Mediating the Memory of the Communist Past in Contemporary East Central European Cinemas: From Historical Specificity to Global Understanding

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In the context of the global resurgence of authoritarian, right wing tendencies, this panel proposes to map changes in the memory discourses about the East Central European past by analysing the aesthetic and narrative strategies that historical films from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania employ in order to respond to the changing needs of the present. The panel seeks to explore the memory of the communist past that these films reconstruct in relation to (a) official discourses about the past; (b) their popularity and/or recognition at global, regional and national levels; c) oppositional discourses of victims and perpetrators. The aim is to offer a nuanced understanding of how these films work within local/ global memory discourses and how these, in turn, affect their reception at local and/ or global level. The panel is organised by the project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No 853385).

Sub Unit

• Cinema/Television/Electronic Media

Chair

• Emilia Diana Popa, Tallinn U (Estonia)

Papers

• 'Reclaiming Past' and 'Filling in the Blank Spots': Prevailing Elements in Contemporary Polish Historical Cinema - Elzbieta Durys, U of Warsaw (Poland)

• From the Rhetorics of 'Glasnost' to Contemporary 'Anticommunism' in Slovak Film - Janka Dudková, Institute of Theatre and Film Research, CRA, SAS (Slovakia)

• 21st Century Historical Films and Small National Collective Memory: Examples from Hungary and Romania - Andrea Virginás, Sapientia Hungarian U of Transylvania (Romania)

• Memory and the Communist Past in Romanian Historical Films: From Revolutionary Uncertainty to Hopeless Didacticism - Emilia Diana Popa, Tallinn U (Estonia)

Discussant

• Katarína Misikova, Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (Slovakia)

Session Manager

• Anastasia Felcher, Blinken Open Society Archives (Hungary)