Orphans of the East

Orphans of the East delves into the multifaceted meanderings around postwar vagrancy in a genre of film rarely brought together in one coherent volume.

* Slavic and East European Journal *

Parvulescu has taken a highly innovative approach to socialist and post-socialist cinema in the region, and one that is vividly illustrated by a superb selection of films.

* Studies in European Cinema *

[This book] is a complex, competent, and engagingly written interdisciplinary book bringing together history, cultural and political theory, and film analysis. It should be of considerable interest to a wide range of scholars and students of Europena cinema, history, and cultural studies.

* Slavic Review *

Parvulescu skillfully uses his examples to explore how ideologies of socialist identity strategies changed over time. Although largely unconcerned with the audio-visual dimensions of the films, the author provides bracing discussions, offering significant insights into the characters and plots as well as the political circumstances to which the narratives responded. . . . Highly recommended.

* Choice *

Parvulescu's broad synoptic reading of films from different Eastern European countries, referring to films that are often hard to see in the West, has the great merit of addressing larger sociological questions about film under socialism that can get lost in more narrowly focused approaches concentrating only on filmic poetics or on the history of everyday life.

* Studies in Eastern European Cine