Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe

by Ewa Mazierska (Editor), Zsolt Gyori (Editor)

Overview

Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe is the first collection to discuss the ways in which popular music has been used cinematically, from musicals to music videos to documentary film, in Eastern Europe from 1945 to the present day. It argues that during the period of state socialism, moving image was an important tool of promoting music in the respective countries and creating popular cinema. Yet despite this importance, filmmakers who specialized in musicals lacked the social prestige of leading 'auteurs' and received little critical attention. The resulting scholarly prejudice towards pop culture created a severe shortage of critical studies of the genre.

With the fall of state socialism - and with it, the need for economically viable film and media industries - brought about an unprecedented upsurge of films utilizing popular music, and a greater recognition of popular cinema as a legitimate object of study. Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe fills the gap and demonstrates why the popular music-cinema interface needs to be theorized with respect to the political, ideological, and social forces invested in popular culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501337178
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/13/2018
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She has published over twenty monographs and edited collections on film and popular music, including Popular Music in Eastern Europe: Breaking the Cold War Paradigm (2016), Relocating Popular Music (2015), co-edited with Georgina Gregory, From Self- Fulfillment to Survival of the Fittest: Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present (2015), and European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory, Politics (2011). Mazierska is the principal editor of the Studies in Eastern European Cinema journal.

Zsolt Gyori is an Assistant Professor in the Department of British Studies at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. He has edited collections of essays in Hungarian on British cinema, on body, subjectivity, race and gender in post-communist Hungarian cinema and the connective structures of space, power and identity in Hungarian cinema. He is also the author of Films, Auteurs, Critical-Clinical Readings (2014).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe Ewa Mazierska Zsolt Györi 1

1 1968 Leftist Utopianism in The Young Girls of Rochefort and Hot Summer Evan Torner 25

2 Representing Modern Romania in the Musical of State Socialist Period Gabriela Filippi 45

3 Worlds that Never Were: Contemporary Eastern European Musical Comedies and the Memory of Socialism Balázs Varga 63

4 Pop Music, Nostalgia and Melancholia in Dollybirds and Liza, the Fox Fairy Hajnal Király 83

5 When the Golden Kids Met the Bright Young Men and Women: Rebellion, Innovation and Cultural Tradition in the Czech 1960s Music Film Jonathan Owen 99

6 'Music isn't Music, Words aren't Words': Underground Music in the Hungarian Cinema of the New Sensibility Zsolt Györi 117

7 Socialist Night Fever: Yugoslav Disco on Film and Television Marko Zubak 139

8 Disco Polo and Techno According to Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz Ewa Mazierska 155

9 Musical Variations in Karpo Godina's Alternative Cinema Andrej Šprah 171

10 Polish Music Videos: Between Parochialism and Universalism Ewa Mazierska 187

11 'She Stole it from Beyoncé!': Transnational Borrowing in Bulgarian Pop-folk Music Videos and Audience Reaction to the Practice Maya Nedyalkova 205

12 Postsocialist Social Reality in Hungarian Rap Music Videos Anna Batori 225

List of Contributors 241

Index 245

Editorial Reviews

"Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe offers a refreshing and original contribution to the research on the region's cultural production. The authors vigorously demonstrate the paramount importance of the interface between cinema and popular music in negotiating hegemonic cultures and ideologies." --Elzbieta Ostrowska, Lecturer in English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Canada

"The volume offers valuable insight into the intersections of film and popular music in Eastern Europe through a set of intriguing case studies from Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, spanning an extensive time period, although primarily focusing on the socialist era and its nostalgic evocations through music and film in postsocialism. Ranging from musical films - a strong focus of the book - to contemporary (Hungarian) rap or (Bulgarian) folk pop music videos, the contributions enable comparisons with regard to the musical and cinematic construction of past and present, localities and identities across genres and among different national environments within Eastern Europe. The chapters also offer unique explorations of the construction and representation of the East-West relationship as lived socially and culturally." --Emília Barna, Assistant Professor, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary

"The study of popular music in Eastern Europe is a relatively new area. In this wide ranging and informative collection, Ewa Mazierska and Zsolt Gyori have assembled a range of contributors who not only provide new insights into the role of musicals in East European cinemas but also examine the relatively uncharted areas of disco, music video and rap music. Examining the situation under both state socialism and capitalism, they provide original historical accounts together with new theoretical applications and insights. The book provides essential reading and an important expansion in the field of popular music studies." --Peter Hames, Visiting Professor in Film Studies, Staffordshire University, UK

From the Publisher