Helman, Alicja (EN)

Helman Alicja, *19 May 1935 Radom, 24 February 2021 Torreviejo (Spain), Polish film theorist. In 1957, she graduated in musicology from the University of Warsaw, and subsequently completed the Film History and Theory Course at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Between 1957 and 1961, she served as editorial secretary of the weekly magazine “Ekran” and contributed to “Kwartalnik Filmowy”. In 1963, she was awarded a PhD in film studies by the Institute of Art Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences on the basis of her thesis Rola muzyki w filmie (The Role of Music in Film), supervised by J. Toeplitz. From 1965, she was a lecturer at the Institute of Art Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, serving as the academic secretary of the series «Studia z teorii filmu» (Studies in Film Theory). In 1966, she obtained her habilitation at the Institute of Film Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences on the basis of her thesis Uwarunkowania materiałowo-techniczne struktury dzieła filmowego (published as O dziele filmowym, Kraków 1970, 2nd ed. 1981); in 1967 she was awarded the title of associate professor; in 1972 she taught film studies at the Jagiellonian University; between 1974 and 1984 she was head of the Department of Film Studies at the Institute of Polish Philology, University of Silesia in Katowice; in 1979 she became an associate professor. From 1984, she headed the Department of Film Studies at the Institute of Polish Philology, Jagiellonian University, in Kraków. She is the author of books and numerous articles on film theory, and the editor of 12 books on the subject published by Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.

Alicja Helman’s academic interests centred on issues relating to the subject and methods of film studies as an independent discipline, as well as the theory and aesthetics of the cinematic work. An important part of Helman’s work is devoted to the relationship and interactions between the auditory layer – particularly music – and the visual layer of film. In her thesis Rola muzyki w filmie, the author seeks to capture the essence of style and the form of film music, as well as to define its specific characteristics (including the one-off nature of its performance and its montage-like character); music — according to Helman — is not merely a constituent element of a film, but one of the factors woven into a network of relationships with other factors, the combined effect of which creates the film. The other books on the subject of music are of a popular science nature: Na ścieżce dźwiękowej…  contains essays on the history of film music, whilst Dźwięczący ekran deals with the theory of music in film.