This seminar investigates how filmmakers and theorists have related the categories of fact and fiction to the production of films in Eastern Europe. At the center of our inquiry is the history and theory of cinematic authenticity, historical referentiality, and the production of reality effects. The seminar tracks how the framing of material reality in moving images produces new aesthetic relations and political implications beginning with the understanding of fiction and nonfiction in early cinema to later contentious debates over fractography and historical reconstruction. Additionally, the seminar considers the emergence of biographical films and the use of documentary fiction in the service communist governments. As part of anti-totalitarianism, we examine how filmmakers undermined the distinction between fact and fiction through collage aesthetics and the fictionalization of reality. We conclude by considering contemporary developments and the continuing experimentation with combining fact and fiction.