European Cinema After The Wall

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, transnational European cinema has risen, not only in terms of production but also in terms of a growing focus on multiethnic themes within the European context. This shift from national to trans-European filmmaking has been profoundly influenced by such historical developments as the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent ongoing enlargement of the European Union. In European Cinema after the Wall: Screening East–West Mobility, Leen Engelen and Kris Van Heuckelom have brought together essays that critically examine representations of post-1989 migration from the former Eastern Bloc to Western Europe, uncovering an array of common tropes and narrative devices that characterize the influences and portrayals of immigration. Featuring essays by contributors from backgrounds as divergent as film studies, Slavic and Russian studies, comparative literature, sociology, contemporary history, and communication and media studies, this volume will appeal to scholars of film, European history, and those interested in the impact of migration, diaspora, and the global flow of cinematic culture.

More than twenty years after its collapse in 1989, the Berlin Wall remains a symbol of the vigour with which communist East Germany kept out the 'corrupting influences' of neighbouring West Germany. However, despite the restrictions, a surprising number of artistic works, including international films, did 'cross the Wall' and reach audiences in the wide network of cinemas in East Germany. This book takes a fresh look at cinema as a social and cultural phenomenon in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and analyses the transnational film relations between East Germany and the rest of the world. Drawing on a range of new archival material, the author explores which films were imported from the West, what criteria were applied in their selection, how they were received by the national press and film audiences, and how these imports related to DEFA (East German) cinema. The author places DEFA films alongside the international films exhibited in the GDR and argues that film in East Germany was actually more transnational in character than previously thought.

The book examines cinema in post-1989 Europe by looking at how the new post-Cold War cinematographic co-productions articulate the political and cultural objectives of a new Europe as they redefine a European identity.

Review: "World's leading scholars in the field assemble to consider the ways in which notions such as East and West, national and transnational, central and marginal are being rethought and reframed in contemporary European cinema. Assessing the state of post-1989 European cinema, from (co)production and reception trends to filmic depictions of migration patterns, economic transformation and socio-political debates over the past and the present, they address, increasingly interwined cinema industries that are both central (France, Germany) and marginal (Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania) in Europe."

New European Cinema offers a compelling response to the changing cultural shapes of Europe, charting political, aesthetic, and historical developments through innovative readings of some of the most popular and influential European films of the 1990s. Made around the time of the revolutions of 1989 but set in post-World War II Europe, these films grapple with the reunification of Germany, the disintegration of the Balkans, and a growing sense of historical loss and disenchantment felt across the continent. They represent a period in which national borders became blurred and the events of the mid-twentieth-century began to be reinterpreted from a multinational European perspective. Featuring in-depth case studies of films from Italy, Germany, eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, Rosalind Galt reassesses the role that nostalgia, melodrama, and spectacle play in staging history. She analyzes Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso, Michael Radford's Il Postino, Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo, Emir Kusturica's Underground, and Lars von Trier's Zentropa, and contrasts them with films of the immediate postwar era, including the neorealist films of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, socialist realist cinema in Yugoslavia, Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair, and Carol Reed's The Third Man. Going beyond the conventional focus on national cinemas and heritage, Galt's transnational approach provides an account of how post-Berlin Wall European cinema inventively rethought the identities, ideologies, image, and popular memory of the continent. By connecting these films to political and philosophical debates on the future of Europe, as well as to contemporary critical and cultural theories, Galt redraws the map of European cinema.

The Figure of the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema explores contemporary debates around the concepts of 'Europe' and 'European identity' through an examination of recent European films dealing with various aspects of globalization (the refugee crisis, labour migration, the resurgence of nationalism and ethnic violence, neoliberalism, post-colonialism) with a particular attention to the figure of the migrant and the ways in which this figure challenges us to rethink Europe and its core Enlightenment values (citizenship, justice, ethics, liberty, tolerance, and hospitality) in a post-national context of ephemerality, volatility, and contingency that finds people desperately looking for firmer markers of identity. The book argues that a compelling case can be made for re-orienting the study of contemporary European cinema around the figure of the migrant viewed both as a symbolic figure (representing post-national citizenship, urbanization, the 'gap' between ethics and justice) and as a figure occupying an increasingly central place in European cinema in general rather than only in what is usually called 'migrant and diasporic cinema'. By drawing attention to the structural and affective affinities between the experience of migrants and non-migrants, Europeans and non-Europeans, Trifonova shows that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate stories about migration from stories about life under neoliberalism in general

Re-examines notions of East and West in contemporary European cinema. This book presents a comprehensive investigation of Central European cinema in the early 21st century.

The book examines cinema in post-1989 Europe by looking at how the new post-Cold War cinematographic co-productions articulate the political and cultural objectives of a new Europe as they redefine a European identity.