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Despite the restrictions pertaining behind the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe gained a reputation for provocative, questioning and beautiful cinema, with such Poles as Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski, Czechs like Jiri Menzel and Frantisek Vlacil and the Hungarians Miklos Jancso and Istvan Szabo defying the tenets of Socialist Realism to examine life, past and prese... [+]

Despite the restrictions pertaining behind the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europe gained a reputation for provocative, questioning and beautiful cinema, with such Poles as Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski, Czechs like Jiri Menzel and Frantisek Vlacil and the Hungarians Miklos Jancso and Istvan Szabo defying the tenets of Socialist Realism to examine life, past and present, in their troubled nations.

Often using the strictures of censorship to positive advantage, directors explored new methods of getting their messages across, whether with satire, as in The Party and the Guests, unbridled irreverence, as with Daisies, or, as wth the work of Czech master animator Jan Svankmajer, innovative animated surrealism. For others - and here films such as Vlacil's Marketa Lazarova and Makk's Love come to mind - exquisite, poignant beauty was the best way of creating great films that have far outlasted the times of their creation."

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, film has flourished in the newly independent republics, with Emir Kusturica, Bela Tarr and Christian Mungiu among those to benefit from the new freedom of expression. Indeed, some of the most exciting new European cinema is currently engaged in examining its own past with a fresh perspective and wry humour. [-]