Suchergebnisse

RUSSIAN CINEMA IN THE FREE-MARKET REALM: STRATEGIES FOR SURVIVAL For a motto of this article I would like to paraphrase the title of Werner Herzog's 1974 film Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle(1) (Every Man for Himself and God Against All) to read: Every Director for Himself and the Free Market Against All. The Hungarian-born social economist and philosopher Karl Polanyi provides a useful theoretical framework for the current situation in post-Communist national cinemas. In his ground-breaking work The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944) he critiques the inherent tendency of an all powerful market to subordinate and manipulate society. His famous dictum "laissez-faire was planned, central planning was not" rings more true today on the basis of post Communist experience, than at the time he wrote his book between the wars.(2) Polanyi has consistently warned against the dangers of separation.

Where is that fragile line between different cultures, different religions, different national or personal identities? - Agnieszka Holland THE 19th CENTURY politician Metternich, a champion of Western European isolationism and Austrian xenophobia, is credited with saying that Asia begins at the Landstrasse, that is, at the street that leads out of Vienna toward Hungary. Over the last two hundred years of our millennium, Central and Eastern European countries have struggled to overcome this deep prejudice and reclaim their place in Europe independent political and cultural entities. And while it has been very difficult to do so in terms of economic and political modernisation; in terms of establishing long lasting state and social institutions that are capable of generating and perpetuating democracy, in terms of culture Central and Eastern European countries have scored much more successfully. In fact, often times much better than their Western European counterparts. Ten.

The transition to market economy and the dismantling of the USSR created an unprecedented crisis in Russian film industry. The awesome All Union Ministry of Cinematography (Goskino) was dismembered. This almost paramilitary institution, whose senior officials were also allegedly senior KGB officers, directed, or rather policed, the Soviet film production process with the stick of censorship, and the carrot of lucrative awards. Understandably, the censorship is not going to be sorely missed. What is missed, however, are the generous state budgets and the firm general line, drawn by the military from the Ministry, in accordance with the ever-changing Kremlin ideological vision. Distribution-wise the situation in Russian cinema followed the pattern characteristic for the other post-communist countries. American films, kept for so long beyond the ideological pale, took over the repertoire, occupying around 75% of the programming time, with a tendency to reach 85% during the next decade. In the Russian.