III - The Flourishing of Kinostudio

Summary

Abstract: This chapter focuses on Albanian cinema from the early 1960s up to and including the mid-1970s. It provides a contextualization of Albania's close ties with Maoist China and will examine briefly the importance of Albanian cinema during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Following an explanation of Hoxha's views on the arts in general and the cinema in particular, it provides an overview of salient documentary tendencies during this period. It looks at how these years witnessed the reconfiguring of thematic tendencies that had been a part of Kinostudio's output of earlier years. It explores Kinostudio's feature productions of the period, which were particularly popular in China. Special attention is devoted to Gjika and Anagnosti, as well as the bucolic visions of Dhamo. A discussion of a 1972 comedy, one of communist Albania's least developed genres, attests to the growing diversity of Kinostudio productions.

Key words: Albania, cinema, China, comedy, New Man of Communism

By the early to mid-1960s, Albania's relations with both the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact had deteriorated, and the People's Republic of China was becoming its closest ally. Both Albania's leaving the Eastern European bloc and its entering into allegiance with Maoist China were ongoing processes and the transition impacted Albanian cinema in gradual and subtle ways. Over the course of the early 1960s up to and including the mid-1970s, Kinostudio's production of feature films, moreover, witnessed exponential growth, expanding from one film per year in 1961 to eleven films in 1977. The chapter will begin with a brief contextualization of the political and cultural context of Albania's friendship with China and an overview of cinematic ties between the two countries. It will then discuss Enver Hoxha's views on literature and art, and how these were interpreted by a 1977 Kinostudio manifesto. After an overview of documentary work—which, with the films of Endri and Xhanfise Keko, was now being produced with a level of greater sophistication—, this chapter will offer an exploration of Kinostudio feature film productions prior to Albania's period of most extensive isolation, which arguably began in 1978.