Film Stock in Eastern Europe: Industry, Geopolitics, Aesthetics

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel considers the history of film stock (the photosensitive celluloid used in motion-picture production) in Eastern Europe between the 1920s and 1970s. The papers examine the material’s manufacturing, use, aesthetics, and industrial contexts in a transnational framework that extends from the Soviet Union to France, and from East Germany to Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and the United States. Together, they advance an understanding of film as a material that was deeply embedded in 20th century geopolitics — those of the first Five-Year Plan, for instance, and of the early Cold War — both before and after images and sounds were recorded on its sensitive surface.

Sub Unit

• Cinema, Television, Electronic Media

Chair

• Alice Lovejoy, U of Minnesota

Papers

• Soviet Film’s French Origins, 1926-1932 - Valérie Pozner, CNRS Thalim

• Rethinking the East European 'Film Industry' - Alice Lovejoy, U of Minnesota

• Agfacolor: The New Color Film Stock and Its Challenges for the Czechoslovak Film Industry in the Postwar Period - Tereza Frodlová, National Film Archive (Czech Republic)

Discussant

• Priska Morrissey, U Rennes 2 (France)

Session Manager

• Aliide Naylor, Independent Scholar