From The Artist to The White Ribbon, from Oscar to Palme d'Or-winning productions, European filmmaking is more prominent, world-wide, than ever before. This book identifies the distinctive character of European cinema, both in films and as a critical concept, asking: what place does European cinema have in an increasingly globalized world? Including in-depth analyses of production and reception contexts, as well as original readings of key European films from leading experts in the field, it re-negotiates traditional categories such as auteurism, art cinema and national cinemas. As the first publication to explore 'Europeanness' in cinema, this book refocuses and updates historically significant areas of study in relation to this term. Leading scholars in European cinema - including Thomas Elsaesser, Tim Bergfelder, Anne Jackel, Lucy Mazdon and Ginette Vincendeau - acknowledge the transnational character of European filmmaking whilst also exploring the oppositions between European and Hollywood filmmaking, considering the value of the 'European' label in the circulation of films within and beyond the continent. The Europeanness of European Cinema makes a lively, timely intervention in the fields of European and transnational film studies.

From The Artist to The White Ribbon, from Oscar to Palme d'Or-winning productions, European filmmaking is more prominent, world-wide, than ever before. This book identifies the distinctive character of European cinema, both in films and as a critical concept, asking: what place does European cinema have in an increasingly globalized world? Including in-depth analyses of production and reception contexts, as well as original readings of key European films from leading experts in the field, it re-negotiates traditional categories such as auteurism, art cinema and national cinemas. As the first publication to explore 'Europeanness' in cinema, this book refocuses and updates historically significant areas of study in relation to this term. Leading scholars in European cinema - including Thomas Elsaesser, Tim Bergfelder, Anne Jackel, Lucy Mazdon and Ginette Vincendeau - acknowledge the transnational character of European filmmaking whilst also exploring the oppositions between European and Hollywood filmmaking, considering the value of the 'European' label in the circulation of films within and beyond the continent. The Europeanness of European Cinema makes a lively, timely intervention in the fields of European and transnational film studies.

Presenting new and diverse scholarship, this wide-ranging collection of 43 original chapters asks what European cinema tells us about Europe. The book engages with European cinema that attends to questions of European colonial, racialized and gendered power; seeks to decentre Europe itself (not merely its putative centres); and interrogate Europe’s various conceptualizations from a variety of viewpoints. It explores the broad, complex and heterogeneous community/ies produced in and by European films, taking in Kurdish, Hollywood and Singapore cinema as comfortably as the cinema of Poland, Spanish colonial films or the European gangster genre. Chapters cover numerous topics, including individual films, film movements, filmmakers, stars, scholarship, representations and identities, audiences, production practices, genres and more, all analysed in their context(s) so as to construct an image of Europe as it emerges from Europe’s film corpus. The Companion opens the study of European cinema to a broad readership and is ideal for students and scholars in film, European studies, queer studies and cultural studies, as well as historians with an interest in audio-visual culture, nationalism and transnationalism, and those working in language-based area studies.

As a rapidly aging continent, Europe increasingly depends on the successful integration of migrants. Unfortunately, contemporary political and media discourses observe and frequently also support the development of nationalist, eurosceptic and xenophobic reactions to immigration and growing multiethnicity. Confronting this trend, European cinema has developed and disseminated new transcultural and postcolonial alternatives that might help to improve integration and community cohesion in Europe, and this book investigates these alternatives in order to identify examples of good practices that can enhance European stability. While the cinematic spectrum is as wide and open as most notions of Europeanness, the films examined share a fundamental interest in the Other. In this qualitative film analysis approach, particular consideration is given to British, French, German, and Spanish productions, and a comparison of multiethnic conviviality in Chicano cinema.

Rosalind Galt offers innovative readings of some of the most popular and influential European films of the 1990s, including Emir Kusturica's 'Underground', Lars Von Trier's 'Zentropa', and Giuseppe Tornatore's 'Cinema Paradiso'.

Lisa Passerini is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Turin. --

'European Cinema in Crisis' examines the conflicting terminologies that have dominated the discussion of the future of European film-making. It takes a fresh look at the ideological agendas, from 'avante-garde cinema' to the high/low culture debate and the fate of popular 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

European Film Theory explores the ‘Europeanness’ of European film theory, its philosophical origins, the ‘culture wars’ between ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytical’ film theory and philosophy, the major discursive and epistemological shifts in the history of Continental film theory, the relationship between Continental philosophy of art and philosophy of history and European film theory. Writing from a range of disciplines and perspectives, the contributors to this new volume in the AFI FILM READERS series offer fresh interpretations of European film theorists and illuminate the political potential of European film theory.

This groundbreaking volume for the Thinking Cinema series focuses on the extent to which contemporary cinema contributes to political and philosophical thinking about the future of Europe's core Enlightenment values. In light of the challenges of globalization, multi-cultural communities and post-nation state democracy, the book interrogates the borders of ethics and politics and roots itself in debates about post-secular, post-Enlightenment philosophy. By defining a cinema that knows that it is no longer a competitor to Hollywood (i.e. the classic self-other construction), Elsaesser also thinks past the kind of self-exoticism or auto-ethnography that is the perpetual temptation of such a co-produced, multi-platform 'national cinema as world cinema'. Discussing key filmmakers and philosophers, like: Claire Denis and Jean-Luc Nancy; Aki Kaurismäki, abjection and Julia Kristeva; Michael Haneke, the paradoxes of Christianity and Slavoj Zizek; Fatih Akin, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, Elsaesser is able to approach European cinema and assesses its key questions within a global context. His combination of political and philosophical thinking will surely ground the debate in film philosophy for years to come.