Portuges edits book on post-Cold War cinema in former East Bloc

Comparative Literature professor Catherine Portuges and Peter Hames are the editors of “Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989,” published by Temple University Press.

 

The cinemas of Eastern and Central Europe have been moving away from earlier Cold War perspectives and iconographies toward identifications more closely linked to a redefined Europe. “Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989” studies the shifts in the dynamics between film production, exhibition, and reception in Eastern bloc countries as they moved from state-sponsored systems toward the free market.

 

The contributors and editors examine the interrelations between thematic, aesthetic and infrastructural changes; the globalization of the international cinema marketplace, and the problems and promises arising from the privatization of national cinemas.

 

The work also addresses the strategies employed for preserving national cinemas and cultures through an analysis of films from the Czech and Slovak republics, the former German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia. The study provides a picture of Eastern European cinema at a critical juncture as well as its connections to the emergent world of transnational media.

 

Contributors include the editors and Barton Byg, professor of German and Scandinavian Studies.

 

Portuges directs the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies and is curator of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival. She is the author of “Screen Memories: The Hungarian Cinema of Márta Mészáros.”