A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas

A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas showcases twenty-five essays written by established and emerging film scholars that trace the history of Eastern European cinemas and offer an up-to-date assessment of post-socialist film cultures. Showcases critical historical work and up-to-date assessments of post-socialist film cultures Features consideration of lesser known areas of study, such as Albanian and Baltic cinemas, popular genre films, cross-national distribution and aesthetics, animation and documentary Places the cinemas of the region in a European and global context Resists the Cold War classification of Eastern European cinemas as “other” art cinemas by reconnecting them with the main circulation of film studies Includes discussion of such films as Taxidermia, El Perro Negro, 12:08 East of Bucharest Big Tõll, and Breakfast on the Grass and explores the work of directors including Tamás Almási, Walerian Borowczyk, Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski, Andrzej ¯u³awski, and Karel Vachek amongst many others

Notes on the Editor and Contributors viii Foreword xv Dina Iordanova 1 Introduction: Eastern European Cinema From No End to the End (As We Know It) 1 Anikó Imre Part I New Theoretical and Critical Frameworks 23 2 Body Horror and Post-Socialist Cinema: György Pálfi’s Taxidermia 25 Steven Shaviro 3 El perro negro : Transnational Readings of Database Documentaries from Spain 41 Marsha Kinder 4 Did Somebody Say Communism in the Classroom? or The Value of Analyzing Totality in Recent Serbian Cinema 63 Zoran Samardzija 5 Laughing into an Abyss: Cinema and Balkanization 77 Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli 6 Jewish Identities and Generational Perspectives 101 Catherine Portuges 7 Aftereffects of 1989: Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) and Romanian Cinema 125 Alice Bardan 8 Cinema Beyond Borders: Slovenian Cinema in a World Context 148 Meta Mazaj and Shekhar Deshpande Part II Historical and Spatial Redefinitions 167 9 Center and Periphery, or How Karel Vachek Formed a New Government 169 Alice Lovejoy 10 The Polish Black Series Documentary and the British Free Cinema Movement 183 Bjørn Sørenssen 11 Socialists in Outer Space: East German Film’s Venusian Adventure 201 Stefan Soldovieri 12 Red Shift: New Albanian Cinema and its Dialogue with the Old 224 Bruce Williams 13 National Space, (Trans)National Cinema: Estonian Film in the 1960s 244 Eva Näripea 14 For the Peace, For a New Man, For a Better World! Italian Leftist Culture and Czechoslovak Cinema, 1945–1968 265 Francesco Pitassio Part III Aesthetic (Re)visions 289 15 The Impossible Polish New Wave and its Accursed Émigré Auteurs: Borowczyk, Polañski, Skolimowski, and ¯u³awski 291 Michael Goddard 16 Documentary and Industrial Decline in Hungary: The “Ózd Series” of Tamás Almási 311 John Cunningham 17 Investigating the Past, Envisioning the Future: An Exploration of Post-1991 Latvian Documentary 325 Maruta Z. Vitols 18 Eastern European Historical Epics: Genre Cinema and the Visualization of a Heroic National Past 344 Nikolina Dobreva 19 Nation, Gender, and History in Latvian Genre Cinema 366 Irina Novikova 20 A Comparative Study: Rein Raamat’s Big Tõll and Priit Pärn’s Luncheon on the Grass 385 Andreas Trossek 21 The Yugoslav Black Wave: The History and Poetics of Polemical Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s in Yugoslavia 403 Greg De Cuir, Jr . Part IV Industries and Institutions 425 22 Follow the Money – Financing Contemporary Cinema in Romania 427 Ioana Uricaru 23 An Alternative Model of Film Production: Film Units in Poland after World War Two 453 Dorota Ostrowska 24 The Hussite Heritage Film: A Dream for all Czech Seasons 466 Petra Hanáková 25 International Co-productions as Productions of Heterotopias 483 Ewa Mazierska 26 East is East? New Turkish Cinema and Eastern Europe 504 Melis Behlil Index 518