The Black Experience in 1960s Czechoslovak Cinema

Storrie, Gareth Lewis (2022) The Black Experience in 1960s Czechoslovak Cinema. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Over the last several decades, a sizable body of academic research has been conducted on the representation of blackness in individual national cinemas. Scholarship on this topic has been most fruitful in those nation-states where members of the African diaspora have long been visible, both in day-to-day society and within the creative arts. The national cinemas of France, Great Britain, and the United States continue to wrestle with the legacies of colonialism and slavery, but what of those countries whose involvement with the African continent and its peoples is less visible, less understood? This thesis critically engages with how blackness was represented in the cinema of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and how external socio-cultural realities shaped depictions and ideas about its essence. In particular, this thesis examines the extent to which stereotypes of inherent black musicality and black sexuality are visible in several films produced in the 1960s, and how they have been intertextually influenced by an array of other visual media produced in the Czech Lands and Czechoslovakia, such as postage stamps, propaganda posters, paintings, travelogues, and books. This thesis also discusses how blackness could be shaped to serve the ideological narrative of the Czechoslovak authorities and what these images added to the global discourse on blackness in the 1960s, a decade in which black political revolutions arose in the United States and on the African continent.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Due to copyright issues this thesis is unavailable for viewing.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics; P Language and Literature > PG Slavic, Baltic, Albanian languages and literature
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > Slavonic Studies
• Supervisor's Name: Šolić, Dr. Mirna, Kay, Professor Rebecca and Čulík, Dr. Jan
• Date of Award: 2022
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2022-83084
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 18 Aug 2022 11:22
• Last Modified: 18 Aug 2022 11:23
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.83084
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/83084