European Cinema after the Wall: Screening East-West Mobility [Hardcover]

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 EastWest 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.

Leen Engelen is a lecturer at the Media and Design Academy and researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium). She has published on film history and visual culture in several national and international academic journals and is coeditor of Perspectives on European Film and History (2007). She is secretary general of the International Association for Media and History.

Kris Van Heuckelom teaches Polish language and culture at KU Leuven (Belgium). His books include (Un)masking Bruno Schulz: New Combinations, Further Fragmentations, Ultimate Reintegrations (2009, coedited) and Visuality in the Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz (2004).

The timing of European Cinema after the Wall could hardly be better. . . .East European Cinema after the Wall is a fine collection with a good selection of compelling essays. . . .I believe that [tl3,