CINÉMA, MÉMOIRE ET CRITIQUE DE LA CORRUPTION DANS LA ROUMANIE ET LA BULGARIE POSTCOMMUNISTES
Alexandra Oprea
Université de Bucarest, EHESS Paris
Abstract: Cinema, memory and critique of corruption in post-communist Romania and Bulgaria
Abstract: This article analyzes different social practices of denunciation of informality through the analysis of cinematic discourses in Eastern European societies. More precisely, two case studies have been chosen, the Romanian and the Bulgarian one, due to their shared communist past and due to the large protests against the corrupt elite and social injustice, that took place in both countries during the last decade. Therefore, we will discuss what type of references and representations of the communist past related to practices of corruption can be found in four recent Romanians and Bulgarian films. These Romanian (Cristi Puiu, Cigarettes and coffee, 2004; Alexandru Solomon, Kapitalism our improved formula, 2010) and Bulgarian (Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov, Gloria, 2016; Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva, The Beast Is Still Alive, 2016) films that address corruption will be studied comparatively from a theoretical perspective situated at the intersection of pragmatic sociology and memory studies, in order to show the local specificity of this type of denunciation and the circulation of certain discourses.
Keywords: Post-Communism, Romania, Bulgaria, Corruption, Cinematographic Practices