Representation of Slow Violence in the Films about Collapsed East European State Farms

Abstract

This article discusses representation of Eastern European state farms during their disintegration after the end of state socialism and in its last stage, in four films: Mgła (Fog , 1993) by Irena Kamieńska, Arizona (1997) by Ewa Borzęcka, U nas w Pietraszach (At Home in Pietrasze, 2002) by Lidia Duda, and Sátántangó (Satantango, 1994) by Béla Tarr. The reason I put these films together, despite their representing different genres, with the first three being documentaries, and the fourth belonging to fiction cinema, and pertaining to different national cinemas, with the directors of the documentaries being Polish, while Tarr is Hungarian, was my observation that the situations they sketch have much in common, as if they adhered to the same matrix. At the same time, each of them is made from a different authorial position. My purpose is to present the main features of the microcosm they construct and establish the authorial strategies employed by their directors. While doing so, I will draw on the political and economic history of Poland and Hungary, and evoke the concept of slow violence, as introduced by Rob Nixon in his book of the same title (2013). In my analysis I will also draw on the work of some prominent critics of neoliberalism, such as David Harvey and Mike Davis.