SUBJECT IN THE ACT

The current editors have therefore put their heads together and joined forces — not so much to reminisce, but to bring the fields of film and theatre closer through a shared reflection. Despite their many overlapping actors, spectators, and readers, these two domains have in recent years withdrawn into themselves, unable to keep up with the flood of events in an age of hyperproduction.

We begin with Ekran’s regular column Object of the Month, in which Ana Šturm, using archival photographs taken in the mid-1970s at the Week of Domestic Film in Celje, recalls the actor’s social role as a worker — his role in “real” life, where he first organizes the work processes through which fiction will be produced. The focus then turns toward the subject. Most of the longer essays address the fundamental issue shared by both film and theatre, outlined in the opening contribution by Jaka Bombač: namely, how does the “subject” operate, and what does it mean, when performing a role on stage or on screen? Who or what is this subject anyway — and is not the very notion of the subject historically conditioned? What is the difference between authenticity and (mediated) performance, between truth and falsehood? Might lies on screen be more genuine than the falsehoods of reality? Do fake tears, as Paolo Caneppele suggests, not have a greater effect on the viewer and on the authenticity of her experience — as discovered by the Gorizia-born black-and-white film star Nora Gregor?

Former Ekran editor Stojan Pelko — who also instigated the first joint issue of these magazines — deepens the reflection on the affective dynamic between the subject who watches and the cinematic object, which, by shifting between subjective and objective perspectives, can touch the viewer more deeply than a real-life encounter.

A strong emphasis in this issue is also placed on the perspectives of the actors themselves, who perform transformations into various roles, while their processes of becoming and creation often remain confined to their internal experience, rarely shared with outsiders. In this issue, the “elusive nature” of the acting profession is generously articulated by fellow actors Marko Mandić and Anuša Kodelja, both active in theatre and film. The actor shaping a role is not necessarily a solitary one. Does our star really perform all the tricks alone? Maša Peče looks behind the scenes of the “stunt paradox.” Stunt performers appear in every film, yet audiences never see them — that invisibility is precisely their job. “Viewers must never find out that their favorite action star is sitting in the makeup chair while real action heroes, the stunt performers, risk their lives on set to preserve the illusion.”

Other supporting professions also often remain invisible, even though they crucially contribute to the creation of a character or role — albeit without putting their own bodies on the line. Set designer Barbara Kapelj discusses these professions and their contributions with costume designer and fashion creator Sanja Grcić, makeup designer Tinka Prpar, and actress Katarina Stegnar.

That reality can sometimes resist even the most sophisticated disguise of costume and makeup is known to almost every woman who has ever been subjected to the male gaze — a gaze that, in patriarchal society, few can escape, and that bears particularly destructive weight for those who do not fit into the desirable norm. In her essay “The Stars Are Ageless, Aren’t They?” Anja Banko writes about the phenomenon of gendered pressure on aging actresses in Hollywood, who, to survive in this competitive capitalist-patriarchal world, must not (visibly) age. When will a woman — on film — ever be truly free?

Croatian dramaturg and choreographer Anna Javoran, in the midst of her creative process for the project Politopornography: A Case Study — inspired by the Yugoslav “Black Wave” — asks whether the eroticism of bodies on screen can ever be separated from objectification and commodification. Together with her, we ask how to capture all that radiance, imagination, and vitality from the stage and the screen — those moments that, we sense, are not false and might yet give us the impulse to look beyond the veil of deceptive appearances, and perhaps become subjects of revolution ourselves.

(Pia Brezavšček and Ana Šturm)