Aesthetics at War: East European Film and Military Conflicts

Can cinema adequately depict the experience of war? What are the limits of visual representation of excessive brutality? To what extent can we treat cinematic productions as historical commentaries on violence? We will turn towards several filmmakers from Poland, Czechia/Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine to discuss these questions, while bearing in mind that the region has been - and continues to be - the site of some of the most horrific wars in modern history.