The Soviet “Globalization”: Russians in East-European Studios after World War II
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| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Only a month after the last German filmmakers left the Prague studios in April 1945, Soviet officials started to prepare their own production there. Prague was just a part, though the most important one, of the Soviet strategy to use East-Central European studios for flooding the world with ideologically loaded films. This paper asks the questions: To what extent do these failed plans to compete with American and British international expansion exemplify an alternative, "Eastern" globalization? What role did Russian language play in the process of emulating Soviet production system in other socialist countries? The 8 Soviet “runaway productions” shot in Prague between 1945 and 1949 illustrate how Soviet officials and above-the-line talent interacted with the local filmmaking communities. Sharp differences between the two production cultures didn’t prevent the state-owned movie industry from attempts to adopt Soviet production guidelines and “norms” and to transform itself into a centralized “film factory”. |
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