Constantin Parvulescu – författare

Unlike the benevolent orphan found in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid or the sentimentalized figure of Little Orphan Annie, the orphan in postwar Eastern European cinema takes on a more politically fraught role, embodying the tensions of individuals struggling to recover from war and grappling with an unknown future under Soviet rule. By exploring films produced in postwar Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Poland, Parvulescu traces the way in which cinema envisioned and debated the condition of the post-World War II subject and the "new man" of Soviet-style communism. In these films, the orphan becomes a cinematic trope that interrogates socialist visions of ideological institutionalization and re-education and stands as a silent critic of the system's shortcomings or as a resilient spirit who has resisted capture by the political apparatus of the new state.

Unlike the benevolent orphan found in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid or the sentimentalized figure of Little Orphan Annie, the orphan in postwar Eastern European cinema takes on a more politically fraught role, embodying the tensions of individuals struggling to recover from war and grappling with an unknown future under Soviet rule. By exploring films produced in postwar Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Poland, Parvulescu traces the way in which cinema envisioned and debated the condition of the post-World War II subject and the "new man" of Soviet-style communism. In these films, the orphan becomes a cinematic trope that interrogates socialist visions of ideological institutionalization and re-education and stands as a silent critic of the system's shortcomings or as a resilient spirit who has resisted capture by the political apparatus of the new state.

Broad in scope, this interdisciplinary collection of original scholarship on historical film features essays that explore the many facets of this expanding field and provide a platform for promising avenues of research. Offers a unique collection of cutting edge research that questions the intention behind and influence of historical filmEssays range in scope from inclusive broad-ranging subjects such as political contexts, to focused assessments of individual films and auteursPrefaced with an introductory survey of the field by its two distinguished editorsFeatures interdisciplinary contributions from scholars in the fields of History, Film Studies, Anthropology, and Cultural and Literary Studies

Global Finance on Screen is the first collection exclusively dedicated to a growing body of multi-format and multimedia audiovisual work that this book designates as the finance film. Finance film provides critical visualizations of the secretive, elitist, PR firewalled, and gender and race-biased world of finance, and its mysterious characters, jargon and products. It reconstructs for the screen and for broader audiences finance’s logics, responsibilities, practices, and ethos, and traces the effects of money, markets, investment, credit, debt, bubbles, and crashes on our well-being, desires, values, and actions. The chapters for this interdisciplinary collection are written by European and North American scholars in film studies, anthropology, business ethics, cultural studies, political economy, and sociology. They reveal and evaluate the ability of film to document financial cultures; reflect economic, cultural and political transformations related to financialization; indicate the alienating and exploitative consequences of the growing role played by financial services in the global economy; mobilize social action against finance’s excesses; as well as spread finance and capitalist mythology. The collection offers in-depth investigations of feature films such as Wall Street, Freefall, Margin Call, Justice&Co, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Big Short, and documentaries such as Inside Job, Capitalism: A Love Story and In a Strange Land.

Global Finance on Screen is the first collection exclusively dedicated to a growing body of multi-format and multimedia audiovisual work that this book designates as the finance film. Finance film provides critical visualizations of the secretive, elitist, PR firewalled, and gender and race-biased world of finance, and its mysterious characters, jargon and products. It reconstructs for the screen and for broader audiences finance’s logics, responsibilities, practices, and ethos, and traces the effects of money, markets, investment, credit, debt, bubbles, and crashes on our well-being, desires, values, and actions. The chapters for this interdisciplinary collection are written by European and North American scholars in film studies, anthropology, business ethics, cultural studies, political economy, and sociology. They reveal and evaluate the ability of film to document financial cultures; reflect economic, cultural and political transformations related to financialization; indicate the alienating and exploitative consequences of the growing role played by financial services in the global economy; mobilize social action against finance’s excesses; as well as spread finance and capitalist mythology. The collection offers in-depth investigations of feature films such as Wall Street, Freefall, Margin Call, Justice&Co, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Big Short, and documentaries such as Inside Job, Capitalism: A Love Story and In a Strange Land.

Romanian Capitalism on Screen examines contemporary Romanian cinema as a testimony to pivotal aspects of Romania's postsocialist economy and culture. It complements existing accounts of economic and cultural history by utilizing the perspective of socially engaged, high-quality cinema to provide enlightening insights into the country's emerging capitalist culture. Focusing on key feature films of the New Romanian Cinema, the monograph presents a methodological framework for analyzing cinematic texts as "histories of the present." It addresses the economic imagination of emerging entrepreneurial classes, the value of human life within neoliberal contexts, the struggles of the middle and working classes during periods of radical economic and social transformation, the mental mapping of globalization from a European periphery, and emigration as a form of economic revenge.