The Actress’s Task Is to Play
Abstract
With the #metoo movement, a new profession appeared on the film set (and in the public debate): the intimacy coordinator. Her task is to ensure the security and comfort of actresses and actors participating in intimate scenes requiring nudity or simulating sex. Coordination (or mediation) also implies that these efforts are made with the filmmakers’ artistic goals in mind. The discussion on intimacy coordination in film evokes a lot of hope, doubts and controversy. They signal changes taking place in the film industry and reveal the long life of certain beliefs and prejudices, related both to sexuality and its representations and to the understanding of the film art. The author indicates some of them, concerning the status of the actress and her body, the essence of acting, and the processual and team nature of working on the set. (Non-reviewed material).
Keywords:
actress, intimacy coordination, film industry, sex in film, censorship, work on film setReferences
Baudrillard, J. (2003). Syndrom Heysel (tłum. A. Gwóźdź). W: A. Gwóźdź (red.), Media – eros – przemoc. Sport w czasach popkultury (ss. 205-210). Kraków: Universitas.
Google Scholar
Biskupski, Ł. (2013). Miasto atrakcji. Narodziny kultury masowej na przełomie XIX i XX wieku. Kino w systemie rozrywkowym Łodzi. Warszawa: Narodowe Centrum Kultury – Szkoła Wyższa Psychologii Społecznej w Warszawie.
Google Scholar
Sobchack, V. (2012). Pieprzyć ciało/przetrzymać tekst, czyli jak wyjść cało z tego stulecia (tłum. M. Szcześniak, Ł. Zaremba). W: I. Kurz, P. Kwiatkowska, Ł. Zaremba (red.), Antropologia kultury wizualnej. Zagadnienia i wybór tekstów (ss. 424-433). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Google Scholar
Authors
Iwona Kurzi.kurz@uw.edu.pl
University of Warsaw Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7180-8670
Culture critic and historian, film expert. She deals with the history of modern Polish culture in the visual perspective, theory of visual culture, and the issues of body and gender. Recent books (co-edited and co-authored): Kultura wizualna w Polsce [Visual Culture in Poland] (2017), Ekspozycje nowoczesności. Wystawy a doświadczanie procesów modernizacyjnych w Polsce 1821-1929 [Expositions of Modernity: Exhibitions and Experiencing Modernization Processes in Poland 1821-1929] (2017) and Ślady Holokaustu w imaginarium kultury polskiej [Traces of the Holocaust in the Imaginarium of Polish Culture] (2017). She writes for Kino and Dwutygodnik.
Statistics
Abstract views: 302PDF downloads: 246
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Iwona Kurz

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.
In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Iwona Kurz, The Bloodstream of History , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 118 (2022): One Take
- Iwona Kurz, Female Workers Are Leaving the Movie Theater , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 116 (2021): Cinema and Social Identity
- Iwona Kurz, Where is She – the Author? , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 125 (2024): Cinema as a Memory Machine
- Iwona Kurz, Mirror , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 119 (2022): (New) Film Theory
- Iwona Kurz, The Firemen’s Ball , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 120 (2022): Film Culture