The article argues for the relevance of intermediality in the interpretation of Radu Jude’s films made after 2016: The Dead Nation (Ţara moartă, 2017), I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Îmi este indiferent dacă în istorie vom intra ca barbari, 2018), The Marshal’s Two Executions (Cele două execuţii ale Mareşalului, 2018), To Punish, to Discipline (A pedepsi, a supraveghea, 2019), The Exit of the Trains (Ieşirea trenurilor din gară, 2020), Uppercase Print (Tipografic majuscul, 2020), Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc, 2021). Instead of framing Jude’s aesthetic in terms of the Eisensteinian montage, as many reviewers have done, the article addresses the way in which these films insist on the tensions between media, on creating an ontological collage, not only a cinematic montage. The collage effect of the films materializes in sensuously and intellectually layered permutations that connect different media and shares some traits with the Surrealist play of the cadavre exquis. The mixture of heterogeneous materials becomes a strategy (informed by the ideas of Walter Benjamin) to reflect on history in the conditions of postmemory as well as a way to explore the relationship between media and reality through various positions of spectatorial engagement and the affective metalepsis between reflexivity and immersion.1

The article attempts a brief overview and evaluation of the main theoretical approaches that have emerged in the study of cinematic intermediality in the last decades since intermediality has become an established research term in media studies. It distinguishes three major paradigms in theorizing intermedia phenomena and outlines some of the directions of change in the intermedial strategies of recent films. It identifies in contemporary cinema a tendency to add new dimensions to the relations of in-betweenness regarding both the connection of cinema to reality and its inter-art entanglements. Finally, the article describes a new type of intermediality, which integrates elements of trans-textuality, creating a format of expanded cinema within cinema. This strategy is presented in the context of Eastern European cinema through a short case study of Cristi Puiu’s film, Sieranevada (2016).

The paper analyses the re-conceptualization of the intermedial trope of the tableau vivant in recent East European cinema through several tableau vivant of a painting, the introduction of "the real into the image" (as Brigitte as images, and something that we can associate with what Mario Perniola considers the "sex appeal of the inorganic" or "the Egyptian moment in art." As such, the tableau becomes a powerful agent in generating metanarratives, offering a blueprint for a "big picture," a comprehensive vision of the world (reinforced by recurring mythological themes like the genesis or the end of the world, the loss of Paradise, etc.). tableaux vivants and to the reconstructive tendencies of contemporary post-postmodern art. 1

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You are Professor of Comparative Literature at the Linnaeus University in Sweden with an impressive research output, comprising several books, edited books, articles and book chapters written both in English and Swedish, some also translated into Portuguese and several other languages (listed in detail on the webpage of the university: https://lnu.se/en/staff/lars.ellestrom/). Besides several important articles, at least two of your books can be considered as real milestones regarding the theory of intermediality published in English: the edited collection of essays, resulting from an international conference that you organized in Växjö, 1 This interview was made within the framework of the Exploratory Research Project, Rethinking Intermediality in Contemporary Cinema: Changing Forms of In-Betweenness, PN-III-ID-PCE-2016-0418, funded by a grant of the UEFISCDI (Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation), Romania.