THE CINEMA OF THE BALKANS

The Cinema of the Balkans contains 24 essays, each on an individual, select film from the Balkan region (former Yugoslavia – Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia; Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Albania). The collection highlights some of the most important films that represent the rich and diverse culture of the Balkans and reveals the stylistic and thematic affinities that characterise the cinemas of a region that is often perceived as a disconnected cultural space. Some of the selected films include Stella (Greece, 1955), The Four Seasons of the Law (Greece, 1999), The Goat’s Horn (Bulgaria, 1972), When I am Dead and Pale (Yugoslavia/Serbia, 1969), The Red Horse (Yugoslavia/Macedonia, 1984), Stone Wedding (Romania, 1971) and Walter Defends Sarajevo (Yugoslavia/Bosnia, 1972).

August 2006
288 pages

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Dina Iordanova is Chair of Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews and has published widely on Eastern European, Balkan and Russian cinema, including Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media (2001), Emir Kusturica (2002) and The Cinema of the Other Europe (2003).

'The cinema of the Balkans is a welcome and timely book, providing an accessible introduction to the diverse cinematic output of this stimulating region. [It] opens a critical space in which some lesser-known figures from the region's different art cinema movements can be discussed and contextualized, with the range of neglected directors and forgotten classics made available to film students through these essays being one of the book's main strengths. The essays are the whole extremely revealing, enthusiastic, and readable. The majority are highly informative, with the necessary combination of background context and textual analysis to illuminate films that it is assumed will be unfamiliar to the majority readers.[...] A volume that contributes significantly to the cinematic and cultural history of an expanding Europe.'
- N. Y. Potamitis, Cineaste 

'A very precious resource. Twenty-four surprising films, brought on stage, shown off and discussed with gusto. Together they sketch what the volume's editor aptly describes as a mutual history and geography ... If it didn't exist before, this anthology produces Balkan Cinema.'
– Dudley Andrew, Yale University

'An exciting and eclectic cross-section of twenty-four films from the Balkans that open our eyes to the rich diversity of the cinemas of these countries, and which deserve attention in the rest of the world.'
– Andrew Horton, University of Oklahoma

'... Almost all the contributors are regionally connected in some way and bring a passionate insight to the role played in the filmmaking process by industrial and biographical factors ... leaving the reader convinced that history can indeed be recounted through, as well as by, film... the sharpness of vision and the insider knowledge conveyed ... lift this book (and the series) from an academic exercise to the realm of investigative history accessible to a wide readership, and extended in this case to a proactive championing of Balkan unity, which will chime with recent developments in co-production across the region.'
– Gareth Jones, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, June 2007