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Orphans of the East: Postwar Eastern European Cinema and the Revolutionary Subject

Orphans of the East: Postwar Eastern European Cinema and the Revolutionary Subject

by Constantin Parvulescu (Author)

  • New

    Illustrated 2015

    $95.25
Synopsis

Unlike the benevolent orphan found in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid or the sentimentalized figure of Little Orphan Annie, the orphan in postwar Eastern European cinema takes on a more politically fraught role, embodying the tensions of individuals struggling to recover from war and grappling with an unknown future under Soviet rule. By exploring films produced in postwar Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Poland, Parvulescu traces the way in which cinema envisioned and debated the condition of the post-World War II subject and the new man of Soviet-style communism. In these films, the orphan becomes a cinematic trope that interrogates socialist visions of ideological institutionalization and re-education and stands as a silent critic of the system's shortcomings or as a resilient spirit who has resisted capture by the political apparatus of the new state.

$95.25

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20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
 Pages: 235
 Edition: Illustrated
 Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 22 Jun 2015
ISBN 10: 0253016738
ISBN 13: 9780253016737

Media Reviews

Orphans of the East delves into the multifaceted meanderings around postwar vagrancy in a genre of film rarely brought together in one coherent volume.

* Slavic and East European Journal *
Parvulescu's broad synoptic reading of films from different Eastern European countries, referring to films that are often hard to see in the West, has the great merit of addressing larger sociological questions about film under socialism that can get lost in more narrowly focused approaches concentrating only on filmic poetics or on the history of everyday life. * Studies in Eastern European Cinema *
[This book] is a complex, competent, and engagingly written interdisciplinary book bringing together history, cultural and political theory, and film analysis. It should be of considerable interest to a wide range of scholars and students of Europena cinema, history, and cultural studies. * Slavic Review *
Parvulescu skillfully uses his examples to explore how ideologies of socialist identity strategies changed over time. Although largely unconcerned with the audio-visual dimensions of the films, the author provides bracing discussions, offering significant insights into the characters and plots as well as the political circumstances to which the narratives responded. . . . Highly recommended. * Choice *

Parvulescu has taken a highly innovative approach to socialist and post-socialist cinema in the region, and one that is vividly illustrated by a superb selection of films.

* Studies in European Cinema *
Author Bio

Constantin Parvulescu is Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at University of Navarra, Spain. He is editor (with Robert A. Rosenstone) of A Companion to the Historical Film.