The GCLR is happy to announce that Katya Lopatko (Comparative Literature) will be participating in one of our prospectus/dissertation workshops! Her project is entitled "Global Cinema in the Cold War: Exchanges between Eastern European and Third World Cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, 1962 and 1964" and an abstract can be found below. 

 

We expect that the event will be of great interest to scholars with interests in Comparative Literature, Film and Media Studies, Cold War and Postcolonial Studies especially, but we encourage professors and fellow graduate students from all backgrounds to attend and offer constructive feedback on Katya's intriguing work!

 

Time: Thursday, February 20th, 3-4:30pm 

 

Place: Phelps 6206C

 

Abstract: This project will trace the contacts and exchanges between the Eastern European film community and Third World filmmakers at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, focusing on its 1962 and 1964 editions. It will then follow the trajectory of these cinemas into the later 1960s and 1970s to investigate how these early encounters shaped the development of aesthetic and political ideas and trends in the cinemas of both of these regions. In particular, it will examine how encountering decolonial cinema at Karlovy Vary impacted (or failed to impact) the formal experiments and political aims of the Eastern European New Waves, and conversely, how contact with Eastern European film - and European filmmaking communities more generally - informed the aesthetic and political principles of Third Cinema. In doing so, the project will engage with theoretical frameworks like postcolonial studies, Cold War studies, film festival studies and actor-network theory, and conceptual categories including socialist internationalism, global cinema, art cinema, and political modernism.