A Critical History of Health Films in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond

Front matter

\ \ \ \ Abe IN

A CRITICAL HISTORY OF HEALTH FILMS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE AND BEYOND

Victoria Shmidt and Karl Kaser zz N [= = = m 9 G m

Contents

List of Archives and Their Abbreviations List of Figures Acknowledgments

Introduction: Nonlinear historicizing as a method for studying health films Health films through the lenses of critical heritage studies and critical public health 1 Health films as structure and agency of public policy 4 The limits and options for historicizing health films in Eastern Europe 6 The historical time of health films in Eastern Europe 9 The event time of health films: The structure of the book 14

PART 1 Child and nation in the focus of rescue-mission health films

1 The interwar obsession with family: Eugenic pathos vs. humanistic skepticism

The (im) possibility of the mission to rescue the child in interwar discursive practices 27

Traditional family values in the eugenic and anti-eugenic rhetoric of Hollywood family films 29

The deconstruction of residential care in The kid by Charlie Chaplin 31

2 Collective care vs. the “backward” family in Jak Vašíček přišel k nohám The brotherhood of the disabled captures Czech screens and hearts 36 vi Contents

Jak Vašíček přišel k nohám as a model of public politics concerning people with disabilities 40

3 The institutionalized child as a precondition for the healthy nation in the films of Mladen Sirola 44 Zapusteno dijete, Pomoć u pravi čas and Spas male Zorice: Three trajectories for institutionalizing children 44 Gender, religion and class in film metaphors about irresponsible parenting 48

4 Central and Eastern European film in the search for deconstructing the institutionalized child 54 The critical reception of residential care for children within global and national campaigns for family care 54 Lilika: An Eastern European response to the issue of youth in social policy and culture 59 The individualistic loneliness of a child vs. collective care in late socialist Czech films 62 A renaissance in rescue-mission films after 1989 with the aim of delegitimizing the socialist past 66

PART 2 Health films for teaching children 71

5 The complex legacy of early animated health films in Eastern Europe 73 Picturing germs in animated health films 73 Puppet theater as a vehicle of health propaganda 80

6 Bacilinek (1922) on the stage of the national and global orders of health security 88 Bacilinek: The inception of the magical contagion genre in health propaganda 88 The cultural war between Bacilínek and anti-scientism 91

7 Health films for children: Between cultural reciprocity and popular scientism 98 Western health animation for children in the service of social and biological awareness 98 Kašpárek kouzelnikem: Our children deserve more care than royalty! 102

Contents

Kašpárek a Budulínek: A health film to save future generations and national manufacturers 104

Campek nevaljalac: The indisputable values of personal cleanliness in controversial times of political pollution 109

PART 3 Men and women in the focus of health films

The options and limits of health films for men in the late 1910s 115

Multi-focus narration in Il était une fois trois amis and Damaged lives 121

Osudná chvilé as a health Bildungsroman for men 127

Double Bildungsroman in Czech and international health film 133

The health education of peasants as a manifestation of progressive agrarianism 142

Representations of masculinity in Dva brata: film o susuci 147

Exposure to toxic masculinity as a strategy of health propaganda 150

Manhood against infections in Pošast: film o tifusu 154

10 Health films in the service of eugenic surveillance over women Eugenic patriarchalism in child welfare propaganda 163 Sentimental health education in Dvije seke: film o njezi dojenéadi 166

Criminalizing abortion in Grijesnice: Macina i Ankina sudbina 168

Eugenic pronatalism in Manzelstvi pod drobnohledem 172

PART 4 Health films for the interwar periphery

11 Stín ve světle as the first health film for the periphery: The birth of the canon Crossing the border of the periphery as a deadly and dangerous trap of individuality 183 vii viii

Contents

The ant personality as an agent of progress for the periphery 186

Human bondage in the periphery: A way of civilizing "nature people" 189

Public health as a part of the new régime of authenticity: Uniting people in the fight against trachoma 195

Ikina sudbina and Dobro za zlo: Extending the canon of health films to the Muslim periphery Endemic syphilis as a long-term enemy of the Yugoslav periphery: The socialist upgrade of colonial motives 202 The ant personality as a "sun" person: An unattainable ideal of the peripheral individual in Dobro za zlo 208 The peripheral community as a social organism: The power of intergenerational responsibility in Yugoslav films 212

Films of the National Tuberculosis Association: Rooting health films for the periphery in the racial hierarchies of the interwar United States Films against tuberculosis for ethnic minorities: A case of multiple pragmatics 217 More health films for "others": Ulmer's "poaching" of films produced for the periphery 219 Let my people live: Lifting the Veil of Ignorance? 222 Cloud in the Sky: A nearly enlightened community of happy and healthy people 224 The Light Ahead: Moving beyond the boundaries of health films produced for the periphery 227 Another to Conquer: Become civilized at any price? 230

Conclusion: Health film as fantasy and event

Bibliography Filmography to the book Index

242 265 268

List of Archives and Their Abbreviations

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)

Arhiv Jugoslavije, Archives of Yugoslavia (AJ)

Archiv Masarykovy university, Archive of Masaryk University (AMU)

Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv The archive of the Bavarian State, (BayHStA)

Hrvatski drZavni arhiv, The Croatian State Archives (HDA)

Literarni archiv Památniku národního pisemnictvi, the Museum of Czech Literature, Literary Archives (LA PNP)

Národní filmovy archiv, Praha, National Film Archive, Prague (NFA)

Slovensky národny archiv, Slovak national archives (SNA)

Státny archív v Kosiciach, State Archive in Kosice (SaK)

Centralen durzhaven arhiv, Central State Archives of Bulgaria (CDA)

Figures

2.1

2.2

4.1

4.2

4.3 4.4

4.5

4.6

5.1

5:2

7.1

7.3

8.1

8.2

8.3

Brotherhood of disabled boys in Jak Vašíček přišel k nohám (How Vašíček got his legs, 1921)

Brotherhood of disabled boys in Jak Vasicek prisel k nohám (How Vašíček got his legs, 1921)

Teddy bear as a broker between child and nurse, A two-year-old goes to hospital (1952)

Teddy bear as a symbol of closed emotional ties in Déti bez lasky (Children without love, 1963)

Lilika takes her orange (Lilika, 1970)

Zorica gets her orange, Spas male Zorice (Rescue young Zorka, 1929)

Marta measures darkness, Neuplné zatmeni (Incomplete eclipse, 1983)

A conveyer of thanatopolitics: Selection of children for the Lebensborn Program in Kukacka v temném lesu (Cuckoo in a dark forest, 1985)

Echo of commedia dell’arte in the characters of mosquitoes in Komarac (Mosquitos, 1929)

Following Reiniger’s visual style in Komarac (Mosquitos, 1929)

Magical contagion: the attack of bacteria in Kaspărek a Budulinek (1927)

Magical contagion: the miracle of healthy nutrition in Kaspárek a Budulinek (1927)

Benevolent paternalism vs parental helplessness in Campek nevaljalac (The rascal Champek, 1929)

“Magic tea” and desperation of the protagonist in Osudná chvíle (Fortuitous moment, 1935)

A quasi-father figure for the young man in Osudná chvile (Fortuitous moment, 1935)

Opposition of new and old elites in Pramen lasky (The seed of love, 1929)

10.1

Figures xi

Ivan as a potential symbol of healthy masculinity in Dva brata: film o susuci (Two brothers: A film about tuberculosis, 1931)

Pavel as a symbol of toxic masculinity in Dva brata: film o susuci (Two brothers: A film about tuberculosis, 1931) Pathetic grotesque in depicting retrogrades in Pošast: film o tifusu (Pestilence: A film about typhus, 1931)

Readiness to change in Pošast: film o tifusu (Pestilence: A film about typhus, 1931)

Ignorance of knowledge as a sin in Grijesnice: Macina i Ankina sudbina (Sinners: Maca and Anka's destiny, 1930) Commitment to health knowledge: rural girls read Narodna čítanka o zdravlju

Physician supervises women in sanatorium Procitnutí ženy (Recognizing the woman, 1925)

Městská odborná škola pro ženská povolaní (City school for female occupations) Procitnutí ženy (Recognizing the woman, 1925)

Residential care institution for elderly women in Procitnutí ženy (Recognizing the woman, 1925)

Rejecting to be civilized in Stin ve světle (The Shadow in the light, 1928)

Male geobody in Stin ve světle (The Shadow in the light, 1928)

Female geobody in Stin ve světle (The Shadow in the light, 1928)

“Gypsy” orchestra infected by trachoma in Stin ve světle (The Shadow in the light, 1928)

Ika and Janja dance in /kina sudbina (Ika’s destiny, 933) Ika and Janja make a decision about wedding in Ikina sudbina (Ika’s destiny, 1933)

Ika and Janja visit the physician in [kina sudbina (Ika’s destiny, 933)

194 206

Acknowledgments

In writing this book, we have incurred many debts. For providing access to the films, thanks to Kinoteka of the Croatian State Archives, Zagreb, the National Film Archive, Prague and Bulgarian Cinematheque, Sofia. Many librarians and archivists have come to our aid: Particular thanks to Jitka Meiinskâ (AMU), Mirjana Jurić, Nina Kolar and Lucija Zore (HDA), Matěj Strnad and Kristyna Dolezalova (NFA), Ondiej Souéek (Archive of Czech Television), Alexandar Radojičić (University Library “Svetozar Markovic”), Alice Scandiuzz (Biblioteca della Biennale-ASAC), Rosen Spasov (Bulgarian Cinematheque), Ivan Stamenković (Jugoslovenska Kinoteka), Genevieve Maxwell (AMPAS) and Igor Stardelov (Cinematique of North Macedonia). We are grateful to Katherine McGilly and Slavoljub Gnjatovié on behalf of Avala Film Way for permission to reproduce stills from the films, A two-year-old goes to the hospital and Lilika.

A special debt is owed to John Starkes Bushnell, who has provided access to the unpublished manuscript of a brilliant monograph, Great nations of the West: Conflicting mind-sets, by David Joravsky, which was a constant source of inspiration for us. We have had helpful and stimulating discussions with Tamara Bjazic-Klarin, Lucie Cesálková, Natascha Drubek, Anelia Kasabova and Chiara Tognolotti.

The research conducted for this text was sponsored by the FWF Austrian Science Fund (M 2674-G28) as part of the project “Die Rassenkunde: Unentdeckte Macht des Aufbaus der Nationen" [Race Science: The Undiscovered Power of Building the Nation]. Financial help for completing this research was provided by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Graz.

The publication of the book has been supported by the FWF Austrian Science Fund FWF Austrian Science Fund (PUB 1028-P).

Introduction

Nonlinear historicizing as a method for studying health films

Health films through the lenses of critical heritage studies and critical public health

In this book, we focus on films that can be conceptualized in various ways: Medicine’s moving pictures, social-hygienic films, educational, cultural, enlightening, classroom or scientific-instructive films and even propaganda films. We use the overarching term “health films” in order to highlight the central mission behind producing and performing these films: To instruct different population groups on how to embrace new and healthy patterns of behavior in different realms of their lives, from being properly insured to practicing abstinence to avoid venereal diseases or altering daily habits to prevent infections. The films falling under this umbrella were introduced in the 1910s and continued to be a dominant visual method of health education throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

Health films should be seen as a part of the global movement concerning educational films, fueled by frustrations over the destructive influence of a new form of entertainment, the cinematograph. To a large extent, along with accepting the power of this new medium, experts (mainly educators) worried about the corrupting influence of films.’ The massive interest in producing “proper” films, able to promote desirable patterns of behavior and demandable competencies as a strong alternative to films that threatened morality, can be seen as one of the main driving forces underlying the history of health films.

The production of these films reflected a multilevel structure, from very local filmmaking, creating almost amateur films,” to films for the widest possible audience produced within international networks of high-level professionals and experts.) Since the early 1920s, enormous efforts had been made to establish, within the League of Nations, a subdivision officially aimed at developing sustainable international collaboration and agreement in questions of teaching, in both the sciences and the arts. The International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), “the cultural arm of the League of Nations, advocated that the League become involved with educational film,” and in 1928, the International Educational Cinematographic Institute, as an IIIC subdivision, was established. In addition, the Red Cross has been

DOI: 10.4324/978 1003272267-1 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY 4.0 license.

one of the longest-running promoters of health films. Since the early 1920s, the Red Cross has selected “proper” films from around the world and disseminated them through national subdivisions and the international network of the Junior Red Cross. Until nowadays, the Red Cross has supported various regular international events, such as the International Festival of Red Cross and Health Films in Varna, which operated between 1965 and 1991 and was reestablished in 2014.° The Rockefeller Foundation not only sponsored the production of health films but also established the film library established at the Rockefeller-backed Museum of Modern Art for promoting educational films.° Despite this long and colorful history, health films have undergone systematic scholarly investigation only since the early 1980s.

Explaining the relatively recent increase in interest about these films is the first and most important step toward mapping a continuum of the approaches and methodological lenses applied to the study of health films. Beginning in the 1970s, the convergence of film studies and cinema history sought to reconstruct a rigorous image of cinematography and its powerful but ambivalent role in human life, which “challenged and changed the way people received, disseminated, and thought about information and transmission of knowledge.”’ A concern for the context of the production and reception of films, situated in their historical moment,? reverberated with the obsession among film scholars to focus on the role of cinematic authorship in the evolution of genres.’ This trend was reinforced by embedding cinema history in the rapidly developing field of critical heritage studies, aimed at operationalizing the films’ intangibility of cultural heritage “as being produced through sociopolitical processes reflecting society's power structures.” 1°

The risks of relegating non-mainstream films to the margins of cinema history and the inevitable oblivion have obliged scholars to revisit the archives of previously underappreciated films and stop “their truncated shelflife.”!! As nontheatrical films, health films have suffered from a nearly lost legacy due to limited access and archival scarcity.'* Two interrelated points within critical heritage studies are especially pertinent to health films: 1) the critical revision of heritage as the “best examples of things" relevant to the mission of building a sense of national identity, ^ and 2) exploring heritage as a process of translating the past into new contexts.!* The enormous interest in films targeted at sexual education and patterns of reproductive behavior most desirable for national interests is one the most visible examples of how critical heritage studies have contributed to historicizing health films.

Along with the motive of preserving and revising the lost legacy of health films, critical heritage studies delineate the difference between films and other types of heritage in terms of the specific *materiality" of films and the predominant role of visual language as a main framework for interpreting a film's history and legacy. Moreover, research on health films has benefited from increasing attention to the role of visual methods in shaping public opinion through metaphors of health and disease. The view on watching films as a manifestation of the essential social habits of an age!” in the

Western world, which reached the widest possible audience between the 1920s and 1950s,'* ascribed to the carriers of metaphors in films the status of one of the most compelling arguments in favor of identifying one or another discursive practice as privileged.

Health films as “elite pedagogic media shaped to elaborate the world”! have been explored as “evidence of social and cultural history."?? This trend has stemmed not only from a growing interest in cinema history as a part of critical heritage studies but also from the intensive formation of critical public health — an interdisciplinary research field aimed at investigating the social and cultural implications of professional medicine and its institutionalization.?! The long-term challenges of epidemiology aimed at eliminating infectious diseases,” the progress of genetics,” and the increasing pressure of preventive medicine?" only reinforce the role of critical public health, which explores “public health as an historical and political construction of a means of restructuring both body and city."?? Such critical historicizing has aimed at disputing the predominance of an idealized and overly positive view on the progress of medical knowledge. The increased role of physicians and various medical institutions since the last third of the nineteenth century had determined the establishment, rooting and deepening of research that should contribute to a critical reflection of public health as an instrument of state surveillance and the subsequent pressure on individuals.”

The resonance of critical heritage studies with the field of critical public health as a main driver for the interest in health films leads to mapping the variety of studies addressing such films through two clusters of questions:

* Which historical contexts prevail in the narration concerning health films? Within which historical milieu (e.g., either national, intercountry or international), welfare issues or propaganda, can we place the research on health films? How does research situate health films among other types of related films, including educational films, films for the professional instruction of public health professionals and scientific films? How do variously applied historical models connect the field of public health and critical heritage studies?

and

* Which position do health films embody in historical narration — as a structure of public health, propaganda, international relations or its agency (a driving force or a factor)? How do various models explain the role of health films, their development and their popularity? How is the timeline for historicizing health films organized? How has the legacy of health films been explored?

These questions help navigate an in-depth examination of the repertoire of historical models used to study the phenomenon of health films, investigating their explanatory and descriptive possibilities, including options for studying health films in Eastern Europe.

Health films as structure and agency of public policy

Exploring health films as a part of public health history remains the most common framework for revising the U.S. and German cases, which represent the longest history of producing the largest number of health films.” The impressive visibility of health films in these countries reverberates with the focus on the embeddedness of public health within the political agenda and its operation as one of the influential tools for managing people. Leslie Reagan and her colleagues synchronize the history of health films with the formation of public health, presenting health films as “more than illustrations” for the past of American medicine.” Alexandra M. Lord focuses on the vicissitudes of local and federal politics related to venereal diseases and especially their prevention in the U.S. Armed Forces as a main explanatory scheme for understanding several generations of campaigns that also included health films.” Miriam Posner investigates the interrogation of state surveillance and commerce interests as a key explanation for the specifics of the production and dissemination of sexual hygiene films." Lee Grieveson highlights the exploitative political economy and the use of media by elite actors — states, corporations and lobbying and trade groups — for integrating the rural and imperial periphery into a new urban and industrial order and new forms of “corporate liberalism."?! Among other practices of pedagogic and commercial media, Grieveson analyses health films as a part of a “biopolitical” project that has utilized media in varied ways to facilitate liberal practices of governance and the political economy. In contrast to Grieveson, who exclusively explores educational films as a structure of neoliberal politics, Martin Pernick investigates “the vital role of mass culture in constructing both the meanings and the memory of these [eugenic] movements."?? In his monumental and revealing book, Pernick focuses on the impact of health films on legitimizing euthanasia as a part of the progressive eugenic movement. He underscores the multilevel interrogation between biology and culture in producing new norms regarding “defectiveness” and “healthy” beauty and recognizes in this connection one of the interrelations between eugenics in the United States and Nazi racial hygiene.

While the history of U.S. health films emphasizes the role of the neoliberal and imperialist pillars of health film production, the exploration of the German case focuses on authoritative regimes as one of the main bases for interpreting the legacy of health films. By focusing on the vicissitudes of sex education films, Ulf Schmidt? and Anita Winkler" not only shed light on the longue-durée of using films in sexual education in the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, capitalist Western Germany and communist Eastern Germany, but also elucidate the continuities and ruptures in the discursive practices regarding reproductive behavior through following the changes in political regimes and their needs as a way to demonstrate the content, planned outcomes and relevance of the films for the priorities of demographic policy. Along with sex education, films that addressed eugenics and its implications, including euthanasia, premarital counseling and sterilization, have warranted the most systematic attention.??

Despite obvious difference in political context, the exploration of U.S. and German health films often reproduces the comparable historical model that stresses a set of massive forces or “organic” processes (e.g., the operation of political regimes, especially those authoritative or at the vanguard of global capitalism) that lead to a particular result, as in the growth of an “organism” and its influence.*° Such a master narrative corresponds not only to the massive legacy of health films but also to the intention to extract health films from historical nothingness through stressing their political importance. This model prioritizes “the values represented, and the style assumed in establishing the composition and mise-en-scéne than to the accuracy or authenticity of the images.”

Robert Proctor recognizes in such selective memories concerning Nazi medicine strong predilections resulting from particular “ideological gaps,” which block the attention of historians to long-term continuities in the campaigns aimed at preventing cancer as well as other important fields of public health.” Notwithstanding the critical potential, applying a linear historical model to health films prioritizes politicized explanations and inevitably replaces the films that cannot be directly interpreted as instruments of structural violence, e.g., the numerous cartoons with a focus on elementary hygiene, which not only played a central role in educating the population but also influenced the development of the most popular cartoon series.”

Along with the limits of politicizing the linear model comes the irreducibility of events to bodies and states of affairs of ordinary people, ^? excluding from the analysis the role of those who created the films. One of the promising alternatives Is reconstructing the professional biographies of the film authors, such as Jean Comandon“! or Jean Benoit-Lévy, who simultaneously managed the institutionalization of public health and advanced national cinematography.? In the focus of applying the biographical method, the historians of health films locate the parallel socializing experiences through which those who nurtured the ground for health film production had been constituted." Exploring their professional pathways within the fields of cinematography and public health moves beyond the dichotomy of agency vs. structure and explores health films as a complex phenomenon. The main outcome of applying this method is grasping the intersection of the different socialization frameworks experienced by the authors of health films, in order to reconstruct the authorship of health films as a reflection of an elitist regime of national and transnational authenticities.

Applying a linear model to cross-national, historical comparative analysis aims to differentiate the driving political forces in producing and disseminating health films^ but does not contribute to the contextualization of health films. One of the possible responses to this challenge is the recent trend of stressing the shared emotions and collective practices of consuming films instead of the possessive individualism or behavioral changes that remain in the focus of politicized views on health films as instruments of propaganda. The motif of collective participation in practices around health films brings forward the task of analyzing visual “language” and its recognizability by spectators and emphasizes the active, agentic position of these films. Revealing the obvious differences among various generations of educational films that have addressed diverse target groups inclines us to move beyond exploring the pressures of modernity, nation-building and state surveillance as the main driving forces behind the generation of a “language” of fear or the shame about illness typical of health films.? Instead, the univocal interrelation between the mission of health films and the political aims bringing forward the visual language of educational films has made the connections between thoughts, ideas and pieces of data discursive moments that remain understood as nonimportant or disconnected. Exploring educational films stresses the role of the informal urban and rural culture of religious and political street preaching, the music hall and the pub and the style of educational films and health films as a part of cinema-enlightenment derived from the newsreel, the cautionary tale and the joke.“

The question concerning the functions of recognition remains at the center of exploring educational films: If educational films have operated as “as visual Esperanto,” how universal was this language,*’ and what were the main sources of universalizing and specifying this language? Historicizing educational films has generated various answers — regarding the cultural and social contexts of the research. The recent trend to focus on the international level of educational films has already affected our comprehension of the variety of “visual languages” within health films. A diversity of political philosophies and a broad array of ideologies articulated by international organizations around film education and film studies stress the internally contradictory messages sent by films.** They also highlight the ways to solve the dilemma of universalism vs. variety, which translated internationalism, solidarity and friendship as new forms of collective emotions cultivated by the various tools of mass culture, including health films.*? Recent and current attempts to historicize health films as embedded in the development of educational films illustrate “how simple sequences of events can produce complex consequences and by offering new insights into the dynamics of human interaction.”50

Which historical model, whether linear or nonlinear, is the most promising regarding the history of health films in Eastern Europe?

The limits and options for historicizing health films in Eastern Europe

Certainly, the historical presence of health films in Eastern Europe is not in question. The materials regarding the activities of the International Educational Cinematographic Institute (housed by the UNESCO Archive) provide a general and specific overview of the involvement of most Eastern European states in producing and disseminating health films during the late

1920s and 1930s. Even a superficial overview of the storerooms and libraries of the National Film Archives in Prague, Sofia, Skopje, Belgrade and Zagreb reveals dozens of health films, along with scenarios of unfulfilled projects aimed at producing health films. Between 1922 and 1939, the School of Public Health in Zagreb produced more than one hundred films of different genres aimed at supplementing and reinforcing various health education campaigns. Between 1921 and 1940, more than 20 films were produced in Czechoslovakia, some in direct cooperation with Yugoslav colleagues.

However, the already-established historical timeline of health films misses the multiplicity of the driving forces that shaped the trajectories of their production and dissemination. Despite the preserved legacy of health films, until now, only a few publications have shed light on their history.” Rigorous cataloging, still the main method of historicizing health films produced in Eastern Europe, only reinforces the admiration for these films due to their unique role in the inception of national animated films in Balkan countries? and a generally decisive role in the development of national cinematography in Eastern Europe in terms of the professionalization of film production.” The rare attempts to revise the legacy of health films have addressed a few issues? but they have not contributed to historicizing health films as a social and cultural trend typical of interwar Eastern Europe.

In terms of the Deleuzian differentiation of time within historical narration,” the contemporary state of health films in Eastern Europe could be defined as a historical paradox between their central role in the inception of national cinematography in many Eastern European countries and a vacuum in producing recognition of the role of these films in public health and other sociocultural realms. In this disparity, it is possible to locate a more general and multifaceted challenge for historicizing Eastern Europe, especially the complexity of its interwar period — the massive avoidance of processes of analysis that are asymmetrical, irreversible and often unpredictable from the view of linear models."

Our main sources for interpreting health films, namely, critical heritage studies and critical public health, dovetails with such a nonlinear historical model. This approach stands in contrast to the predominant role of medical science and its implications in the Western world that have belittled Eastern European interwar public health and the related ideological movements as eugenics. It further serves as a corrective to the exclusion of such driving forces as the reinvention of an interwar global agenda of demographic policy and the reproduction of international networking among racially minded experts after 1945.

The neglect of such historical continuities simplifies the explanation for the institutional violence typical of public health in socialist countries between the 1960s and 1980s, which concerns the ubiquitous surveillance of socialist authoritarianism. As with public health, the interwar cinematography of Eastern Europe is seen to be “of no importance," except for some recent attempts to introduce the complexities of the driving forces that shaped the development of films and film studies in the region, between the global pressure of progress and local entertainment needs.?/ These shortcomings in interpreting the interwar period can be overcome through new, nonlinear historical models which *no longer assume that small or accidental changes will have minor consequences for human communities or that massive social movements will be of major consequences, because nonlinear processes are not proportional."?*

The main hypothesis explored within this book posits that health films were not just a manifestation of the ideological transmission of global patterns but rather the repercussion of regional events.?? The resistance of local populations to public health initiatives, egregious cases of infanticide, the pressure of international bodies on national authorities to present the progress in production and dissemination of educational films, the extreme popularity of films that absorbed the attention of the audience targeted for health films such as The Kid by Charlie Chaplin, the appearance of Western health films made using new, attractive artistic techniques such as animation or the emergence of films that translated an ideological message opposed to national interests, like Frauennot-Frauenglück (The misery or fortune of women, 1929), are just some of the events that we bring into the focus of our analysis. The inner complexity of events, especially those operating in the “impossible” positions of “minorities” such as interwar Eastern Europe, is often imperceptible from the view of linear models.*^ Even the health films made in Eastern Europe and their dissemination should be seen as still “impossible” for historicizing events.