Solicitation of papers to cinema panel at NEMLA (4/10-13/08)

[Alexandar Mihailovic]

I am posting this call for papers for a panel I am chairing at the next Northeast Modern 
Language Association conference (Buffallo, NY;  April 10-13, 2008).  Please reply off-list.  
For more information about NEMLA, consult the organizations web site (www.nemla.org):


Cinematic Representations of the Former East Bloc, 2001-Present

The Communist era and its legacy have been portrayed with considerable ambiguity in 
recent films from the former East Bloc or its successor states.  While movies such as the 
German Goodbye, Lenin!  (2002) and the Russian television Brezhnev  (2004) regard 
nostalgia for life under the Warsaw Pact as a trap,  they frame their critiques of 
ideological wistfulness in surprisingly gentle terms, perhaps suggesting a new kind of 
historical revisionism that avoids the moral binaries of post Cold-War triumphalism.    
These hints of soft-pedaled relativism have more recently been rebutted by films such as 
the German The Lives of Others (2006) Florian Henckel von Donnersmark’s examination 
of the morally corrosive consequences of surveillance culture in the former GDR.  Russian 
films such as Zviagintsev’s The Return  (2003)  and Kzhazhanovsky’s  Four  (2005) 
underscore the stubbornness of the authoritarian Communist legacy.  Cinematic 
reevaluations of the Cold War from the former East have also been shaped by the 
ramifications of 9/11.  Drawing on the lessons of their own experience and collective 
histories, filmmakers from the former East Bloc and its successor states are regarding 
with increasing skepticism the demands for an international network of tightened security 
and untrammeled information gathering.   The “extraordinary rendition” or transportation 
of Al-Qaida suspects to prisons in the former East Bloc has contributed to a more 
rigorously ethical examination of statist domination over everyday life.  In this view, the 
parallels between the crypto-colonialist network of Soviet-allied nations and President 
Bush’s “coalition of the willing” are highly suggestive.  

The goal of this panel is to examine the ways in which post-2001 cinema considers the 
ramifications of such international developments,   and presents alternate visions of the 
relations between the West and the “former East” within today’s Europe. Papers may 
examine either film or television series.  Discussions of cinematic representations of the 
GDR in recent German films are also welcome.

Please send abstract of 200-250 words to Alexandar Mihailovic (cllazm at hofstra.edu) no 
later than September 21.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------