Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe - by Masha Shpolberg & Lukas Brasiskis (Paperback)

About the Book

Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe traces from the 1970s through the post 1989 period how documentaries and filmmakers began to articulate alternative, aesthetically and ideologically provocative visions of the relationship between human and natural worlds.

Book Synopsis

The annexation of Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere after World War II dramatically reshaped popular understandings of the natural environment. With an eco-critical approach, Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe breaks new ground in documenting how filmmakers increasingly saw cinema as a tool to critique the social and environmental damage of large-scale projects from socialist regimes and newly forming capitalist presences. New and established scholars with backgrounds across Europe, the United States, and Australia come together to reflect on how the cultural sphere has, and can still, play a role in redefining our relationship to nature.

Review Quotes

"This collection provides a comprehensive analysis of Eastern European film culture and ecocinema, integrating them expertly to provide a deep historical and geocultural analysis of variations in ecocinematic representations and the ways these film cultures have been engaging with environmental matters. The contextualization of existing scholarship with the particularities of Eastern European political and cultural history is exciting and innovative." - Pietari Kaapa, University of Warwick

About the Author

Masha Shpolberg is Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College. She is currently at work on a book entitled Labor in Late Socialism: The Cinema of Polish Workers' Unrest. In addition to this volume, she is also co-editor, with Anastasia Kostina, of Contemporary Russian Documentary, forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press.