Studies in Eastern European Cinema

27/04/2024

In "Agents of Socialist Realism. Transforming the Future in Hungarian Educational Films", László Strausz analyzes the ways the educational- and propaganda films produced by the film studio of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior during the 1950s and 60s are part of the broader landscape of socialist realist culture. The author proposes that by tracing the transformations of the fatherly police agent figure across the productions of the film studio, we can understand how the project of socialist realism itself began to change in the aforementioned period. In this light, the police agent becomes a figure on whom the shifting epistemological status of representation under state socialism is projected.

This article analyzes the ways the educational- and propaganda films produced by the film studio of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior during the 1950s and 60s are part of the broader landscape of ...

24/04/2024

From out forthcoming special issue on spies and agents in EE cinema: "The Useful Cinema of State Secrecy. On Some Socialist Romanian Spy Films" by Christian Ferencz-Flatz!

A decree passed by the socialist Romanian state at the beginning of the 1970s stipulated the need to defend state secrets as a condition for the country’s economic and social progress in the context of its growing participation in world commerce. While the law operated with a wide notion of state secrecy, referring to any piece of information which, if disclosed, could jeopardize the Romanian state’s interests, it included harsh regulations with regard to personal contacts with foreign citizens and served primarily for establishing a heightened operative control over the local economic life. Following the Romanian State Security Council’s encouragement of campaigns for popular education, which should help prevent any trespassing of this decree, the early 1970s saw the commissioning of several instruction films made by the newly founded Film Service of the Ministry of the Interior as a form of ‘counterintelligence training of the working class’. The present paper contextualizes and closely analyzes some of these films staging fictional cases of industrial espionage and their subsequent investigation by State Security as a form of useful cinema, arguing that, aside from their main educational mission of raising awareness about the legal responsibilities ensuing from the decrees concerning state secrecy, these films also acted as an instrument of national, geopolitical and institutional self-representation.

A decree passed by the socialist Romanian state at the beginning of the 1970s stipulated the need to defend state secrets as a condition for the country’s economic and social progress in the contex...

23/04/2024

In "Auteur Studies of the European Periphery" Constantin Parvulescu reviews the book "Beyond the New Romanian Cinema: Romanian Culture, History, and the Films of Radu Jude" by Veronica Lazăr and Andrei Gorzo.

Published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema (Ahead of Print, 2024)

10/04/2024

From our forthcoming Spies & Agents special issue, here comes "Stolen Transformation, Conspiracy Theories and Female Detectives in Contemporary East-Central European Films and Series" by Balázs Varga!

The essay discusses the surging popularity of crime fiction as a reflection of the evolving social climate and the erosion of illusions regarding the post-socialist transformation in the 2010s Central Europe. It focuses on Entanglement (2011), a Polish paranoia thriller, X – The eXploited (2018), a Hungarian political thriller and Sleepers (2019), a Czech HBO production spy thriller series to examine how they portray symptoms of social and political crisis, perceived manipulation of the transition, and the struggle for female individual agency. These films offer a unique portrayal of the notion of a ‘stolen’ regime change, framed within conspiracy narratives suggesting the involvement of former state security personnel who managed to maintain their influence during the transition. Additionally, each narrative features a female protagonist who embarks on an investigation, uncovering a political conspiracy intertwined with her personal history. The fusion of conspiracy thriller elements with the emotional detective archetype represents a pivotal characteristic of these films, underscored by their transnational ambiguity. With the coupling of conspiracy narrative and female emotional detectives, paranoia and individual suffering, these films highlight the prevailing ­disillusionment and the sense of inaction that characterizes the contemporary social climate in the region.

The essay discusses the surging popularity of crime fiction as a reflection of the evolving social climate and the erosion of illusions regarding the post-socialist transformation in the 2010s Cent...

28/03/2024

Check out Ana Grgić and Fabio Bego's piece "Useful Bodies, Socialist Commodification and Everyday Culture: Promoting Albanian and Yugoslav Industrial Production Through Non-Fiction Films"

The article discusses how documentaries were used for the promotion of industrial production in socialist Albania and Yugoslavia through a discussion of two short non-fiction films, Në turnet e natës/The Night Shift (1970, Albania) and 25 Godina. Jugoplastika/25th Anniversary of Jugoplastika (1977, Yugoslavia). The discourse of Albanian and Yugoslavian socialist ideologies of modernisation and industrial production, and the notion of everyday socialism are constructed and visible in the films’ representational strategies. The analysis of the two previously overlooked archival films along with the press, and non-film materials and documents from film and state archives allow us to compare and contrast the similarities and differences of Albanian and Yugoslav socialist ideologies toward industrial production, labour and gender relations. In doing so, we aim to better understand the complexities of the state socialist discourse vis-à-vis Western capitalism and consumerist ethics during the Cold War period.

In this paper, we discuss how documentaries were used for the promotion of industrial production in socialist Albania and Yugoslavia through a discussion of two short non-fiction films, Në turnet e...

25/03/2024

Mantė Valiūnaitė discusses the processes of hybridization in her article "Regained Screens: Contemporary Documentary Film Culture in Lithuania".

The focus of this article is contemporary documentary film culture in Lithuania. Through the case study of the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival (VDFF), I would like to argue that documentary culture has been going through a process of hybridisation in recent years. Firstly, I will outline the context of the global situation of documentary cinema, then I will show the origin and importance of VDFF in that context. I will use postcolonial studies and decoloniality to explain the process of contemporary documentary film culture in Lithuania. My research is contextualised in the new field of film festivals research in film studies. The article is based on a few semi-structured interviews, detailed analyses of catalogues of few events in Lithuania before VDFF and catalogues of VDFF, and an analysis of international festivals’ research texts.

The focus of this article is contemporary documentary film culture in Lithuania. Through the case study of the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival (VDFF), I would like to argue that documentary cultu...

23/03/2024

In his book review "East German Cinema: Collaboration and Continuity", Nick Hodgin discusses the monograph 'Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe' by Mariana Ivanova!

Published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema (Ahead of Print, 2024)

21/03/2024

Hajnal Kiraly’s article “Social Media, Female Victimisation and Autonomy in Contemporary Hungarian and Romanian Cinema” looks how a number of contemporary Hungarian and Romanian films incorporated new media techniques and mechanisms in order to thematize the paradoxical effect of social media platforms.

She argues that besides connecting individuals and communities, these can become a vehicle of their social isolation. However, while Hungarian films like I Hope You Die Next Time:) (Remélem legközelebb sikerül meghalnod, Mihály Schwechtje, 2018) and FOMO: Fear of Missing Out, Attila Hartung, 2019) present teenage, male individuals (mis)using social media as part of their coming of age process, fuelled by a desperate need to connect with their peers, in one of the latest, award-winning features of versatile Romanian director Radu Jude, Bad Luck Banging or Looney P**n (Bărbădeală cu bucluc sau p***o balamuc, 2021) social media is challenging the (sexual, gendered) autonomy of the female protagonist and fuelling a heated socio-political debate around sexual roles, liberties and moral responsibilities in a contemporary Romanian society torn by contradictory value systems. Regarding social media as a platform of identity quests and moral attitudes, my article aims to situate these films in the Hungarian and Romanian cinematic traditions, analysing and comparing them in terms of cultural representations of female and male victimisation, as well as agency and autonomy. I will argue that these films exemplify the gendered modes of self-representations (selfies) and gazes in social media and beyond, a model subverted only by Jude’s film reiterating the female flâneur as the freely moving subject of the gaze.

In recent years, a number of Hungarian and Romanian films incorporated new media techniques and mechanisms in order to thematize the paradoxical effect of social media platforms which, besides conn...

16/03/2024

Bence Kránicz's piece "The Informant Falls Silent. World-Systems Analysis and Debates over the Socialist Past" discusses the popular and controversial television show set in the last years of state socialism.

The Informant, a historical thriller series produced by HBO and distributed by HBO Max between March and June 2022, provoked heated debates about its representation of the 1980s Hungarian political climate, society and lifestyle. In the first section of this paper I will highlight the core aspects of the critical discourse around The Informant. What directions did the collective recollections and contemporary interpretations of the historical past take? What kind of controversial expectations were brought to surface by the question of authenticity, a central theme of the reviews about the series? In the second section I will argue that the production, the ensuing debate, and the incidental suspension of the discourse should be interpreted as a case study of world-systems analysis. After establishing the framework and contemporary relevance of this theory, I will connect it to the findings of recent papers in production studies regarding Central and Eastern Europe. In the last section I will argue that due to the semi-peripheral status of Hungary, the Western economic centre plays a key role in the local cultural production, and in this case, the reformation of national collective memory. However, this relationship between centre and periphery is originally organized by economic interests, thus it is generally insensitive about the symbolic values of cultural productions. This means that it cannot fulfil the progressive social role that the local intelligentsia is expecting from it.

The Informant, a historical thriller series produced by HBO and distributed by HBO Max between March and June 2022, provoked heated debates about its representation of the 1980s Hungarian political...

12/01/2024

https://www.hsozkult.de/grant/id/stip-141147?utm_source=hskhtml&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=htmldigest

Call for Applications Fall 2024

08/01/2024

Our latest regular (non-special) issue 15:1 is now complete, check out László Strausz's editorial which introduces the included research articles and short pieces!

Happy new year to the SEEC community!

Published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema (Vol. 15, No. 1, 2024)

13/12/2023

Monstrous mermaid sisters threaten to cannibalize men!

In her article "Reading the Mermaid Sisters of Smoczyńska’s 'The Lure' (2015) as More Than Shoreline Strangers: Toward a Feminist Solidarity with Nonhuman Others", Mariliis Elizabeth Holzmann develops a counter-reading that attends to the nonhuman relations between the film’s sisters and examines how processes of human exclusion and exploitation are responsible for fracturing the sisterhood.

The monstrous mermaid sisters of Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s musical horror film, The Lure (2015), mysteriously appear along the Polish shoreline and threaten to cannibalize men. Although unusual in the horror genre, Smoczyńska’s combination of musical numbers and aquatic gothic monsters strategically appropriates elements of mermaid mythology to create a contemporary story of bodily performativity and sisterhood. Following a critical consideration of the literary and cultural histories associated with the mermaid, this article presents a textual analysis of The Lure and related paratexts (director interviews, industry expert reviews, scholarly criticism). From one analytic reading perspective, The Lure’s can be read as a coming of age story that implies that bodily transformations interrupt the solidarity of sisterhood. This reading illuminates differential associations with feminism and women’s agency that are particularly poignant in the context of the Polish Solidarity movement. Extending this feminist reading position, I develop a counter-reading that attends to the nonhuman relations between the film’s sisters and examines how processes of human exclusion and exploitation are responsible for fracturing the sisterhood. From this perspective, I read the conclusion as a call for a feminist solidarity predicated on nonhuman relations of mutuality, codependency, and symbiosis.

The monstrous mermaid sisters of Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s musical horror film, The Lure (2015), mysteriously appear along the Polish shoreline and threaten to cannibalize men. Although unusual in the...

09/12/2023

Christian Ferencz-Flatz reviews 'Romanian cinema: thinking outside the screen' by Doru Pop in "A non-philosophy of non-cinema":

Published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema (Ahead of Print, 2023)

03/12/2023

The recent book 'A Concise History of Slovak Cinema
Alphabet of Slovak Cinema 1921–2021', ed. Martin Kaňuch, Jelena Paštéková and Radislav Steranka is reviewed by Ewa Mazierska:

Published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema (Ahead of Print, 2023)

01/12/2023

In "From Ruptures to Continuities: Czechoslovak Cultural Heritage in Non-Fiction Cinema 1948-1956", Andrea Průchová Hrůzová examines the post-war trajectory of the Czechoslovak politics of cultural heritage, its public presentation and circulation through the medium of non-fiction film. Specifically, it investigates the genres of ethnographic, geographic, and art films released after the political transformation in 1948 that brought the country under the direct influence of the Soviet Union. It describes the professional infrastructure and networks within which the fields of cultural heritage preservation and non-fiction cinema were operating and analyses their interactions in the realm of film production. Through the analysis of the film production background, audio-visual content itself, and related period visual ­culture, it finds a set of different narrative strategies used for public presentation of cultural heritage. These narratives are then placed in the context of the official cultural ideology. It exposes continuities that can be traced between the communist cultural politics introduced after the communist takeover in 1948 and the pre-WWII Czechoslovak cultural politics. The analysis shows the diversity within the film production whose primary goal was to celebrate and represent the national cultural heritage in and outside the country, and therefore understands these films as important tools of national and international cultural politics.

The article examines the post-war trajectory of the Czechoslovak politics of cultural heritage, its public presentation and circulation through the medium of non-fiction film. Specifically, it inve...

24/08/2023

In "Performative Cinematic Acts of Form in the Baltic New Wave Documentary: The Old Man and the Land, Ruhnu, and Bridges of Time", Teisi Ligi & Teet Teinemaa use Austin’s speech act theory to explore the poetic manifestations of three Baltic documentary films.

This article explores via John L. Austin’s speech act theory the poetic manifestations of three Baltic documentary films: Bridges of Time, The Old Man and the Land and Ruhnu. The aim is to illustrate the way in which the Austinian division between the constative and the performative articulates the meaning-making process in these documentaries. This is done on two levels: on a larger scale the analysis looks at how Bridges of Time serves as a single performative speech act, establishing the Baltic New Wave phenomenon through its own aesthetic style; in a more detailed level, the article examines two examples from the aesthetic movement to demonstrate how they avoid reproducing a given reality by creating a semantic shift away from the surface structure in order to connote a rustic pre-occupation sensibility.

This article explores via John L. Austin’s speech act theory the poetic manifestations of three Baltic documentary films: Bridges of Time, The Old Man and the Land and Ruhnu. The aim is to illustra...

09/08/2023

From our forthcoming Polanski issue, here comes "Polish Reception of Roman Polanski’s Films. Outline of the Main Tendencies in Film Criticism and Film Studies" by Robert Birkholc!

The article is devoted to the reception of Roman Polanski’s cinema in Poland. The author examines both critical-film articles (opinions formulated in reviews after the first viewing of a movie) and...

13/07/2023

From the forthcoming Spies in EE cinema issue, here comes Piotr Zwierzchowski's "Polish Spy Movies of the 1960s in Light of Transcripts from Meetings of Script Assessment and Film Approval Commissions".

This article addresses the problem of the unique reception of spy films made in the 1960s in the People’s Republic of Poland. In line with the tenets of New Historicism (cultural poetics), the New Film History and the historical poetics of film, the author focuses on the political, ideological and rhetorical nature of these movies, focusing especially on the analysis of various contexts in their historical setting. Analysis of the transcripts and minutes from script assessment and film approval meetings, important in terms of the process of producing a film and clearing it for distribution, helps to reconstruct both the disputes about the predominant features of the spy film at the time and the fears of its subversive reading. Analysis of these documents makes it possible to show the tensions, limitations and contradictions of the spy film formula of the time, related to cultural politics and the perception and use of genre conventions, to reconstruct the processes of negotiation of meanings, the interpretative strategies of the time, and the social and cultural tensions of the historical moment.

This article addresses the problem of the unique reception of spy films made in the 1960s in the People’s Republic of Poland. In line with the tenets of New Historicism (cultural poetics), the New ...

06/05/2023

We are very happy to announce the program of the 2023 Studies in Eastern European Cinema Workshop!

On the day of the workshop, May 19, you can use this link to join:

https://tinyurl.com/4dve88vj

We look forward to e-meeting you, all the best!

SEEC Editorial Board

Programme (all times CET)
9-9:15
Welcome, introduction by the editors

9:15-10
Keynote
Peter Hames (Staffordshire University)
An international canon

10-11:20
Traumas, audiences and canons

Emily-Rose Baker (University of Southampton)
Considering the Place of Eastern European Holocaust Cinema in Transnational Canons

Andrea Virginás (Babeș-Bolyai University)
Premediating Anthropocene Trauma in Eastern European Ecocinema: Generic, Canonic and Cinematic Specificities

Maya Nedyalkova (Oxford Brookes University)
Breaking with the Canon – Films in Bulgaria through the Early Memories and Experiences of Three Generations of Viewers

11:30-12:50
Canons of the past

Dušan Radunović (Durham University)
The Canonicity of Avant-garde. Some Reflections on the Principles of Canon Formation in Yugoslav Cinema(s)

Adrian Pelc (University of Vienna)
“Dreary and Sarcastic Images Under the Marshal's Baton”: Yugoslav 1960s Cinema, the Canon and the International Gaze

Lina Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute)
Building the National and Transnational Canon of Early Cinema in Lithuania

2-3:40
Institutions, audiences, technologies and canons

Balázs Varga (ELTE University)
Domestic markets and international podiums: canonisation and Eastern European films at leading European festivals

Zsolt Győri (University of Debrecen)
The Anatomy of Dissent: Cinematic Canon Formation at the Intersection of Film Politics and Grassroot Initiatives

Zoltán János Tóth (University of Szeged)
Future of the Canons in the Age of Streaming Services

Dóra Bartal (ELTE University)
The role of regional institutions in the establishment of an Eastern European documentary film canon

3:50-5:10
Women and the canon

Teréz Vincze (ELTE University)
Canonisation and Female Film Makers – The Case of Hungarian Cinema

Natalija Arlauskaitė (Vilnius University)
Feminist Canon of Lithuanian Cinema: First Steps and Preliminary Notes

Bruce Williams (William Paterson University)
Unlocking the Unlockable: Reconsidering the Transnational Canon of Communist Albanian Cinema

5:30-6:15
Jana Dudková (Slovak Film Institute)
Post-Humanist Condition in Central European Cinema: the Works by Viera Èákanyová

04/05/2023

22-23 September, 2023
International Conference

Personal Perspective and Essayistic Form in
Nonfiction Film and Art
CALL FOR PAPERS

Abstract/Panel submission deadline: May 21, 2023.
Conference dates: September 22-23, 2023.
Venue: Film and media space “Planeta“, A. Goštauto str. 2, Vilnius
Mode of participation: In person only
Conference language: English

Abstract/Panel submission deadline: May 21, 2023.Conference dates: September 22-23, 2023.Venue: Film and media space “Planeta“, A. Goštauto str. 2, VilniusMode of participation: In person onlyConference language: EnglishOrganizers:Vilnius Academy of ArtsLithuanian Culture Research InstituteViln...

02/05/2023

The 2nd volume of our Žilnik special issue is out now!

The second issue of Studies in Eastern European Cinema in 2023 is dedicated to Želimir Žilnik. This is the second of two issues, dedicated to the work of this director, honouring his unique contribution to Yugoslav, Eastern European, European and global cinema. Politically and socially engaged, provocative, stylistically innovative and often produced on a shoestring budget, Žilnik’s oeuvre epitomises Eastern European cinema at its most original. In this issue we include articles presenting different aspects of Žilnik’s work, as well as allowing the director to speak with his own voice, thanks to including an interview with him.

Volume 14, Issue 2 of Studies in Eastern European Cinema

25/04/2023

Just out: in "Image of the Perpetrator, the Victim, and the Bystander in Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden (1994)", Aleksandra Piętka pursues the question how Polanski toys with the thriller convention to create a cognitive dissonance in the viewer.

This article analyzes the cinematographic means used by Roman Polanski in Death and the Maiden to portray the characters of the movie and the relationship between them. It discusses how Polanski to...

15/04/2023

In "The Sense of an Ending: Culture, Capital, and the Fate of (Late) Modern Europe in Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999)", Andrés Bartolomé Leal looks at the film's representation of Europe's uncertain future.

As the imaginary deadline or vanishing point of the turn of millennium was drawing ever closer, its associated anxieties and apocalyptic woes offered a fertile breeding ground for suspense, horror, and the fantastic to experience a resurgence in Western cinemas. Roman Polanski’s fifteenth feature film The Ninth Gate, released in 1999, can be read among the various auteur-helmed evidences of such a trend, but also as a self-conscious exercise in the kind of trans-European filmmaking being promoted at the time within the continent, one in which Polanski himself had, willingly or not, already been cutting his teeth for almost two decades after his spiteful return from the US and Hollywood in the late 1970s. On the back of a border-crossing journey in search for three demonic books, this essay will argue, The Ninth Gate manages to discursively interlace both facets. The result, by way of an intermedial concern with the world of literature, a generic involvement with the supernatural, and a meticulous mobilization of cinematic space, location shooting and architecture, is a cynical, self-deprecating reflection on the precarious state of Europe at the time, caught between the memories of glorious but long-fading splendor and a crippling uncertainty about its future and place in an increasingly globalized world.

As the imaginary deadline or vanishing point of the turn of millennium was drawing ever closer, its associated anxieties and apocalyptic woes offered a fertile breeding ground for suspense, horror,...

27/03/2023

In his recently published article, György Kalmár analyzes Ágnes Kocsis's film ÉDEN from an ecological perspective, check it out!

The rise of the ecological point of view in Eastern European societies is undoubtedly one of the defining trends of the early 21st century, generating continuous changes in all fields of life, from agricultural production to consumption habits to contemporary visual culture. We are witnessing a gradual but large-scale cultural transformation, the understanding of which is a major challenge for contemporary academic research. In this paper, I will attempt to understand these changes in the field of film culture: I will examine to what extent the rise of the ecocritical approach is something new in Hungarian filmmaking, to what extent it draws on established film traditions, and in what respect it rewrites the established procedures and approaches of local filmmaking traditions. The starting point for my investigation is Ágnes Kocsis’s film Eden (Éden 2020), which can be considered as the first eco-feature-film in Hungarian. A comparison of Eden with Kocsis’s previous feature films highlights the cinematic effects and consequences of this new approach, as well as the way in which our changing understanding of the relationship between human beings and the biosphere may be transforming the practice of filmmaking.

The rise of the ecological point of view in Eastern European societies is undoubtedly one of the defining trends of the early 21st century, generating continuous changes in all fields of life, from...

15/03/2023

Check out this CfP on a fascinating topic: the personal perspective and essayistic form in nonfiction film and art!

Abstract/Panel submission deadline: May 21, 2023.Conference dates: September 22-23, 2023.Venue: Film and media space “Planeta“, A. Goštauto str. 2, VilniusMode of participation: In person onlyConference language: EnglishOrganizers:Vilnius Academy of ArtsLithuanian Culture Research InstituteViln...

27/02/2023

"Inventing Eastern Europe, or the land of provisionality. Identity and history in documentary films from Eastern Europe."Call for Papers at PANOPTIKUM!

Call for papers 2023 2023-02-24 Call for Papers Inventing Eastern Europe, or the land of provisionality. Identity and history in documentary films from Eastern Europe. The next issue of ‘Panoptikum’ will be devoted to documentary films from the countries of Eastern Europe. In the spirit of the t...

21/02/2023

We just published Lucia Szemetová's review "Raising the Curtain over Cold War Transnational Media Practices" on the book 'Remapping Cold War Media: Institutions, Infrastructures, Translations' edited by Alice Lovejoy and Mari Pajala!

Published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema (Ahead of Print, 2023)