Pub Date : 2022-05-05DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2071518
A. Serada
Abstract Early computer games of the ‘Eastern bloc’ have been studied as important artefacts of early digital media, but their significance is usually limited to the historical context. In this article, I present a case study of the first popular computer game made in Belarus, which political relevance has persisted through over two decades. In order to achieve multi-sided description and interpretation of the case, three methods are combined: semantic analysis of the game itself, a survey of its typical players, and comparison to similar cases in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia. The proposed explanation of the game’s origins highlights the importance of ‘shared commons’, relics of socialism reused for a variety of purposes during the brief period of ideological liberalism. This allows situating this particular form of subversive media in the process of transition from socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe – the process that has never been concluded in contemporary Belarus, contributing to the totalitarian situation of 2020–2021.
{"title":"‘Died from Debeeration’: the Case of the First Belarusian Political Game","authors":"A. Serada","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2071518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2071518","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Early computer games of the ‘Eastern bloc’ have been studied as important artefacts of early digital media, but their significance is usually limited to the historical context. In this article, I present a case study of the first popular computer game made in Belarus, which political relevance has persisted through over two decades. In order to achieve multi-sided description and interpretation of the case, three methods are combined: semantic analysis of the game itself, a survey of its typical players, and comparison to similar cases in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia. The proposed explanation of the game’s origins highlights the importance of ‘shared commons’, relics of socialism reused for a variety of purposes during the brief period of ideological liberalism. This allows situating this particular form of subversive media in the process of transition from socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe – the process that has never been concluded in contemporary Belarus, contributing to the totalitarian situation of 2020–2021.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"14 1","pages":"8 - 24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88528618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-20DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2060462
Lilla Tőke
{"title":"A Certain Kind of Happiness: Women and Disability in Recent Hungarian Cinema","authors":"Lilla Tőke","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2060462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2060462","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81787240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-23DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2053934
Adrian Pelc
{"title":"Non-Aligned Spies: Secret Agents in the Yugoslav 1960s Cinema","authors":"Adrian Pelc","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2053934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2053934","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"258 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72929209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-21DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2052229
Jasmina Šepetavc
{"title":"More than Comrades: queering Slovenian cinema in Yugoslavia","authors":"Jasmina Šepetavc","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2052229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2052229","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85574039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-09DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2043734
G. Gergely
A significant body of scholarship since Dyer’s groundbreaking work on stars (Dyer 1979, 1986, 1998) has challenged the view that stardom was limited to Hollywood (e.g. Vincendeau 2000, Ascheid 2003, Hayward 2004, Soila 2009, Bandhauer and Royer 2015). Star biographies are ubiquitous in Eastern Europe [e.g. Bános (1978)], there is a wealth of archival material to mine (e.g. Zbigniew Cybulski headshots and lobby cards traded on online auction sites), and scholars have considered film actors in relation to representations of femininity (e.g. Attwood 1993, Iordanova 2003, Mazierska and Ostrowska 2006), in relation to national (e.g. Ostrowska 2005, Williams 2015, Gergely 2016) and transnational identity (Kristensen 2014, Mazierska 2014, Smith 2014). However, much work remains to be done in the context of Eastern Europe on stars, stardom, celebrity and infrastructure supporting star systems (e.g. agencies, the tabloid press, fan literature, and exhibition, distribution and marketing firms). The false perception that stardom was negligible or even non-existent and the assumption that state-supported film industries were insensitive to audience demand and therefore had no need for stars remain hard to shake because what writing there is on Eastern European stars is dispersed and yet to grow into a body of work that can offer a comprehensive and nuanced view. The blurring of state socialist Eastern Europe with the region’s other faces and eras is also a factor. The false image of Cold War-era Eastern Europe established in scholarship ‘from the West’ (Imre 2005, xii), and popular representations of state socialist Eastern Europe as drab, do not easily mesh with the notions of glitz and glamour cultivated by classical Hollywood’s publicity departments. Thus there appears to be a cognitive dissonance between the notions of stardom and Eastern Europe. At play, too, is the dominance of the auteur-director and the resistant film in approaches to Eastern European cinema of the Cold War (Imre 2005, xii; Mazierska 2010, 11), a dynamic that downplays and obscures other creatives in the filmmaking process, including actors. Nonetheless, stars were and remain ubiquitous and their role is important to the functioning of Eastern European centres of film production. The springboard for analyses of stardom in Hollywood is the insight, first systematically developed by Dyer, that stars are a phenomenon of production and consumption, they are aligned with the ideological project and practices of Hollywood and accumulate meanings projected onto them by consumers and producers, which stars, with their individual agency, challenge or play up to (1998). These dynamics can be logically read against a capitalist system of production, but are perhaps less straightforward to map against the command economies of state socialism. It may seem that the relatively overt ambition to convey specific ideas and ideologies via the cinema – remember the sentiment attributed to Lenin: ‘of all
{"title":"Stars and Stardom in Eastern European Cinema","authors":"G. Gergely","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2043734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2043734","url":null,"abstract":"A significant body of scholarship since Dyer’s groundbreaking work on stars (Dyer 1979, 1986, 1998) has challenged the view that stardom was limited to Hollywood (e.g. Vincendeau 2000, Ascheid 2003, Hayward 2004, Soila 2009, Bandhauer and Royer 2015). Star biographies are ubiquitous in Eastern Europe [e.g. Bános (1978)], there is a wealth of archival material to mine (e.g. Zbigniew Cybulski headshots and lobby cards traded on online auction sites), and scholars have considered film actors in relation to representations of femininity (e.g. Attwood 1993, Iordanova 2003, Mazierska and Ostrowska 2006), in relation to national (e.g. Ostrowska 2005, Williams 2015, Gergely 2016) and transnational identity (Kristensen 2014, Mazierska 2014, Smith 2014). However, much work remains to be done in the context of Eastern Europe on stars, stardom, celebrity and infrastructure supporting star systems (e.g. agencies, the tabloid press, fan literature, and exhibition, distribution and marketing firms). The false perception that stardom was negligible or even non-existent and the assumption that state-supported film industries were insensitive to audience demand and therefore had no need for stars remain hard to shake because what writing there is on Eastern European stars is dispersed and yet to grow into a body of work that can offer a comprehensive and nuanced view. The blurring of state socialist Eastern Europe with the region’s other faces and eras is also a factor. The false image of Cold War-era Eastern Europe established in scholarship ‘from the West’ (Imre 2005, xii), and popular representations of state socialist Eastern Europe as drab, do not easily mesh with the notions of glitz and glamour cultivated by classical Hollywood’s publicity departments. Thus there appears to be a cognitive dissonance between the notions of stardom and Eastern Europe. At play, too, is the dominance of the auteur-director and the resistant film in approaches to Eastern European cinema of the Cold War (Imre 2005, xii; Mazierska 2010, 11), a dynamic that downplays and obscures other creatives in the filmmaking process, including actors. Nonetheless, stars were and remain ubiquitous and their role is important to the functioning of Eastern European centres of film production. The springboard for analyses of stardom in Hollywood is the insight, first systematically developed by Dyer, that stars are a phenomenon of production and consumption, they are aligned with the ideological project and practices of Hollywood and accumulate meanings projected onto them by consumers and producers, which stars, with their individual agency, challenge or play up to (1998). These dynamics can be logically read against a capitalist system of production, but are perhaps less straightforward to map against the command economies of state socialism. It may seem that the relatively overt ambition to convey specific ideas and ideologies via the cinema – remember the sentiment attributed to Lenin: ‘of all","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"33 1","pages":"123 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84388224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-18DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2041368
T. Juricic
Abstract The violent disintegration of the federation at the beginning of the 1990s transformed the Yugoslav sphere into a landscape plagued by its complicated shared history and the arduous process of transition. Coinciding with Milošević’s tendencies towards Greater Serbia, Belgrade became an intersection of anti-war activists, socio-economic difficulties, and nationalist propaganda. Produced within the microcosmos of a post-socialist society undergoing a transition, Želimir Žilnik’s Tito Among the Serbs for the Second Time (1994) and Marble Ass (1995) can be understood through Kevin M. F. Platt’s (1997) notion of the ‘revolutionary grotesque’. For Platt (1997), the revolutionary grotesque is an artistic response that emerges during the periods of radical social transformation, and it is marked by the unusual confrontations and deformations of the past and future. The paper will examine the nature of the revolutionary grotesque found in Žilnik’s films through the collective memory of a post-socialist society and the post-war trauma of its transgressive individuals. To understand Žilnik’s blend of documentary and fiction, which often deploys the notion of the carnivalesque, I will introduce the term ‘revolutionary carnivalesque’ to further corroborate the filmmaker’s cinematic representations of a transitional microcosmos as the space turned upside down.
{"title":"And the Marble Ass saw the second coming of Tito: Želimir Žilnik’s cinematic representations of a transitional society through the revolutionary carnivalesque","authors":"T. Juricic","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2041368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2041368","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The violent disintegration of the federation at the beginning of the 1990s transformed the Yugoslav sphere into a landscape plagued by its complicated shared history and the arduous process of transition. Coinciding with Milošević’s tendencies towards Greater Serbia, Belgrade became an intersection of anti-war activists, socio-economic difficulties, and nationalist propaganda. Produced within the microcosmos of a post-socialist society undergoing a transition, Želimir Žilnik’s Tito Among the Serbs for the Second Time (1994) and Marble Ass (1995) can be understood through Kevin M. F. Platt’s (1997) notion of the ‘revolutionary grotesque’. For Platt (1997), the revolutionary grotesque is an artistic response that emerges during the periods of radical social transformation, and it is marked by the unusual confrontations and deformations of the past and future. The paper will examine the nature of the revolutionary grotesque found in Žilnik’s films through the collective memory of a post-socialist society and the post-war trauma of its transgressive individuals. To understand Žilnik’s blend of documentary and fiction, which often deploys the notion of the carnivalesque, I will introduce the term ‘revolutionary carnivalesque’ to further corroborate the filmmaker’s cinematic representations of a transitional microcosmos as the space turned upside down.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"44 1","pages":"154 - 167"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84073008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-11DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2037232
Natália Fábics
{"title":"New Perspectives for Researching Intermediality in Eastern European Cinema","authors":"Natália Fábics","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2037232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2037232","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"91 1","pages":"234 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80490299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-11DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2033434
Györgyi Vajdovich
ABSTRACT The study aims to explore the characteristics of the phenomenon of Katalin Karády, one of the greatest stars of the Hungarian film industry between 1939 and 1944. Karády’s on-screen characters often represented modern, independent women who questioned the gender roles instituted by the strongly-conservative patriarchal Hungarian society of the time. This aspect of her characters is examined with the help of the concepts of ‘new woman’ and ‘modern girl’ widely used in contemporaneous media discourses, and compared to other types of female figures present in the Hungarian film production of the time. The narratives of her films are analysed with special focus on women’s position and male-female relationships. Some aspects of her erotic appeal, such as sensuality, nudity and an attractive voice are described with a special attention to her songs. Her star persona is analysed considering possible international models and similarities with certain Western stars. Emphasising specific elements of her private life, the study shows that her on-screen characters and her off-screen personality strongly blended in the imagination of the public, and gender ambiguity inherent to her character contributed to the birth of the ‘Karády phenomenon’.
{"title":"Controversial Women, Attractive Voice and Erotic Appeal Katalin Karády’s On-Screen Figures and Star Persona","authors":"Györgyi Vajdovich","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2033434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2033434","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The study aims to explore the characteristics of the phenomenon of Katalin Karády, one of the greatest stars of the Hungarian film industry between 1939 and 1944. Karády’s on-screen characters often represented modern, independent women who questioned the gender roles instituted by the strongly-conservative patriarchal Hungarian society of the time. This aspect of her characters is examined with the help of the concepts of ‘new woman’ and ‘modern girl’ widely used in contemporaneous media discourses, and compared to other types of female figures present in the Hungarian film production of the time. The narratives of her films are analysed with special focus on women’s position and male-female relationships. Some aspects of her erotic appeal, such as sensuality, nudity and an attractive voice are described with a special attention to her songs. Her star persona is analysed considering possible international models and similarities with certain Western stars. Emphasising specific elements of her private life, the study shows that her on-screen characters and her off-screen personality strongly blended in the imagination of the public, and gender ambiguity inherent to her character contributed to the birth of the ‘Karády phenomenon’.","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"1 1","pages":"143 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72762842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-25DOI: 10.1080/2040350x.2022.2030558
G. Norkūnaitė
{"title":"Representations of World War II in Lithuanian Cinema in the 2000s: Between National and European Narratives","authors":"G. Norkūnaitė","doi":"10.1080/2040350x.2022.2030558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350x.2022.2030558","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"122 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88037590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-24DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2022.2029306
C. Parvulescu
{"title":"Production Practices in Small European Industries","authors":"C. Parvulescu","doi":"10.1080/2040350X.2022.2029306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2022.2029306","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52267,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Eastern European Cinema","volume":"42 1","pages":"237 - 239"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91208994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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