Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe: From Communism to Capitalism

by Masha Shpolberg (Editor), Lukas Brasiskis (Editor)

Overview

The annexation of Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere after World War II dramatically reshaped popular understandings of the natural environment. With an eco—critical approach, Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe breaks new ground in documenting how filmmakers increasingly saw cinema as a tool to critique the social and environmental damage of large—scale projects from socialist regimes and newly forming capitalist presences. New and established scholars with backgrounds across Europe, the United States, and Australia come together to reflect on how the cultural sphere has, and can still, play a role in redefining our relationship to nature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781805391050
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	10/13/2023
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Masha Shpolberg is Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College. She is currently at work on a book entitled Labor in Late Socialism: The Cinema of Polish Workers’ Unrest. In addition to this volume, she is also co—editor, with Anastasia Kostina, of Contemporary Russian Documentary, forthcoming from Edinburgh UniversityPress.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction
Masha Shpolberg and Lukas Brasiskis

Part I: Industrializing the Bloc: Cinema of the Socialist Period

Chapter 1. Sad Landscapes: Panoramic Photography and Documentary Film in the Czech Lands
Katie Trumpener and Alice Lovejoy

Chapter 2. From Mastery to Indistinction: Nature in Thaw—Era Cinema
Lida Oukaderova

Chapter 3. Spectres of Ecology in Cold War Soviet Science Fiction Film
Natalija Majsova

Part II: Environmental Crisis and the Nuclear Imaginary

Chapter 4. Post—Apocalyptic Landscapes: The End of August at the Hotel Ozone and the Czechoslovak New Wave
Barbora Bartunkova

Chapter 5. Fallow Fields: Crises of Masculinity and Ecology in Piotr Andrejew’s ‘Tender Spots’
Eliza Rose

Chapter 6. Catastrophe, Obliquely: The Revival of the Essay Film Form in Soviet Documentaries About Chernobyl
Masha Shpolberg

Part III: Animals Between the Natural and the Social

Chapter 7. Animals in Modernity: Shaping the Urban Landscape in Lithuanian Documentary
Natalija Arlauskaitė

Chapter 8. Mongrelizing Interpretation: The Animal in Contemporary Hungarian Cinema
Raymond DeLuca

Part IV: From Communism to Capitalism: Privatization and the Commons

Chapter 9. Okraina and ‘Oil Ontology’ in Post—Soviet Russian Cinema
José Alaniz

Chapter 10. The Commercialization and Destruction of Nature in Contemporary Bulgarian Cinema
Dina Iordanova

Part V: Towards an Eastern European Eco—cinema

Chapter 11. Coming to the Senses: Environmental Ethics in Contemporary Slovenian Cinema
Meta Mazaj

Chapter 12. Cinema of the Forest People: Environmental Consciousness, Authorship and Genre in Post—1989 Polish Film
Kris Van Heuckelom

Chapter 13. Beyond the Utopian Landscape in Post—Soviet Russian Cinema
Jeremi Szaniawski and Michael Cramer

Chapter 14. Recycling, Citroën Cars, and Roma Refugees in Boris Mitić’s Pretty Dyana (2003)
Alice Bardan

Chapter 15. From Water to Wind: Elemental Critique in Recent Eastern European Video Art
Lukas Brasiskis

Editorial Reviews

“This collection provides a comprehensive analysis of Eastern European film culture and ecocinema, integrating them expertly to provide a deep historical and geocultural analysis of variations in ecocinematic representations and the ways these film cultures have been engaging with environmental matters. The contextualization of existing scholarship with the particularities of Eastern European political and cultural history is exciting and innovative.” • Pietari Kaapa, University of Warwick

From the Publisher