During four decades of Communist Party rule, the film industries of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia were under state control. One positive result of this was ample funding for serious films about social and political topics; one serious drawback was the existence of a censorship apparatus which made criticism of the policies of the existing regimes very difficult (though not impossible). Nonetheless, in certain thematic areas, particularly those dealing with racial and ethnic intolerance and with the plight of women in patriarchal societies, filmmakers in East Central Europe were able to be more incisive, frank, and provocative than is generally possible within the profit-driven, entertainment-oriented Hollywood film industry. This is not to say that the Communist regimes themselves gave priority to ameliorating the living conditions of their ethnic minorities or of women. But talented and committed filmmakers were able to take advantage of the progressive official pronouncements of these regimes with regard to ethnic and gender issues in order to craft powerful films, films which the regimes had no grounds to suppress or censor.

This course will study some of the most important films made in four thematic categories:

1. the Holocaust — the reactions of people in East Central Europe to the genocidal plans of the Nazis, from indifference and collaboration to heroic acts of altruism
2. ethnic discrimination and its consequences in more recent years — the depressed economic status of the Roma (Gypsies); animosity among Croats, Serbs, Moslem Bosnians and Albanians, leading to Yugoslavia's past and present civil wars — as well as the countervailing examples of a commonality of humanistic values and peaceful coexistence among people of these ethnicities
3. women's lives under state socialism — women in the work force in large numbers, but plagued by a "double" or "triple" burden, with continued primary responsibility for domestic work and child care, as well as by persistent patriarchal attitudes toward sex and marriage in society as a whole
4. the response of Central Europe's leading women filmmakers, who, in different contexts and with different stylistic approaches, have presented heroines who rebel and struggle against the patriarchal order

Course Requirements:

Three papers.

Class Format:

All of the required films, readings, and lectures will be asynchronous. Weekly short quizzes on the films will help students keep pace with the course, and students will be asked to submit brief discussion questions each week. One-on-one on line conferences with the professor and the graduate student instructor, as well as small Zoom meetings on suggested paper topics, will be arranged throughout the semester. Feedback on papers before the required revisions will be conveyed as written comments and in one-on-one on-line meetings.

Assignments and on-line quizzes will be asynchronous and "open-book" in the sense that students will be able to review films and readings as they wish before responding. Grades will be based primarily on three medium-length papers and the revisions of the first two of these three papers. Due dates for the papers and the revisions will be spread throughout the semester, with a paper or a revision due every two or three weeks, beginning with the fifth week of the semester (see syllabus for details and due dates).

Canvas will be used for all asynchronous online components. Synchronous meetings with instructors will be conducted through Zoom. These meetings will be optional, except for the discussions of revisions of papers, which will be required twice during the semester. Students should have access to a camera and microphone on a computer or to a telephone.