“Socialist Entertainment” – Special issue of the Journal of Film & Media „Ekrany”

Socialist film-making was not only about oppressed directors fighting with censorship and criticizing the communist system in their allegorical works. Already in the 1940s most film industries in the Soviet bloc started to introduce their own segments of popular audiovisual media: new film genres, ‘educate and entertain’ TV shows, or expensive and aesthetically sophisticated historical superproductions.

With in-depth analyses by leading scholars on the subject, including Ewa Mazierska, Balázs Varga, Anikó Imre and Jaromír Blažejovský, the new special issue of “Ekrany” offers insight into the academically underexplored realm of socialist film and television entertainment – a rich cultural universe of sophisticated political satire, ideologically biased depictions of history and campy communist incarnations of classic genres such as horror, western, musical, crime, or science fiction film.

Available in open access at: [https://ekrany.org.pl/…/Ekrany_Socialist_Entertainment.pdf]