Disintegration in Frames


Book Description

Disintegration in Frames explores the relationship between aesthetics and ideology in the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav cinema, with emphasis on issues of nationalism, internationalism, and interethnic relations.




European Civil War Films


Book Description

This book examines the ways in which late twentieth-century European cinema deals with the neglected subject of civil war. Exploring a range of films about the Spanish, Irish, former Yugoslavia, and Greek civil wars, this comparative and interdisciplinary study engages with contemporary debates in cultural memory and investigates the ways in which cinematic postmemory is problematic. Many of the films present an idealized past that glosses over the reality of these civil wars, at times producing a nostalgic discourse of loss and longing. Other films engage with the past in a melancholic fashion. These cinematic discourses articulate contemporary concerns, especially the loss of ideology and a utopian political horizon in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, a date that marks a significant break in European history and an accompanying paradigm shift in European cultural memory. Filmmakers examined include Trueba, Cuerda, Loach, Jordan, Kusturica, Dragojevic, and Angelopoulos.




Liberated Cinema


Book Description

Originally published in 1985, Liberated Cinema: The Yugoslav Experience received the first annual "Close-up" award from the Yugoslav Film Institute in 1986 for "outstanding scholarship and for promoting the values of Yugoslav film art internationally." This new edition has been revised and updated throughout. It has been expanded to complete the story of the new Yugoslav cinema of the 1980s and to address major film developments that have taken place in the former Yugoslavia's five successor states. As in his analysis of past periods of Yugoslav cinema, Goulding situates the most recent developments within the context of film economics, state subsidies, and changing patterns of political control. Most significantly, however, he provides an insightful discussion of the ways in which critically important domestic feature films produced or co-produced from 1991 to 2001 reflect on recent brutal internecine warfare and other contemporary social, cultural, and political realities after the breakup of Yugoslavia.




War Cinema


Book Description

'War Cinema' presents an introduction to and overview of films that take war as their main theme. Framing the era with 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Apocalypse Now Redux', the author initially focuses on Vietnam on film in the 1970s and 1980s and how this divisive war was represented.




Post-Yugoslav Cinema


Book Description

Drawing primarily on selected filmic texts from former-Yugoslavia, the book examines key social and political events that triggered the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. Yugoslav politics and society are set within the broader artistic and cinematic strategies that helped stabilise post-Yugoslav territories strategies that were part of the national desire of looking forward to a time of 'perpetual peace' and its subsequent cosmopolitan norms. It argues that filmic texts demonstrate the degree to which nationalism was at the heart of the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia. Yet, the concern of the argument is not simply to offer a filmic critique but to develop an alternative to nationalism; namely, a theoretical framework through which cosmopolitan humanism is at the forefront of addressing former Yugoslavia's political wounds.




Surfing the black : Yugoslav Black Wave cinema and its transgressive moments


Book Description

The Yugoslav black wave cinema of the sixties and the seventies is one of the grand, though hidden, chapters of cinema history. Talented young authors, working under the sign of individual expression and aesthetic experimentation, pushed and explored the limits of the constraints of a socialist state. Their efforts lead to a new path of visual expression, so outstanding by its social and political engagement, its formal invention, and its courage. This book is the result of a multi-disciplinary research attempting to cross over politics, philosophy, design, art, architecture, and some speculative thinking. Starting from archival work, interviews, seminars, screenings and a conference, 'Surfing the Black' has found its (temporary) conclusion in a publication consisting of six theoretical essays and three fanzines that open up the black wave film experience to current affairs.




The Bosnian Conflict


Book Description

This dramatic volume introduces the conflict in Bosnia that affected citizens of the same nation, who savaged each other with massacres and mass rape of civilians as a war tactic. Essays are compiled from a variety of sources and are carefully edited and introduced to provide context for readers unfamiliar with the Bosnian conflict. Essay sources include Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, and The Militant. Readers will examine the background and the causes of the conflict. The last chapter offers unforgettable first-hand accounts and narratives about people who were personally impacted by the conflict.




East European Cinemas


Book Description

Eastern Europe has produced rich and varied film cultures--Czech, Hungarian, and Serbian among them-whose histories have been intimately tied to the transition from Soviet domination to the complexities of post-Communist life. This latest volume in the AFI Film Readers series presents a long-overdue reassessment of East European cinemas from theoretical, psychoanalytic, and gender perspectives, moving the subject beyond the traditional area studies approach to the region's films. This ambitious collection, situating Eastern Europe's many cinemas within global paradigms of film study, will be an essential work for all students of cinema and for anyone interested in the relation of film to culture and society.




European Cinema in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

This book rethinks the study of European Cinema in a way that centres on students and their needs, in a comprehensive volume introducing undergraduates to the main discourses, directions and genres of twenty-first-century European film. Importantly, this collection is the first of its kind to apply a transversal approach to European Cinema, bringing together the East and the West, while providing a broad picture of key trends, aesthetics, genres, national identities, and transnational concerns. Lewis and Canning’s collection effectively addresses some of the most pressing questions in contemporary European film, such as ecology, migration, industry, identity, disability, memory, auteurship, genre, small cinemas, and the national and international frameworks which underpin them. Combining accessible original research with a thorough grounding in recent histories and contexts, each chapter includes key definitions, reflective group questions, and a summative case study. Overall, this book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of recent European Cinema, making it an invaluable resource for lecturers and students across a variety of film-centred modules.




Shell Shock Cinema


Book Description

'Shell Shock Cinema' shows how classical German cinema of the Weimar Republic was haunted by the horrors of World War I & the trauma of Germany's humiliating defeat. Anton Kaes argues that even films which do not depict war reveal a wounded nation in post-traumatic shock.