Abstract

The thesis analyzes the dynamic relationship among the totalitarian state, society and cinema and their interplay in producing the crisis of self-knowledge that plagued Eastern European societies during Communism. The study is accomplished from an interdisciplinary and comparative point of view. Its interdisciplinary core involves film, communication studies and political economy/science. The analysis is based on the experience of seven countries--Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia--collectively known as Eastern Europe, during the period from the imposition of totalitarian rule throughout the region (1944-48) until its collapse in 1989. To meet its objectives, the dissertation has developed a wide array of original methodological tools, based on theories and concepts, borrowed from the three main areas of this interdisciplinary study. Its most important methodological contribution is the construction and application of an original genre approach that adequately captures the dynamics in the relationships of the state, society and cinema. The thesis is an in-depth study of the origins and nature of each of the three principle players: the state, society and cinema and the role of the intelligentsia as the principal mediator in their interactions. The film process emerges as a form of displaced negotiations between state and society. The new genre approach provides analytical tools for the critical analysis of the product, the individual film. It facilitates the balancing of the political, the social and the aesthetic in the critical analysis of the product.