Full Description
Was there experimental cinema behind the Iron Curtain? What forms did experiments with film take in state-socialist Eastern Europe? Who conducted them, where, how, and why? These are the questions answered in this volume, the first of its kind in any language. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines, the book offers case studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and former Yugoslavia. Together, these contributions demonstrate the variety of makers, production contexts, and aesthetic approaches that shaped a surprisingly robust and diverse experimental film output in the region. The book maps out the terrain of our present-day knowledge of cinematic experimentalism in Eastern Europe, suggests directions for further research, and will be of interest to scholars of film and media, art historians, cultural historians of Eastern Europe, and anyone concerned with questions of how alternative cultures emerge and function under repressive political conditions.
Contents
Introduction (Ksenya Gurshtein and Sonja Simonyi) Part I Key Figures, 1. The Experimentalism of Gábor Bódy (Gábor Gelencsér) 2. Circles, Lines, and Documentary Designs: Tomislav Gotovac's Belgrade Trilogy (Greg de Cuir Jr.) 3. From the Workshop of the Film Form to Martial Law: On the Intersecting and Bifurcating Paths of Pawel Kwiek's and Józef Robakowski's Cinematographic Work in the 1970s and the 1980s (Lukasz Mojsak) Part II Production, Support, and Distribution, 4. Amateur Cinema in Bulgaria (Vladimir Iliev with Katerina Lambrinova) 5. The Polish Educational Film Studio and the Cinema of Wojciech Wiszniewski (Masha Shpolberg) 6. Home Movies and Cinematic Memories: Fixing the Gaze on Vukica Dilas and Tatjana Ivancic (Petra Belc) Part III Viewing Contexts, Theories, and Reception, 7. Alone in the Cinemascope (Aleksandar Boskovic) 8. kinema ikon—Experiments in Motion (1970-89) (Ileana L. Selejan) 9. AudioVision: Sound, Music, and Noise in East German Experimental Films (Seth Howes) Part IV Intersection of the Arts, 10. Intersections of Art and Film on the Wroclaw Art Scene, 1970-80 (Marika Kuzmicz) 11. Conceptual Artist, Cognitive Film: Miklós Erdély at the Balázs Béla Studio (Ksenya Gurshtein) 12. Works and Words, 1979: Manifesting Eastern European Film and/as Art in Amsterdam (Sonja Simonyi) 13. Wizardry on a Shoestring: Carodej and Experimental Filmmaking in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia (Tomás Glanc) Index.
