Syllabus
* 1. General concepts
Film, Political Power, Representations, Legitimacy, Reception, methodological challenges.
* Literature
Martin Mevius (ed.), The Communist Quest for National Legitimacy in Europe, 1918-1989, Routledge 2013.
Cristina Vatulescu, Police Aesthetics, Literature, Film, and the Secret Police (intelligence unit) in Soviet Times, Stanford University Press 2010 (see the concept of representation).
* 2. Film and surveillance, obedience and disintegration
* Film
Orson Welles (dir.), The Trial (1961).
(See for comparison: Emyr ap Richard, Darhad Erdenibulag (directors), K (2015)).
Miloš Forman (dir.), The Firemen’s Ball, (Czech dir. Hoří, má panenko, 1967).
Dušan Hanák (Slovak dir.), 322 (1969).
Karel Kachyňa (dir.), The Ear (Cz. Ucho, 1969).
* Literatur
Serazer Pekerman, The Schizoanalysis of European Surveillance Films, in: David Martin-Jones /
William Brown (eds.), Deleuze and Film, Edinburgh UP, 121-136.
Kirstie Ball, Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies, Routlege (London a.o.) 2012.
George Orwell, 1984, (first Secker & Warburg, London 1949), Penguin Books 2008, see also as
EBook of Adelaide University: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/index.html
Michael, Douglas Gose, Getting Reel: A Social Science Perspective on Film, (Cambria Press), New
York 2006.
Kees Boersma, Rosamunde van Brakel, Chiara Fonio, Pieter Wagenaar (eds.), Histories of State
Surveillance in Europe and Beyond, Oxon 2014.
Franz Kafka, The Trial (first 1914; Harmondsworth 1968 or as a Gutenberg EBook: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7849/pg7849.html).
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (NY 1975).
(from Jeremy Bentham`s Panopticon to Foucault`s Panoptism, Bauman`s Postpanoptikon and Bran- den Hookway`s Panspectron).
* 3. Film and the Staging of State Order
* Film
CCTV (Chinese State Television), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o2mHGrq_CY (a six epi- sodes propaganda documentary).
TVR (Romanian State Television), film sequences from Ceauşescus trial 1989 in Andrei Ujicăs film, see bellow.
Jiří Sequens (dir.), The Thirty Cases of Major Zeman (1975-1979)
DEFA (Studios), Polizeiruf 110 (1971-1990).
Rangel Valcanov (director), The Inspector and the Night (1963, Bg. Inspektorut i noshta).
* Literature
John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds.), Oxford Guide to Film Studies (see chapter “Film Text and Context: Culture, History and Reception”), Oxford University Press 1998.
Rolf Michaelis, Heimatlos in der Heimat, in Die Zeit Nr. 33, 07.08.1981, S. 29, siehe Archiv bei
Zeit Online: http://www.zeit.de/1981/33/heimatlos-in-der-heimat
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (first 1934), Penguin
Books 2008.
Veronika Pehe, Retro Reappropriations. Responses to the Thirty Cases of Major Zeman in The
Czech Republik, in: Journal of European Television, History and Culture, Vol. 3, %/2014.
* 4.Film and Violence
(from abroad, from within, State violence, censored violence)
* Film
Ryszard Bugajski (dir.), Interrogation, (Pol. Przesłuchanie 1982).
Pintilie (dir.), Reconstruction, 1968.
Thomas Jacob (dir.), Polizeiruf 110: Dt. Der Kreuzworträtselfall (1988).
* Literature
Richard Cross, Norry LaPorte, Kevin Morgan, Matthew Worley (eds.), Communism and Political
Violence, No. 2 - May 2010 of Twentieth Century Communism. A Journal of International History.
(see also Annual Conference Report_Violence IOS Regensburg: http://www.physicalviolence.eu/sites/default/files/Annual%20Conference%20Report_Violence%2 0IOS%20Regensburg.pdf, about violence in late socialism).
* 5.Film and Show Trial
* Film
See “7”.
Stanley Kramer (dir.), Judgement at Nürnberg (1961).
Costa-Gavras (dir.), The Confession (Fr. L`Aveu, 1970).
Andreas Johnsen (dir.), Ai Wei Wei, The Fake Case (2013)
Aleš Březinas (dir.), Toufar - The Torture Games, Nationales Opertheater, Prag, Tschechische Re- publik (2013) relating to the priest Toufar`s show trial
Kirchhof (dir.), Normalization (2014).
* Literatur
Schlicht, Robert, Film als Schauprozess / Film as a Show Trial, in: Tobias Hering (Hg.), Der Stand- punkt der Aufnahme - Point of View. Positionen politischer Film- und Videoarbeit, Berlin 2014.
Vatulescu, Cristina The Medium on Trial: Orson Welles Takes on Kafka and Cinema, in: Literature
Film Quarterly, Bd. 41, Nr. 1/2013, S. 52-56.
* 6.Discussion Round on term papers.
* 7.Film and Police Investigation
The Reconstruction of Crime Scenes (A discursive relationship).
* Film
See “5”.
Virgil Calotescu (dir.), The Reconstruction (1960)
Lucian Pintilie (dir.), The Reconstruction (1968)
Irene Lusztig (dir.), Reconstruction (2001)
Alexandru Solomon (dir.), The Big Communist Robbery (2004)
Nae Caranfil (dir.), Closer to the Moon (2013).
* Literature
(will be updated)
* 8.Film and Denunciation
Peter Bacso (dir.), The Witness (1969).
* Literature
(will be updated)
* 9. The Educational Film
(public or within the Ministry of Interior Affairs
* Film
Ovidiu Bose Paştina (dir.), One Victim and Many Culprits (Rom. O victimă şi mai mulți vinovați, 1983).
Sergiu Nicolaescu (dir.), Dangerous Curve (my translation), Rom. Viraj Periclos (1983).
(will be updated; see literature on socialist realism)
* 10. Film and Public Revolt
Kieślowski (dir.), „Arbeiter `71 - Nichts über uns ohne uns“ (1972).
Jerzy Wojcik (dir.), Lament (Pol. Skarga“, 1991).
Antoni Krauze (dir.), Black Thursday, (Pol. Czarny czwartek), 2013.
(will be updated)
* 11. Between Obedience and Mobility in film
* Film
Drăgan (dir.), Brigada Miscellaneous (1970, 1971).
(will be updated)
* Literature
Vannini, P (ed.) (2009) The cultures of alternative mobilities. Routes less travelled, Burlington:
Ashgate.
Siegelbaum, L H (2011) ‘Introduction’, in L H Siegelbaum (ed.) The socialist car. Automobility in the Eastern Bloc, Ithaca: Cornel University Press.
Scott, C J (1990) Domination and the arts of resistance: hidden transcripts, London and New Ha- ven: Yale University Press.
Gardiner, M E (2000) Critiques of everyday life, London and New York: Routledge.
Gătăjel, L (2011) ‘The common heritage of the socialist car culture’, in L H Siegelbaum (ed.) The socialist car. Automobility in the Eastern Bloc, Ithaka: Cornel University Press.
Michel de Certeau, M. (1988) The practice of everyday life, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London:
University of California Press.
* 12. Final Discussion and Conclusions
Annotation
The block course takes place at following days:
Friday, Nov 13
Saturday, Nov 14
Friday, Dec 11
Saturday, Dec 12.
On each of these days, there will be three classes (1,5 hour).
Statement: The course aims at familiarizing students with film as a medium of history on one side and as object and source genre of historiography on the other. It explores the way communist gov- ernments of central and southeastern Europe understood to employ the medium “film” in represent- ing political power and order with the aim of fostering state legitimacy. At the same time the course illuminates the overt critical character of banned, exiled, or merely censored film makers. Not least, it questions the rather ambiguous status of a third category of film makers who proved their political loyalty, but nevertheless included subversive elements in their films. The tensions inflicted by these three types of films, be it for cinema or for television, and by the ambiguity of the latter category to in the discursive relationship between film and political power should open the floor for discussion.
At stake is the understanding of the aesthetics of state order, e.g. the police aesthetics in film, and the degree of reception of those films by the respective populations, in German Democrat Republic,
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and beyond. Students are free to explore the interconnectedness of film genres with archival sources or other sources such as the written press and radio, literature and autobiographies, memoirs and petitions or letters to various administrative bodies. On this jour- ney through the narrative and the aesthetics of film in a “middle phase” and in late communism, students will explore various sub-genres of film such as feature film, crime fiction, essay, educa- tional film, documentary and autobiographic documentary from a both socialist and critical realism perspective. By deciphering among various layers of fictionality, grasping congruent or contradic- tory storytelling, this course will contribute to an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural mode of un- derstanding the collapse of late communism, the self-reproductive mode of social obedience and the mechanism of political power beyond legitimacy.