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Drawing on Brigitte Peucker’s question – “in cinematic experience, what promotes the impression of reality, and when does medium awareness come into play?” – I examine how Sokurov’s family trilogy constitutes a certain oscillation between the immediate and the constructed. The films under discussion connect with the sensual, physical-biological and socio-political reality, while, simultaneously, they emphasize the artificial and stylised. Mother and Son employs distancing painterly images which deemphasise the figures of the characters while it finishes with the extreme close-up exploring the skin as a raw material used to construct image with its varied colours and textures. Father and Son, on the other hand, enters the dialogue with medicine; through the employment of haptic images and medical appropriations, the film focuses on the sensual along with the biological dimension of the body. Set within a clear socio-political context, Alexandra explores the senses which are not readily available in cinema, that is touch and smell, and thus emphasises the trace of the physical presence on screen. This paper demonstrates how Sokurov’s family trilogy situates itself on the intersection of the Bolter and Grusin’s “desire for immediacy” with the mediated and remediated.

Przekładaniec/Roly Poly (1968), based on a Stanisław Lem script, is a frequently overlooked oddity in Andrzej Wajda's body of work. The film occupies a curious place amongst the director's films of the 1960s, a period marked by his experimentation with new genres and modes. Furthermore, as part of a Polish television series of science-fiction shorts, Roly Poly is an interesting example of an exclusively Polish film made when the genre was dominated by international co-productions. This paper aims to trace the genesis of Roly Poly, particularly its script and Wajda's relationship to Lem. It also briefly traces 1960s and 1970s Polish science-fiction cinema and the implications of Wajda's choice of the genre. I propose a reading of Roly Poly as the reflection of Wajda's own artistic struggle. The protagonist's gradual identity loss through the gradual substitution of his defining characteristics in some ways mirrors the filmmaker's own creative and personal crisis at that time. Roly Poly is here interpreted as a palate cleanser, or an artistic break from Wajda's signature themes and stylistics preceding the opening of a successful second act in the director's career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]