Postcolonial Approaches to Eastern European Cinema: Portraying Neighbours on Screen

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

All countries and nations are deeply affected by their neighbours and every national cinema reflects this relationship. This book explores how postcolonial approaches can 'frame' the neighbours of people living in Eastern Europe. It elucidates how the region has evolved from being a communist extension of the Soviet Union to becoming integrated into neoliberal capitalism. Drawing on classical studies of postcoloniality by Edward Said, Gayatri C. Spivak and Homi K. Bhabha, as well as works of theorists and historians like Janusz Korek and Jaak Kangilaski, who specialize in the Eastern European variant of postcolonialism, the book engages with the question of genre in investigating how neighbours fit into and shape melodramas and thrillers, heritage and war films. Contributors explore a wide range of films in relation to territory, from the steppes of the East to reunified Berlin to Albania on the Adriatic Sea and from the streets of Tallinn to the hill slopes of Transylvania. Individual chapters situate in a new context the movies of internationally celebrated filmmakers, such as Roman Polanski, Agnieszka Holland, Nikita Mikhalkov and Jan Hrebejk, as well as introducing films by locally renowned directors, such as Wladyslaw Pasikowski, Arsen Anton Ostojic, and Leida Laius.

Reviews

To come

Author Bio

Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Contemporary Cinema at the School of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Central Lancashire. Her publications include Roman Polanski: The Cinema of a Cultural Traveller (I.B.Tauris, 2007) and European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory, Politics (2011). Lars Kristensen is a Research Associate at the Film and Media Studies at the University of Central Lancashire. He is editor of Postcommunist Film - Russia, Eastern Europe and World Culture: Moving Images of Postcommunism (2012). Eva Naripea is affiliated with the Estonian Academy of Arts and with the research group of cultural and literary theory at the Estonian Literary Museum. She is co-editor, with Andreas Trossek, of Via Transversa: Lost Cinema of the Former Eastern Bloc (2008) and, with Ewa Mazierska and Mari Laaniste, of a special issue of Kinokultura: New Russian Cinema journal on Estonian cinema (2010).