Prague, the “Hollywood of the East,” has played an important role in the history of cinema and World Film Locations: Prague traverses the city’s topography to examine an internationally diverse range of movies made in the Czech capital: landmark early films such as Ecstasy, controversial due to the female nudity that catapulted Hedy Lamarr into stardom in the United States; Steven Soderbergh’s biopic Kafka, starring Jeremy Irons; adaptations of Kafka’s literary works such as The Trial, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and starring Anthony Hopkins; and action blockbusters like Mission Impossible, The Bourne Identity, and Casino Royale. Exploring legendary Prague landmarks as they appear onscreen—including the Charles Bridge, Old Town, Malá Strana, Liechtenstein Palace, Wenceslas Square, and Prague Castle—the book also discusses the intersection of the capital city and its cinematic representations; Prague and the Czech New Wave; the iconic Barrandov Studios; and the impact of political events such as the Prague Spring, the Soviet Invasion of 1968, and the Velvet Revolution on the city’s film industry.
An invaluable resource for scholars, students, and aficionados of film and cinematic psychogeography, this collection will be heralded by students of East European literary, cultural, and sociopolitical history.
Marcelline Block is a film historian, author, editor and translator. Her publications include, among others, World Film Locations: Paris; World Film Locations: Marseilles (and its French version, entitled Filmer Marseille); World Film Locations: Las Vegas; World Film Locations: Prague; World Film Locations: Boston; Fan Phenomena: Marilyn Monroe; French Cinema and the Great War: Remembrance and Representation; French Cinema in Close-up: La vie d'un acteur pour moi; An Anthology of French Singers from A to Z: Singin' in French; Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema, and the French to English translation of Jean-Pierre Bertin-Maghit's Propaganda Documentaries in France: 1940-1944. Her writing has appeared in Afterall; Art Decades; the Big Picture Magazine; Cineaste; the Guardian; the Harvard French Review; Periodical; Soledad; Wages of Film, and Women in French Studies and has also been translated into Chinese, French, Italian, Korean, and Russian.
marcelline.contently.com
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