Lovefilm (Hungary, 1970)
Literature and Film: In Search of the Lost Past
C LIT 357 A/ GLITS 314 D/ SLAVIC 223 A
Professor Gordana Crnković
TA: Taylor Eftimov, MA
With our 24/7 connectivity and the incessant flood of news from the farthest reaches of the globe the moment they happen, the past of a moment or a day or a year ago—let alone of decades or more ago—becomes our most distant realm, a fantastic land speedily retreating into the total oblivion. Yet, some of the most outstanding works of Eastern European literature and cinema revolve around the search for such a lost past, and reveal the deep connection of this reclaimed past to our collective present. Our class will discuss literary works in dialogue with chosen films to see how the two forms of art approach the same subject. Class readings consist of one short novel (Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude [Czechoslovakia, 1976]), one mid-size one (Bosnian-American author Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project [2008]), several stories by Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski, and an excerpt from the Yugoslav writer Ivo Andrić’s novel Bosnian Chronicle. Our films will include István Szabó’s Lovefilm (Hungary, 1970), Veljko Bulajić’s Kozara (Yugoslavia, 1962), Florian H. von Donnersmarck’s Lives of Others (Germany, 2006), Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War (Poland, France, UK, 2018), a few comedies to lighten things up, as well as clips from a number of other East European films.