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Ecocinema Beyond the Iron Curtain

Discussions of climate change tend to foreground the former “first and third worlds.” What often gets left out of the conversation is the “second world”—the countries relegated to the Soviet sphere of influence after World War II. Yet these countries experienced some of the most dramatic transformations, from rapid industrialization to total dereliction and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, troubled revival. This film series charts the way Eastern and Central European filmmakers helped audiences process these changes and reimagine their attitudes towards the environment and nonhuman species. It includes cinematic gems rarely or never before shown in the US that touch on the representation of pollution, radiation, and a nature radically altered by human folly.

The program is co-curated by Joanna Raczyńska in collaboration with Lukas Brasiskis (e-flux, Columbia University) and Masha Shpolberg (Bard College), who recently published an edited volume on this topic: Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe (Berghahn Books, 2023). These three programs were screened once previously as part of a broader series held at Anthology Film Archive in New York City in April 2024.

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