Based on the author's dissertation (doctoral)--Yale University, 2009.

A history of the Czechoslovakian military’s connection to some of the nation’s most innovative and subversive cinema. During the 1968 Prague Spring and the Soviet-led invasion and occupation that followed, Czechoslovakia’s Army Film studio was responsible for some of the most politically subversive and aesthetically innovative films of the period. Although the studio is remembered primarily as a producer of propaganda and training films, some notable New Wave directors began their careers there, making films that considerably enrich the history of that movement. Alice Lovejoy examines the institutional and governmental roots of postwar Czechoslovak cinema and provides evidence that links the Army Film studio to Czechoslovakia’s art cinema. By tracing the studio’s unique institutional dimensions and production culture, Lovejoy explores the ways in which the “military avant-garde” engaged in dialogue with a range of global film practices and cultures. (The print version of the book includes a DVD featuring sixteenth short films produced by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense. The additional media files are not available on the eBook.) “Alice Lovejoy’s revelatory study of the cinema culture wrought by the Czechoslovak Army Film studio is a cause for celebration among both cinephiles and media scholars. . . . Lovejoy’s curatorial enterprise brings these fascinating films to us for fresh examination. Seeing these artful army films nearly half a century later opens our eyes to work that requires us to reassess what we thought we knew about documentary, new waves, and world cinema itself.” —Dan Streible, New York University “Lovejoy restores these sometimes funny, sometimes poignant and always innovative films to their proper place in film history, while explaining the unique cultural politics that allowed them to blossom beneath the noses of the Stalinist government.” —Tom Gunning, University of Chicago “Filled with surprises for readers who thought they knew their Czech film history, this insightful book refutes many received ideas about Eastern European cultural politics during the Cold War and sketches a complex and nuanced relationship between artists and the socialist state.” —Rick Prelinger, UC Santa Cruz

Annotation Few aspects of American military history have been as vigorously debated as Harry Truman's decision to use atomic bombs against Japan. In this carefully crafted volume, Michael Kort describes the wartime circumstances and thinking that form the context for the decision to use these weapons, surveys the major debates related to that decision, and provides a comprehensive collection of key primary source documents that illuminate the behavior of the United States and Japan during the closing days of World War II. Kort opens with a summary of the debate over Hiroshima as it has evolved since 1945. He then provides a historical overview of thye events in question, beginning with the decision and program to build the atomic bomb. Detailing the sequence of events leading to Japan's surrender, he revisits the decisive battles of the Pacific War and the motivations of American and Japanese leaders. Finally, Kort examines ten key issues in the discussion of Hiroshima and guides readers to relevant primary source documents, scholarly books, and articles.

Here is a critical and historical overview of unconventional and aesthetically challenging films, all of feature length. The author focuses on the particular forms of contemporary avant-garde films, which often rely on characteristics associated with historical films of the same genre. Included are works by such visionary filmmakers as David Lynch, Luis Bunuel, Jean Cocteau, Jean-Luc Godard, Guy Maddin and Derek Jarman. The first of the two appendices contains a filmography of key avant-garde feature films, from Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922) to Maximum Shame (2010). The second appendix offers a brief list of directors who have made significant contributions to films that take alternative approaches to cinematic practice, establishing new grounds for analysis and evaluation.

The national cinemas of Czechoslovakia and East Germany were two of the most vital sites of filmmaking in the Eastern Bloc, and over the course of two decades, they contributed to and were shaped by such significant developments as Sovietization, de-Stalinization, and the conservative retrenchment of the late 1950s. This volume comprehensively explores the postwar film cultures of both nations, using a “stereoscopic” approach that traces their similarities and divergences to form a richly contextualized portrait. Ranging from features to children’s cinema to film festivals, the studies gathered here provide new insights into the ideological, political, and economic dimensions of Cold War cultural production.

Documents the rich allusiveness and intellectual probity of experimental filmmaking-a form that thrived despite having been officially banned-in East German socialism's final years.

The annexation of Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere after World War II dramatically reshaped popular understandings of the natural environment. With an eco-critical approach, Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe breaks new ground in documenting how filmmakers increasingly saw cinema as a tool to critique the social and environmental damage of large-scale projects from socialist regimes and newly forming capitalist presences. New and established scholars with backgrounds across Europe, the United States, and Australia come together to reflect on how the cultural sphere has, and can still, play a role in redefining our relationship to nature.