1.1 ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on the role that the mass produced image (e.g. lithographs, photographs, and cinema) played in the creation and solidification of Slovak national and ethnic identity not only among Slovaks living in Slovakia, but also Slovaks living abroad in America from the 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Given the problems inherent in using the written Slovak language to form a sense of national and ethnic unity, Slovak culture drew widely on visual sources that could be rapidly reproduced, easily transmitted in Slovakia and abroad, and were affordable to a wide variety of social and economic classes. This dissertation also focuses on some of the problems of this approach which will require further study and examination. Keywords: Slovakia, Slovak nationalism, ethnic identity, photography, lithography, cinema, ethnography, mass media,

Le cinéma n’enregistre pas seulement ce qui existe: il arrive qu’il fabrique des objets pour les filmer. Des « simulacres » qui peuvent être aussi bien des parodies d’œuvres d’art que des machines à voyager dans le temps. Comment penser ces objets improbables, excroissances filmiques souvent kitsch, qui dénoncent au sein du film même ses artifices fictionnels? Comment pensent-ils le cinéma, ses spécificités et ses relations avec les arts plastiques? À partir de l'exemple du cinéma français des années 1960, ce travail de thèse s’est donné pour objectif de replacer ces objets dans la culture visuelle, de les analyser comme des carrefours artistiques et de débattre des questions théoriques qu’ils soulèvent, notamment de la capacité du cinéma à mettre en fiction le pouvoir des autres arts. Au point de rencontre entre la théorie artistique et la fiction cinématographique, l’histoire de ces objets hybrides permet de comprendre que le cinéma peut se faire historien d’art et que l’histoire de l’art est elle-même une longue suite de fictions sur les pouvoirs attribués aux objets. En cela, ces simulacres cinématographiques apportent des sources inédites à l’historien des arts visuels. / Not only do films record what exists: they sometimes create objects to be filmed. These « simulacra » can just as well be parodies of art works or time machines. How do we think about these peculiar objects, all-too-often kitsch filmic excressences, which serve to highlight fictional artifice? Moreover, how do we think about cinema, in both its specificities and its relation to Plastic Arts? Looking through the lens of French cinema in the 1960's, this thesis intends to reconsider these objects in the context of visual culture, to analyse them as artistic crossroads, and to debate the theoretical issues they raise, most particularly the ability of cinema to turn into fiction the power of other arts. At the meeting point between artistic theory and cinematographic fiction, the history of these hybrid objects allows one to understand that cinema can perform the role of an art historian, and that art history is itself a succession of fictions about the power assigned to objects. As such, these cinematographic simulacra provide visual arts historians with unexpected sources.