Cultural Studies Approaches in the Study of Eastern European Cinema: Spaces, Bodies, Memories

The “spatial”, the “bodily”, and the “memory turn” in the humanities and cultural studies are well-canonized developments. These features of our being in the world are fundamental in the medium of cinema, which is an art of spaces, bodies, and memories, increasingly so today when the analogue platform has been running parallel with the digitalized method of filmmaking. The three nodal concepts define the tripartite structure of this volume, composed of an overview study and twelve case-studies of post-1989 Eastern European film and cinema. The overarching questions of space representation and construction, bodies on screen, issues of national identification in a postcolonial framework, and cinema as a form of cultural memory are explored through the lens of specific national cinemas or contemporary Croatian, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian, and Romanian films. In addition to investigating the cohesive forces that mark the postcommunist Eastern European region as a coherent cultural entity in its cinematic representations, the volume also stands as a witness to the importance of transnational approaches.