Vol 3, No 3, 2011

The article deals with such phenomena as "Language", "Speech" and "Image" in the context of the hermeneutic interpretation and understanding of a literary text and a wider notion of the form this text is incorporated in. The author introduces the terms "image-opus" and "speech-opus" to describe the relationship between the image and speech on the one hand, and the perceiving mind on the other, and proves the importance of developing a theoretical model (reconstruction) of a work of art as a collaboration of the author and interpreter which is vital for the functioning of a speech-opus. In view of making a theoretical model as an adequate and vivid reconstruction of the literary text such notions as "esthetic feeling", "event" and "dialogism" are introduced.

The article examines some instruments of A. Sokurov's visual language, i.e. the system of symbolic structures which allow the filmmaker to reveal the metaphysics of life and death, to show the dialectics of the outer and inner vision. The principles of incorporating the system in question into the film's composition are viewed as exemplified by the films The Lonely Voice of Man and Mother and Son.

The article is devoted to the synthesis of cultures and mythological patterns in creating an artistic image. The author analyses the unique polycultural layer of the film Holidays of the Childhood , which comprises mythology as well as everyday, Orthodox Christian and social cultures, and analyses the Grigoryevs' screen adaptations of V. Shukshin's prose.

The evolution of informational culture which can be treated as media culture due to the development of audiovisual technologies, puts a number of questions brought about by the emergence of a new personality type, homo informaticus (informational man). The article covers the conflict between the nature of television with its tendency for spectacularity and the informational requirements of the modern society which demands an authentic presentation of the world.