--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote: >
>
> As for the Soviet bloc, it produced many fine
> artists aside from such
> film giants as Vertov and Eisenstein. Andrzej
> Wajda, Andrei
> Tarkovsky, Béla Tarr (check out Jonathan Rosenbaum's
> comments at
>
<http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/0596/05106.html>),
> Andrzej
> Munk, Marta Meszaros, Mikhail Kalatozov, Krzysztof
> Kieslowski (whose
> films produced under socialism were superior to his
> post-communist
> works), Peter Kahane, Frank Beyer, Heiner Carow,
> Konrad Wolf, and so
> on, and so forth.
It had many fine artists, though many of them (including several, possibly all, that you name here) were not communists, and fairly critical. Tarkovsky and Kieslowski had problems getting films made and shown (and of course Parajadanov, who you don't mention, was jailed). Outside the brief period that Vertov and Eisenstein operated within, I can't think of any pro-communist Eastern Block filmmakers who were any good. Plenty of good political filmmakers though - maybe political art needs a sense of urgency thats lacking in the west?
Many fine Czech, Hungarian and Polish filmmakers had to stop making films because they were considered too subversive.
Bela Tarr's finest films date from after communism, BTW. Which may or not be relevant. Being freed from having to make political comments seems to have improved him. Conversely several other filmmakers have very undistinguished careers since the fall of communism. As you say, Krzysztof Kieslowski's French films are pretty indifferent.
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