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

Victoria Shmidt is a Senior Researcher at the University of Graz in Austria. Her main interest is to deepen the approaches toward racial thinking in Central Eastern European countries. Recent publications include book “Historicizing Roma in Central Europe Between Critical Whiteness and Epistemic Injustice” (2021). Karl Kaser is a Professor of Southeast European history and anthropology at the University of Graz, Austria. His research focuses on historical-anthropological issues and encompasses topics such as gender relations and historical visual cultures. His most recent book is Femininities and Masculinities in the Digital Age.

Introduction: Nonlinear historicizing as a method for studying health films. Part 1: Child and nation in the focus of rescue-mission health films. 1. The interwar obsession with family: Eugenic pathos vs. humanistic skepticism. 2. Collective care vs. the “backward” family in Jak Vašíček přišel k nohám. 3. The institutionalized child as a precondition for the healthy nation in the films of Mladen Širola. 4. Central and Eastern European film in the search for deconstructing the institutionalized child. Part 2: Health films for teaching children 5. The complex legacy of early animated health films in Eastern Europe. 6. Bacilínek (1922) on the stage of the national and global orders of health security. 7. Health films for children: Between cultural reciprocity and popular scientism. Part 3: Men and women in the focus of health films. 8. Health films as Bildungsroman for teaching men. 9. Masculinity in health films for the rural population. 10. Health films in the service of eugenic surveillance over women. 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. 12. Ikina sudbina and Dobro za zlo: Extending the canon of health films to the Muslim periphery. 13. Films of the National Tuberculosis Association: Rooting health films for the periphery in the racial hierarchies of the interwar United States. 14. Conclusion: Health film as fantasy and event.