Between locus amoenus and locus terribilis: Baroque topos in films of Marian Dora
Authors | |
---|---|
Year of publication | 2025 |
Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
MU Faculty or unit | |
Citation | |
Description | Comforting shots of the sunrise alternate with footage taken by a handheld camera in the autopsy room. A farmhouse in the middle of a paradisiacal countryside becomes the scene of torture and murder. Films with such ambivalent elements by German filmmaker Marian Dora appear repeatedly in YouTube videos with several million views concerning 'disturbing films'. However, they have been completely neglected by the scholarly literature, including that dealing with the films from the category of 'extreme cinema' that can otherwise be found in these videos. Despite this, by bringing Dora into the field of scholarly discussion for the first time, we do not attempt to portray him simplistically as an outsider defying categories. On the contrary, it seems more productive to show that this filmmaker follows the existing aesthetic categories but uniquely enriches (and simultaneously subverts) them. Above all, we will try to explain that in his films, Dora creates a specific hybrid topos that seems to be a combination of two opposing spaces that can be traced in European culture back to Ancient Greece – the locus amoenus, i.e., the pleasant place, and the locus terribilis, i.e., the horrendous place. This will be made possible by relating Dora's films to the Baroque as understood by the art historian Josef Vojvodík for who Baroque is an "unfinished project", a meta-style that still manifests in todays culture and which simirlarly as Dora’s films works preciesly with the merging of opposites such as creation and destruction, matter and spirit, or fascination and shock. |
Related projects: |