Reluctant Feminists, Powerless Patriarchs, and Estranged Spectators: Gender in Post-1989 Eastern European Cinema

Abstract

The article analyses several films made within Eastern Europe during the first decade of the postcommunist period that represent the crisis of traditional gender models which permeated popular cinema. As the author argues the films represent ‘transition cultures’ in regard to gender discourse. The film Ildikó Enyedi’s My Twentieth Century (Az én XX. századom, Hungary/GDR/ Cuba, 1989) destabilises normative models of femininity by means of both the narrative content and formal strategies. Dorota Kędzierzawska’s Nothing (Nic, Poland, 1998) and Ildikó Szabó’s, Child Murders (Gyerekgyilkosságok, Hungary, 1993) denounce its discriminatory politics, especially effective on women that represent marginalised sectors of society. Finally, The Garden (Záhrada, Slovakia, France, 1995) directed by Martin Šulík, demonstrates how breaking with the code of realism facilitates the process of ‘correction of patriarchy’. The article will establish that these films significantly disrupt the national and thus patriarchal mode of address. This shift from the national to the gendered mode of identification also marks a new point of encounter between Eastern European and Western feminism. Due to represented gender uncertainty and aesthetic modes of spectatorial distanciation, the analysed works indicate this resistance and scepticism towards any singular mode of identification.

Keywords

• post communism
• Eastern European cinema
• Eastern European feminism
• women’s cinema
• postcommunist cinema