Fri 17th May 2013 10:00 to 18:00
FilmGuild - Filmhouse Edinburgh
Organised by Prof. Dina Iordanova, Dr Dennis Hanlon and
Dr Jonathan Owen
In the 1960s the Western genre, then waning in its native
Hollywood, took root in many European countries. Though Italy's Spaghetti
Westerns indeed remain the best-known result of this transposition, the genre
also crossed political lines into Communist Eastern Europe. A highly diverse
raft of state-socialist Westerns emerged that twist the genre's familiar tropes
in accord with local culture and history, not to mention the ideological
demands of the Cold War.
These 'Red Westerns' sometimes play as uproarious
parodies of the genre and sometimes as sincere examples of it; they sometimes
adapt Western narratives to local histories and settings, and sometimes
fabricate an American West with the help of lookalike European locations. If,
say, Yugoslavia's 'Gibanica' Westerns spin genre thrills out of that country's
wartime Partisan struggles, then East Germany's Indianerfilme take place in a
recognisable 'West' - albeit a radically reimagined one where the Indians are
good and the American settlers bad.
Our one-day symposium will chart this fascinating episode
in European popular cinema and address such questions as where these films
stand in the history of the Western: how might they connect to post-classical,
revisionist, demystifying modes of the genre as embodied by Peckinpah or Leone? This topic also enables us to explore
broader, marginalised realities of Eastern Bloc film. With their Hollywood
borrowings and frequent dependence on co-production, these films reveal the
centrality of the transnational to this region's cinema. Their often
Bloc-busting commercial success further affords consideration of popular
pleasures in the people's democracies.
Venue: Filmhouse Film Guild
This is a free event; no registration is required
Programme
9:30 - 10.00 Welcome and Opening Comments
10:00-12:00: PANEL 1 - Westerns Around the Bloc
Jonathan Owen : Czech WesternsSonja Simonyi : Hungarian Westerns
Dennis Hanlon : Latin American Westerns
12:00-13:00: Lunch Break
13:00-15:00: Screenings: Short Films and Apaches
(Apachen, 1973, Gottfried Kolditz)
15:00-15:30: Coffee Break
15:30-17:30: PANEL 2 - East German Westerns
Tim BergfelderEvan Torner
Dina Iordanova
17:30-18:00: Close / Discussion