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Rethinking the Cinematic Cold War

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An exacting reassessment of the relationship between culture and ideology within the Cold War period, Rethinking the Cinematic Cold War highlights the role that politics played in informing polic...
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  • 01 March 2025
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Historical consensus increasingly views the Cold War period as a multifaceted conflict which extended beyond the borders of the USSR and USA, encompassing both cultural and diplomatic history. Debate remains, however, about how best to balance the Cold War as a cultural event with the existence of Cold War culture. Rethinking the Cinematic Cold War provides a fresh reassessment of this period, highlighting how the convergence of geopolitical interests, cultural production and exchange, and technological and media history shaped a unique epoch. Consequently, this volume seeks to diagnose the role cinema played in expanding the ideological outlook of artists, audiences, and policymakers.

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Price: $135.00
Pages: 316
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Imprint: Berghahn Books
Series: Visual and Media Cultures of the Cold War and Beyond
Publication Date: 01 March 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781805398769
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: PERFORMING ARTS/Film & Video/History & Criticism, HISTORY/Modern/20th Century/Cold War
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“Individual chapters… are well researched and cover remarkable ground. Interesting foci include international film festivals; the cinema cultures of India, Mexico, and post-colonial Africa; and the impact of Western film technology and Italian mafia films on the USSR. This volume is a welcome contribution to both cinema and Cold War studies, and many of its essays are suitable for advanced undergraduates…Recommended.” • Choice

Stefano Pisu is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Cagliari. Previously an International Fellow at Oxford University’s Research Center in the Humanities, his work considers the history of international cultural relations through cinema. His publications include Il XX secolo sul red carpet. Politica, economia e cultura nei festival internazionali del cinema, 1932-1976 (Franco Angeli, 2016) and La cortina di celluloide. Il cinema italo-sovietico nella Guerra Fredda (Mimesis, 2019).

Introduction: Expanding the Cinematic Cold War or: How We Learned to Cross Boundaries and Look at Bigger Pictures
Stefano Pisu, Francesco Pitassio, and Maurizio Zinni

Chapter 1. The Burden of Winning: American Cinematographic Policy in Italy in the Years of the Allied Military Administration (1943–1945)
Maurizio Zinni

Chapter 2. The Struggle to Save Progressive Unions: Carl Marzani and Union Films
Rosemary Feurer and Charles Musser

Chapter 3. A ‘Trojan Horse in the Enemy Camp’: Vatican Plans for a Catholic Third Way on the Chessboard of Cold War-Era Cinema (1939-1958)
Gianluca della Maggiore

Chapter 4. An Impossible Cinematic Hegemony: Soviet Films in Italy between Postwar and the Cold War (1944–1953)
Stefano Pisu

Chapter 5. Soviet Cinematic Diplomacy from New York to Beijing, 1949: Sergei Gerasimov and his Documentary Films
Marsha Siefert

Chapter 6. The Rise and Fall of Sino-Soviet Film Festival Diplomacy (1957-1966)
Elena Razlogova

Chapter 7. Making Ground for Film Export: Soviet Films’Competition with Hollywood in India in the 1950-1960s
Severyan Dyakonov

Chapter 8. The Film Market at the Time of Independence: France’s Former African Colonies and the Cinematic Cold War in the 1960s
Gabrielle Chomentowski

Chapter 9. The Troubles of Non-Alignment: International Pacifism, Transnational Style and Production Strategies in the Case of Rat (Atomic War Bride, Veliko Bulajić, 1960)
Francesco Pitassio

Chapter 10. From Anticommunism to Third-Worldism: The Transformation of Mexican Cinema in the Cold War of the 1970s
Israel Rodrìguez

Chapter 11. Cold War and Film Festivals in the Aftermath of 1968
Dina Iordanova

Chapter 12. To Catch Up and Overtake… Europe: Technology Transfer and Its Limits in the Soviet Cinema under Brezhnev
Catriona Kelly

Chapter 13. Missed Opportunities and Unexpected Success: Film Relationships between France and the GDR in the 1970s
Perrine Val

Chapter 14. The Chilean Cultural Project during Unidad Popular (1970–1973): The Interview between Roberto Rossellini and Salvador Allende
Margherita Moro

Chapter 15. ‘Ideological Threat of Italian Movies’: The KGB, Mafia, Punk-Rock, and Rise of Neo-Fascism among Soviet Youth (1982-1985)
Sergei Zhuk

Conclusion: Close Encounters around the World
Stefano Pisu, Francesco Pitassio and Maurizio Zinni

Filmography
Index