A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas showcases twenty-five essays written by established and emerging film scholars that trace the history of Eastern European cinemas and offer an up-to-date assessment of post-socialist film cultures.* Showcases critical historical work and up-to-date assessments of post-socialist film cultures* Features consideration of lesser known areas of study, such as Albanian and Baltic cinemas, popular genre films, cross-national distribution and aesthetics, animation and documentary* Places the cinemas of the region in a European and global context* Resists the Cold War classification of Eastern European cinemas as "other" art cinemas by reconnecting them with the main circulation of film studies* Includes discussion of such films as Taxidermia, El Perro Negro, 12:08 East of Bucharest Big Tõll, and Breakfast on the Grass and explores the work of directors including Tamás Almási, Walerian Borowczyk, Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski, Andrzej Zulawski, and Karel Vachek amongst many others

Notes on the Editor and Contributors viiiForeword xvDina Iordanova1 Introduction: Eastern European Cinema From No End to the End (As We Know It) 1Anikó ImrePart I New Theoretical and Critical Frameworks 232 Body Horror and Post-Socialist Cinema: György Pálfi's Taxidermia 25Steven Shaviro3 El perro negro : Transnational Readings of Database Documentaries from Spain 41Marsha Kinder4 Did Somebody Say Communism in the Classroom? or The Value of Analyzing Totality in Recent Serbian Cinema 63Zoran Samardzija5 Laughing into an Abyss: Cinema and Balkanization 77Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli6 Jewish Identities and Generational Perspectives 101Catherine Portuges7 Aftereffects of 1989: Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) and Romanian Cinema 125Alice Bardan8 Cinema Beyond Borders: Slovenian Cinema in a World Context 148Meta Mazaj and Shekhar DeshpandePart II Historical and Spatial Redefinitions 1679 Center and Periphery, or How Karel Vachek Formed a New Government 169Alice Lovejoy10 The Polish Black Series Documentary and the British Free Cinema Movement 183Bjørn Sørenssen11 Socialists in Outer Space: East German Film's Venusian Adventure 201Stefan Soldovieri12 Red Shift: New Albanian Cinema and its Dialogue with the Old 224Bruce Williams13 National Space, (Trans)National Cinema: Estonian Film in the 1960s 244Eva Näripea14 For the Peace, For a New Man, For a Better World! Italian Leftist Culture and Czechoslovak Cinema, 1945-1968 265Francesco PitassioPart III Aesthetic (Re)visions 28915 The Impossible Polish New Wave and its Accursed Émigré Auteurs: Borowczyk, Polañski, Skolimowski, and u³awski 291Michael Goddard16 Documentary and Industrial Decline in Hungary: The "Ózd Series" of Tamás Almási 311John Cunningham17 Investigating the Past, Envisioning the Future: An Exploration of Post-1991 Latvian Documentary 325Maruta Z. Vitols18 Eastern European Historical Epics: Genre Cinema and the Visualization of a Heroic National Past 344Nikolina Dobreva19 Nation, Gender, and History in Latvian Genre Cinema 366Irina Novikova20 A Comparative Study: Rein Raamat's Big Tõll and Priit Pärn's Luncheon on the Grass 385Andreas Trossek21 The Yugoslav Black Wave: The History and Poetics of Polemical Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s in Yugoslavia 403Greg De Cuir, Jr .Part IV Industries and Institutions 42522 Follow the Money - Financing Contemporary Cinema in Romania 427Ioana Uricaru23 An Alternative Model of Film Production: Film Units in Poland after World War Two 453Dorota Ostrowska24 The Hussite Heritage Film: A Dream for all Czech Seasons 466Petra Hanáková25 International Co-productions as Productions of Heterotopias 483Ewa Mazierska26 East is East? New Turkish Cinema and Eastern Europe 504Melis BehlilIndex 518