Richard Taylor, Nancy Wood, Julian Graffy and Dina Iordanova, eds. The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema. London: British Film Institute 2000. vii, 288 pp. Bibliography. $65, cloth. $29.95, paper. This new book, published by the British Film Institute as part of its "companion series" to several national cinemas, aims to "bring together under one volume the breadth and variety of East European and Russian cinema in a concise, accessible and informative form" (p. vi). While focussing on "important figures and landmarks," the authors aspire, in over 200 articles, to provide a more balanced picture of "Eastern European" and Russian cinemas by paying attention to marginalised national cinemas, neglected traditions (such as popular cinema), and "other voices," including "post-colonial communities" (p. vi). Among the four editors and twelve contributors readers will recognize the names of leading experts in their fields, including Dina Iordanova (Balkan cinemas), Peter Hames (Czech and Slovak cinemas), Richard Taylor (early Soviet cinema), and Ronald Holloway (Bulgarian cinema). The involvement of reputable scholars, and the ambitious goal of the editors do not, however, result in a book that I can recommend. Dictionaries, encyclopaedias and companions present an easy target for reviewers because of the choices made: they are never complete, feature arbitrary selections, and exclude more than they include. There always will be a name, a concept, a film genre, or movement that should be, and is not, included in the work. There always will be a reviewer with a private agenda and a prepared list of names that were not selected by the editors. This book is no exception. The idea of combining entries on, for example, "Albania," "Zbigniew Rybczyfiski" and "Otar D. Ioseliani," seems odd and difficult to justify by "the geo- political order they [national cinemas] inhabited for more than four decades of this century" (p. 1). The multiplicity of this companion's entries on filmmakers, actors, film festivals, film movements and studios, once supposedly "united" by their Soviet heritage, does nothing to create a lucid picture of the cinemas in question. Although such books undoubtedly make sense from the publisher's perspective (vast field results in broader readership and better sales), from the academic perspective, however, discussing Polish, Georgian and Albanian cinemas in one book makes very little or no sense. I would rather see companions on "less ambitious" subjects, for example on particular national cinemas from Central and Eastern Europe. They deserve the same treatment by the BFI as, for example, German cinema (see the BFI Companion to German Cinema published in 1999). …

The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema

Berghahn, Daniela. Hollywood Behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany. Manchester, UK: University of Manchester Press, 2005.294 pp. $24.95 paperback. The opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 arguably made research on the literature and culture of the former East Germany both more appealing to a larger array of scholars and arguably more difficult to conduct. Writing on the films of DEFA (Deutsche Film AG), the East German film production company, offers a case in point. The dissolution of the German Democratic Republic brought about the dissolution of the company, the departure from the industry of many of the personnel who once worked there and a dispersal of the resources, prints, and archives once held by the studio. Yet, in the past ten years, numerous books and many articles have appeared both in English and in German telling histories of various aspects of filmmaking in the GDR. Daniela Berghahn's new book offers the first history of DEFA from its founding in 1946 to its closing in 1990 available in English. Moreover, the book provides an account of filmmaking originating in eastern Germany since DEFA closed its doors. Hollywood Behind the Wall is encyclopedic in format. Rather than providing sustained arguments about particular films, it attempts to cover the cinema as institution in East Germany. In this approach lie both the book's greatest strengths and its weaknesses. The book is divided into six chapters, organized topically. It begins with an extensive history of the role of film in the East German state that provides, at the same time, an overview of the relationship between the cinema and the state in both East and West Germany. As the founding of DEFA actually preceded the founding of the German Democratic Republic, the GDR inherited a film company that had already become the strongest in all of Germany. This strength came, in great part, through DEFAs ability to consolidate its talents and resources, whereas West German film companies remained divided and dispersed throughout the three western zones of occupation. Moreover, while audiences tired quickly of rubble films, some of DEFAs earliest films, including Die Morder sind unter uns (Wolfgang Staudte, 1946) and Ehe itn Schatten (Kurt Matzig, 1948), did quite well at the box-office. These and other early DEFA products including Die Affare Blunt (Erich Engel, 1948) mark the start of what would become known as the DEFA anti-fascist films. As Berghahn notes "the centrality of the anti-fascist myth of origin for East German national identity is reflected in the prominence accorded this subject in its national film production" (72-73). It is a theme that Berghahn traces through to the 1980s. …

Hollywood Behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany

Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe. By Mariana Ivanova. New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. Pp. xiv + 278. Cloth $135.00. ISBN 978-1789203431.

West German producer Manfred Durniok (1934–2003) played a crucial role in channelling the work of critical filmmakers from East to West. Straddling the Iron Curtain, Durniok financed international ...

Mariana Ivanova

Papers

Dissent as responsibility: Manfred Durniok’s Central European coproductions Mephisto (1981), Taken for a Ride (1983) and Colonel Redl (1985)