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Book Talk. Experimental Cinemas in State-Socialist Eastern Europe
Monday, March 7, 2022 @ 5:00 pm
Please join the Harriman Institute and East Central European Center for a book talk with Ksenya Gurshtein and Sonja Simonyi, co-editors of the new volume Experimental Cinemas in State-Socialist Eastern Europe, and series editor Greg de Cuir Jr. Moderated by Aleksandar Bošković and Christopher Caes, co-directors of the East Central European Center.
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, 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.