Full Description
This book presents a comprehensive re-examination of the cinemas of the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe during the communist era. It argues that, since the end of communism in these countries, film scholars are able to view these cinemas in a different way, no longer bound by an outlook relying on binary Cold War terms. With the opening of archives in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, much more is known about these states and societies; at the same time, the field has been reinvigorated by its opening up to more contemporary concepts, themes and approaches in film studies and adjacent disciplines. Taking stock of these developments, this book presents a rich, varied tapestry, relating specific films to specific national and transnational circumstances, rather than viewing them as a single, monolithic "Cold War Communist" cinema.
Contents
IntroductionPart 1: On Spaces and Nations1. Squeezing Space, Releasing Space: Spatial Research in the Study of Eastern European Cinema2. Thinking again about Cold War Cinema 3. Incommensurable Distance: Versions of National Identity in Georgian Soviet Cinema Part 2: Ideologies of Representation 4. Mirrors of Death: Subversive Subtexts in Bulgarian Cinema, 1964 -1979 5. Popular Cinema in Late 1960s Romania6. Stalinist Cinema and the Search for Audiences: Liubov¢ Orlova and the Case for Star StudiesPart 3: (Re)recordings, (Re)focusings, (Re)discoveries 7. The Political Camera: Comparing 1956 in Three Moments of Hungarian History8. Back to the Archives: The Testimonial Power of Soviet Silent Footage of the Holocaust9. The Human and the Possible: Animation in Central and Eastern Europe
