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Experimental Cinemas in State-Socialist Eastern Europe

Ksenya Gurshtein editor Sonja Simonyi editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Amsterdam University Press

Published:20th Apr '22

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Experimental Cinemas in State-Socialist Eastern Europe cover

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.

"This is a gem of a collection. It makes a unique and lasting contribution to film history, film studies, and the history of avant-garde/experimental cinema. The thirteen chapters, shepherded by expert curation by the two editors, provide the definitive, thoroughly researched, interconnected, and yet locally specific histories of experimental cinema in the East European countries under Soviet influence in the 1960s-70s, the most prolific period of this kind of filmmaking during the Cold War."
– Anikó Imre, University of Southern California, editor of East European Cinemas and A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas

"I am extraordinarily impressed by this collection—by its balance of diversity and coherence, the quality of the individual contributions and the “curatorial” work of the editors, the depth of research, and the thoroughness with which it covers its topic. This is a powerhouse collection of scholarship that provides an exceptional introduction to a sadly under-studied and under-represented topic. In both the introduction and the contributions, the editors and authors link their projects to larger questions—historical, theoretical, methodological—in the field, all of which are relevant and indeed at the forefront of current work in cinema and art studies."
– Jonathan Walley, Denison University, author of Cinema Expanded: Avant-Garde Film in the Age of Intermedia

"It is among the first editions that do not simply concentrate on the history of local experimental filmmaking practices within Eastern Europe but attempt to give an overview of such practices in the aforementioned region. The publication of this book without a doubt can be a crucial step in the research of this field and will be important and inevitable literature for all the scholars focusing on the area."
- Bori Máté, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Sep 2022

ISBN: 9789462982994

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

334 pages