Cinema and Media: East Central Europe

This course will also have spaces available to
enroll at Course Advising Day.
This course will examine narrative films from
Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic and Slovakia]
and Hungary from post-WWII to the present,
including the remarkably inventive and often
banned films of the 1960s Czech New Wave
("diamonds of the everyday"); the often dark and
experimental "documentary fictions" of 1970s-80s
Hungary; and probing work of the transitional
period (1988-91) including samizdat media and
video art from societies experiencing dramatic
cultural and political changes. The ongoing
impact of surrealism (and animation) in the
region, ethnic tensions reflected in art and
media before and during the wars in Yugoslavia
(1990s), the austere realism of the "hard to live
in" post-socialist society reflected in New
Romanian Cinema (2000s), and work from other
countries that contribute insights to
contemporary directions in the "former East" will
also be explored.