3 Dec 10.00-11:45 CST, Virtual Convention, VR 5
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.
Chair: Diana Popa, Tallinn University
Discussant: Katarína Misikova, Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava
Speakers:
Elzbieta Durys, University of Warsaw
‘Reclaiming Past’ and ‘Filling in the Blank Spots’: Prevailing Elements in Contemporary Polish Historical Cinema
Janka Dudková, Institute of Theatre and Film Research, CRA, SAS
From the Rhetorics of ‘Glasnost’ to Contemporary ‘Anticommunism’ in Slovak Film
Andrea Virginás, Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania
21st Century Historical Films and Small National Collective Memory: Examples from Hungary and Romania
Diana Popa, Tallinn University
Memory and the Communist Past in Romanian Historical Films: From Revolutionary Uncertainty to Hopeless Didacticism