Editorial

Abstract

EditorialThe economic, social and cultural transformation of East-Central Europe in the last decades of the twentieth century has been declared as the last grand modern social, economic and political change in European history. Fiction film production of the region has recorded it and has been shaped by it. This special issue of SEEC aims to study this cinematic testimony and look into how the filmic output of the region has contributed to imagining and recreating socialist and postsocialist reality in times of change marked by sharp divisions between different imaginary projects.Most academic accounts in the field address 1989 as marking the fall of communism and the beginning of transition period. These concepts have their worth, but are also problematic, as they bear the marks of cold war anticommunism, neoliberal triumphalism and neo-colonialist bias, and assume linear from-to historical transformation. Consequently, this approach has overemphasized, among others, the importance of 1989 as a radical break, the legacy of the communist doctrine in the post-1989 present, the sheer rejection of the past as main motor of development, politicized approaches to history, cultural pessimism, orientalizing aspects, and the national character of cultural production.This special issue addresses the cinema production of the last two decades of the twentieth century in order to put 1989 into a broader perspective. The 1980-2000 timeframe can be instrumental in defetishizing the role of 1989 as landmark of a radical rupture in history and the pre-and post-1989 distinction it implies. Additionally, employing this period gives researchers the chance to focus not only on the commercial, structural, thematic and stylistic differences between pre-and post-1989 film output, but also on continuities; and challenge the artificial contrasts between socialist and (capitalist) European cultural production. The umbrella term we propose here is Europeanization. It assumes that transformations taking place at a national level are an interdependent part of a broader continental process. It emphasizes the social and cultural aspects of history and, as film historian Randall Halle puts it, can be viewed as an interzone and an ideational space of transit.The articles -extensively reviewed in our introductory intervention (see: Constantin Parvulescu and Claudiu Turcus, Introduction. Devices of Europeanization) -explore topics such as: the rural, adolescent and detectivistic imaginary of sequels to East-Central European popular cinema and their idiosyncratic visions of Europe (Balazs Varga); magical realist approaches to the notion of freedom in a society that is devoid of public space (Aida Vidan); representations of a liminal urban topography whose Europeanization is metaphorically outlined through erotic adventures and voyeuristic revenge narratives (Kris Van Heuckelom).Europeanization is also addressed through disappointed stories of self-colonization and migration that set forth the idea that the rift between the biographical East and th...