Twenty-five years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe, ten years have passed since the first formerly communist states entered the E.U. and an entire post-Wall generation has now entered adulthood. Yet scholarship on European cinema still tends to divide the continent along the old Cold War lines. This collection is the first 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. The world's leading scholars in the field a ... More

Twenty-five years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe, ten years have passed since the first formerly communist states entered the E.U. and an entire post-Wall generation has now entered adulthood. Yet scholarship on European cinema still tends to divide the continent along the old Cold War lines. This collection is the first 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. The world's leading scholars in the field assemble in this volume to assess the state of post-1989 European cinema, from (co)production and reception trends to filmic depictions of migration patterns, economic transformations, and socio-political debates over the past and the present. The volume focuses on three geographic or linguistic clusters whilst suggesting that the lines are often blurred between them: French- and German-language cinemas as well as more ‘marginal’ and overlooked players in European cinema. Contributions address recent films from or about Armenia, Austria, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Switzerland and the complex and often contradictory notions of East, West and ‘Centre’ that they employ. The volume is grouped around three sections: (1) ‘Redrawing the Lines: De/Re-centring Europe’, (2) ‘Belonging and the “Road to/from Europe”: Border Spaces, Eastern Margins and Eastern Markets’ and (3) Spectres of the East. It is the most comprehensive investigation of East/West European cinema in the early 21st century.