Comrade Consumer

Shopping, Style, and Desire on Socialist Screens

This event is conceived and organised by Anastasia Mamaeva (PhD candidate, Sorbonne University, associate researcher at CEFRES) and hosted by CEFRES, Ponrepo Cinema, and the National Film Archive (Prague), with support from the Polish Institute in Prague and UMR Eur’ORBEM (Paris).
Dates & locations: December 5, 2025, 18:00
Ponrepo Cinema, Bartolomějská 11, Prague 1
December 12, 2025
CEFRES, Na Florenci, Prague 1 & online (to get the link, write to cefres[@]cefres.cz)
Language: English (films in the Czech/Polish original with English subtitles)
A two-part international workshop exploring the phenomenon of socialist consumerism in Czechoslovak, Polish, and Soviet films of “the long seventies”. The upcoming two-part event – 5th and 12th December – invites both scholars and the general public to take a closer look at national classics and recently rediscovered film gems, and to explore how images, characters, and themes of shopping, style, and everyday life were crafted on socialist screens.

To many casual viewers, socialist cinema from Central Europe and the Soviet Union rarely evokes images of beauty parlours, leisurely shopping, or browsing exotic groceries—let alone consumer abundance and hired domestic help. Yet throughout the relatively “liberal” 1960s, the murky 1970s, and the tentative promise of the 1980s, nationalized film and television studios in the Polish People’s Republic, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR frequently returned to shopping as pastime, leisure, and aspiration, constructing surprisingly layered images of consumption under socialism.

Program 
Session 1 | Screenings with discussion 
5th December, 18:00
Address: Kino Ponrepo, Bartolomějská 11, Prague 1
Language: English (films in the Czech/Polish original with English subtitles)
Participants: Anastasia MAMAEVA, film scholar (Paris/Prague), Anna BERNAL, multimedia artist (Helsinki), Dimitri FILIMONOV, Soviet media historian (Paris).
Free entrance
  • 18:00—Murdering the Devil (Ester Krumbachová, Czechoslovakia, 1970). This recently rediscovered gem explores gender roles and folklore—from old-time witches to modern mansplaining tropes. It is the only directorial work of Ester Krumbachová, the original and prolific polymath behind many beloved Czechoslovak films.

The screening will be introduced and followed by commentary and a Q&A with Anastasia Mamaeva and Anna Bernal.

  • 20:30—Man/Woman Wanted (Stanisław Bareja, Poland, 1973) What if one day your art historian’s desk gave way to the chaotic world of housekeeping, institutional corruption, black-market dealings—and casual drag? Discover all this and more in this cult Polish comedy.

The screening will be introduced and followed by commentary and a Q&A with Anastasia Mamaeva and Dimitri Filimonov.

Attending in partial or full drag—or showing your allyship in other ways—is warmly encouraged.

Session 2 | Roundtable discussion
12th December, 15:00
Consumer cultures and screen imaginaries under state Socialism in Polish, Czechoslovak, and Soviet cinema of the 1960-80s

Address: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1 (and online)
Language: English
Participants

Lucie ČESÁLKOVÁ (PhD, Department of Film Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University; Editor-in-Chief, Iluminace): Fragmenting the Female Body in Czechoslovak Socialist Advertising

Justyna JAWORSKA (PhD, Associate Professor, Section of Film and Visual Culture, Faculty of Polish Studies, University of Warsaw): How to eat spaghetti? Consumerism in Polish cinema of early 1970s

Jonathan OWEN (PhD, author: Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties): Ecce Homo Consumens: from New Wave to Normalisation with Jaroslav Papoušek’s Homolka Trilogy

Dimitri FILIMONOV (PhD, Associate Researcher, UMR CIRICE): Between Ideology and Desire: Consumer Imaginaries in Soviet Cinema of the Long 1970s

Anastasia MAMAEVA (Associate Researcher, UMIFRE CEFRES; PhD candidate, Sorbonne University): The Mirage of Developed Socialism: Architecture and Urban Luxury in Late-1970s Onscreen Prague

This discussion invites film and media scholars to explore how Socialist screens negotiated consumer culture and scarcity.
Each speaker will have 20 minutes to deliver their paper, followed by a discussion and Q&A session.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Constructing the image of a prosperous, open society amid reinforced control in the wake of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion
    Conspicuous consumption and black-market practices as anti-Soviet character markers
  • Gendered representations of consumer behaviour under “developed socialism”
  • Style, occupation, home décor, and queer identity on and off screen
  • Socialist movie star fandom and related ephemera