Challenging the Canon

An exploration of the contributions of little-known women filmmakers and critics in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1920s and 1930s to reveal the complexity of the challenges they faced.

Challenging the Canon: Women Filmmakers in Interwar Eastern Europe explores the contributions of "lesser known" women in the cinema industries of east-central, eastern, and south-eastern Europe, including the western USSR, not merely to "restore" them to film history but to reveal the complexity of the challenges they faced at a pivotal period in both cinematic and world history.

The two decades following World War I were tumultuous ones in European cinemas. This era of challenges affected all filmmakers, but especially pioneering women; not only the very few well-known directors like Germaine Dulac and Leni Riefenstahl, but also the women scriptwriters, editors, producers, costume and set designers, film critics, etc., whose contributions warrant research and recognition.
The women practitioners in this volume all persevered and made an impact on their industry and the field of their practice, only to "disappear" from history.

This volume is a project of reclamation of "lost" pioneers, as well as a challenge to the hierarchies of canons and pantheons that have tended to dominate cinema histories. Coupled to this aim of recovery is an intervention in ongoing debates on the marginalisation and peripherality of Eastern and Southeastern Europe as geopolitical and cultural spaces.