The Centre for Film Studies at the University of Essex is pleased to announce the international symposium Beyond the Cold War: New Directions in Soviet, Central and Eastern European Cinema Studies. Featuring a range of distinguished speakers, the symposium aims to offer both a survey and a critical, reflective assessment of selected new and emerging approaches to the study of cinema under the conditions of State Socialism in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe.　

This symposium offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the current state of the field: many previous studies of the relationship between cinemas and State Socialism were underpinned, in one way or another, by mentalities deeply imbricated in the Cold War discourses. Twenty years after that war's end, the time is right to take stock of the various ways in which the collapse of Soviet power has facilitated - perhaps even necessitated - a shift in the approaches of scholars from East and West alike; at the same time, developments within the field have been increasingly informed and enriched by concepts and themes drawn from neighbouring disciplines, as well as the opening up of new sources within the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe.