The Europeanization of Cinema: Interzones and Imaginative Communities - Softcover

Halle, Randall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252079957 ISBN 13: 9780252079955

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2014

Synopsis

In this innovative study, German and film studies scholar Randall Halle advances the concept of "interzones"--geographical and ideational spaces of transit, interaction, transformation, and contested diversity--as a mechanism for analyzing European cinema.
 
He focuses especially on films about borders, borderlands, and cultural zones as he traces the development of interzones from the inception of central European cinema to the avant-garde films of today. Throughout, he shows how cinema both reflects and engenders interzones that explore the important questions of Europe's social order: imperialism and nation-building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; "first contact" between former adversaries (such as East and West Germany) following World War II and the Cold War; and migration, neo-colonialism, and cultural imperialism in the twenty-first century.
 
Ultimately, Halle argues that today's cinema both produces and reflects imaginative communities. He demonstrates how, rather than simply erasing boundaries, the European Union instead fosters a network of cultural interzones that encourage cinematic exploration of the new Europe's processes and limits of connectivity, tolerance, and cooperation.
 
 

About this title

Book Description:

An original and exciting examination of boundary-crossing spaces in European cinema

About the Author:

Randall Halle is the Klaus W. Jonas Professor of German and film studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of German Film after Germany: Toward a Transnational Aesthetic.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0252079957
• ISBN 13: 9780252079955
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224