Slow Time Like the Present’

Romanian New Wave Cinema as Commemorative Critique of Communist Memory

Bibliographic Data

ID11102188
AuthorsBeatrice Leeming (0009-0002-9871-808X, University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume48
Issue1
Pages109-144
Publication date2024-09-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSoutheastern Europe (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-4467 • E-ISSN: 1876-3332
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.30965/18763332-48010006
OpenAlexW4402781606
LanguageEN
References cited19

Romanian New Wave cinema ( rnw ) has been recognised as a medium that addressed the way people felt about their historical trauma, a vernacular insertion nuancing declarations that Nicolae Ceausescu was a ‘megalomaniacal dictator’, and a means to attract and negotiate international interest in the country’s culture. rnw was a subversive and self-conscious commentary on the experience of transition from communism to capitalism as much as aesthetic entertainment. This article argues that rnw was critical of the idea of a transformative watershed – predominant in conceptions of 1989 across the Euro-Atlantic space – and qualifications of the teleological imaginary that encompassed it. Drawing on film theory, as well as the tension between collective and individual memory, the author argues that rnw was a self-conscious and creative effort at commemorating a past, contributing to a more democratic debate about the ways in which recent history bears upon the present

Ancient history · Modern history · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History

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