated, trying to provide an objective correlative of the truths and lies inherent in any kind of video footage, both edited and "raw".

            Nažalost, pošto se radi o akademskom izdanju, to podrazumeva da je knjiga veoma skupa i izvan dometa prosečnog srpskog čitaoca, ali i inostranog, osim u bibliotekama koje sebi mogu priuštiti knjigu koja košta 60 funti, odnosno skoro 100 dolara. No, postoji mogućnost da se dogodine pojavi i izdanje u mekom povezu, po razumnijoj ceni.
Šteta, jer počeo sam da je čitam, i za sada je odlična, iznad proseka za ovu vrstu izdanja.

            Takođe, pre ili kasnije, ovaj moj rad će izaći i na srpskom, ovde ili onde, ali svakako ne na blogu, već u nekom respektabilnom časopisu ili zborniku. Već neko vreme se nosim mišlju da objavim zasebnu knjigu o SRPSKOM FILMU, pa možda to bude prikladan kontekst. Videćemo...