In addition to countering a tendency to see World cinema in terms of its coagulation in national cinemas, The Routledge Companion to World Cinema also does battle with auteurism, that belief that the vision, input and guidance of a single creative individual (the director) is what determines the final film.
It can be hard to shake off such traditions, however, especially when they are so crucial to an understanding of certain cinemas, which may only have been noticed because of the critical and commercial reception, infected by auteurist dogma, that selected a film for success.
Such is the case with Eastern European cinema, for example, where for many reasons, including a tradition of patriarchy, it’s a struggle to re-fashion debates around other concerns. Such a struggle, in fact, that the contributor we invited, Joanna Rydzewska, understandably suggested that the chapter be shared between her and a co-author, Elzbieta Ostrowska.
Joanna is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Swansea University and her research interests lie in the field of Eastern European cinema, transnational cinema, migration in film, gender theory and issues of identity. She has written on several Polish émigré directors, including Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Pawel Pawlikowski, as well as the representation of Polish migration in both Polish and British film and television. Elzbieta is at the University of Alberta and has published wide on Polish cinema, gender, Eastern European cinema, authorship, and Polish Literature and Culture.
This was their abstract.
Developments in Eastern European Cinema since the Break-Up of the Soviet Union
In a similar fashion to the debates around European cinema, one of the more prominent debates around Eastern European cinema is how to conceptualise it, where its boundaries are and whether it exists at all. If before 1989, some common features such as state censorship, the importance of authorial cinema for national identity or the experience of totalitarianism/socialism gave validity to putting together the cinemas of such disparate countries as East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia or Romania, the radical de-centralisation after 1989 and the formation of new nation-states in addition to the old ones begs a question of the usefulness of the term.
This chapter charts the developments in Eastern European cinema since 1989. On the one hand, contextualising it within the previous common experience of the Soviet Bloc and, on the other, taking into account the new forces of globalization, neo-liberalism, the partial collapse of state funding and the more industrial model of film production, including the new pan-European funding mechanisms and transnational films (Spare Parts, Kozole, 2003). It will look at the key common themes and trends that emerged in Eastern European cinema post-1989 using examples from different countries. Themes include representations of Communism, the rise in heritage cinema, especially in the context of the exploration of the mechanisms of state control (Różyczka/Little Rose, Kidawa-Błoński, 2010) and previously suppressed histories (Ida, Pawlikowski 2013), the postcolonial re-working of the relationship with Russia (Kolja/Kolya, Sverak, 1996), the legacy of the social ravages of Communism exemplified by the films of the Romanian New Wave, gendered representations of the New Europe (Slovenian Girl, 2009 Kozole; Elles, Szumowska, 2011) and the persistence of authorship (Béla Tarr).
Ah, the persistence of the persistence of authorship!