East European Cinema: Introduction

While to some, what "East Europe" is might seem straightforward, it is very much not. It has become more and more a controversial term. It is often perceived to have a political connotation, as leaders have strumentalised the term as an identity that opposes the west; largely, the expression is used with a degrading quality, to describe a series of countries perceived as retrograde - other times, "east european" seems to describe an aesthetic of sorts, a stereotypical exoticisation of a cultural reality.
In short East Europe is an identity from which most try to distance themselves. 

For these reasons, to proceed to define East Europe geographically, especially after 2022, is a challenge. Ever since the war in Ukraine, the east european identity has been reminiscent of the forced semi-unification during the Cold War, a spectre of the Soviet influence that is more and more a concrete threat. It is however undeniable that this very trauma, that of the Iron Curtain, also provides a sense of kinship to all those involved. It is in this sense that we should look at East Europe: a region that suffered a similar trauma in the history of the past century, and therefore is brought together by the shared experience.

While often east Europe has been divided in conflicts, cinema has universally condemned war and divisions, and traditionally has always aligned itself in a critical position towards all regimes. We are here speaking of cinema as an art form, purposefully ignoring propaganda films or movies that have been conceived as echo-chambers to a regime's policies, something that is still very present in several countries. During the Soviet Era, this form of dissent was met with the facing of censorship, and the limitations often allowed filmmakers to find pave new ways to convey meaning. As a result, often the cinematic language that is today defined as cinematic poetry became a dominant form adopted by east european filmmakers, alternatively, the subtle art of comedy was employed to more or less occultedly satyrise the issues of society.

East European Flicks aims to provide a positive connotation to the east european identity, through the peculiarities of its cinematic art, and to highlight the beauty of the filmic achievements that come from this very complex, often downlooked, often misunderstood area that very much belongs to Europe.