Synopses & Reviews
Has European cinema, in the age of globalization, lost contact not only with
the world at large, but with its own audiences? Between the thriving
festival circuit and the obligatory late-night television slot, is there
still a public or a public sphere for European films? Can the cinema be the
appropriate medium for a multicultural Europe and its migrating multitudes?
Is there a division of representational labor, with Hollywood providing
stars and spectacle, the Asian countries exotic color and choreographed
action, and Europe a sense of history, place and memory?
This collection of essays by an acclaimed film scholar examines how
independent filmmaking in Europe has been reinventing itself since the 1990s,
faced by renewed competition from Hollywood and the challenges posed to
national cinemas by the fall of the Wall in 1989. Elsaesser reassesses the
debates and presents a broader framework for understanding the
forces at work since the 1960s. These include the interface of "world
cinema" and the rise of Asian cinemas, the importance of the international
film festival circuit, the role of television, and the changing
aesthetics of auteur cinema. New audiences have different allegiances, and
new technologies enable networks to reshape identities, but European cinema
still has an important function in setting critical and creative agendas,
even as its economic and institutional bases are in transition.
Synopsis
A collection of essays by the acclaimed film scholar Thomas Elsaesser, written between 1968 and 2005, tracks the crisis of contemporary European cinema, faced by the Hollywood giant on the one hand, and the collapsing national cinema industries on the other. In the face of renewed competition from Hollywood since the early 1980s and the challenges posed to Europe's national cinemas by the fall of the Wall in 1989, independent filmmaking in Europe has begun to re-invent itself. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood re-assesses the different debates and presents a broader framework for understanding the forces at work since the 1960s. These include the interface of "world cinema" and the rise of Asian cinemas, the importance of the international film festival circuit, the role of television, as well as the changing aesthetics of auteur cinema. New audiences have different allegiances, and new technologies enable networks to reshape identities, but European cinema still has an important function in setting critical and creative agendas, even as its economic and institutional bases are in transition.
Synopsis
Geeft een genuanceerd beeld van de toekomst van de nationale filmtradities-Met een frisse blik op de ideologische agenda's binnen de filmindustrie
Synopsis
In the face of renewed competition from Hollywood since the early 1980s and the challenges posed to Europe's national cinemas by the fall of the Wall in 1989, independent filmmaking in Europe has begun to re-invent itself. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood re-assesses the different debates and presents a broader framework for understanding the forces at work since the 1960s. These include the interface of "world cinema" and the rise of Asian cinemas, the importance of the international film festival circuit, the role of television, as well as the changing aesthetics of auteur cinema. New audiences have different allegiances, and new technologies enable networks to reshape identities, but European cinema still has an important function in setting critical and creative agendas, even as its economic and institutional bases are in transition.
Synopsis
In much of Western Europe--particularly Britain, France, and Italy--the future of national cinema traditions was hotly debated in the 1990s. We can no longer assume the existence of distinct national styles, such as Italian neo-realism or the French
nouvelle vague. Filmmaking in Europe, it seems, has become an anxious art.
In European Cinema, noted scholar Thomas Elsaesser reexamines the conflicting terminologies that dominate current debates--including the notion of the nation in "national cinema," changing conceptions of the film director as auteur, and the continual struggles between "high" and "low" culture, the art cinema and the Hollywood movie. European Cinema poses some provocative questions: has European cinema, in the age of globalization, lost contact with its own audiences? Indeed, does a public sphere still exist for European films? With sections such as "National Cinema; Definitions and New Directions," "Border-Crossings: European Filmmaking without a Passport," and "Europe Haunted by History and Empire," Elsaesser's text will be enlightening reading for students, film lovers, and scholars alike.
About the Author
Thomas Elsaesser is professor of film and television studies in the Department of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author or editor of many books, including The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s, also published by Amsterdam University Press.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction - European Cinema: Conditions of Impossibility? [2005] National Cinema: Re-Definitions and New Directions
European Culture, National Cinema, the Auteur and Hollywood [1994]
ImpersoNations: National Cinema, Historical Imaginaries [2005]
Film Festival Networks: the New Topographies of Cinema in Europe [2005]
Double Occupancy and Small Adjustments: Space, Place and Policy in the New European Cinema since the 1990s [2005]
Auteurs and Art Cinemas: Modernism and Self-Reference
Ingmar Berman - Person and Persona: The Mountain of Modern Cinema on the Road to Morocco [1994]
Late Losey: Time Lost and Time Found [1985]
Around Painting and the "End of Cinema": A Propos Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse [1992]
Spellbound by Peter Greenaway: In the Dark ... and Into the Light [1996]
The Body as Perceptual Surface: The Films of Johan van der Keuken [2004]
Television and the Author's Cinema: ZDF's Das Kleine Fernsehspiel [1992]
Touching Base: Some German Women Directors in the 1980s [1987] Europe-Hollywood-Europe
Two Decades in Another Country: Hollywood and the Cinephiles [1975]
Raoul Ruiz's Hypothèse du Tableau Volé [1984]
Images for Sale: The "New" British Cinema [1984]
"If You Want a Life": The Marathon Man [2003]
British Television in the 1980s Through The Looking Glass [1990]
German Cinema Face to Face with Hollywood: Looking into a Two-Way Mirror [2003]
Central Europe Looking West
Of Rats and Revolution: Dusan Makavejev's The Switchboard Operator [1968]
Defining DEFA's Historical Imaginary: The Films of Konrad Wolf [2001]
Under Western Eyes: Who Does Zizek Want? [1995]
Our Balkanist Gaze: About Memory's No Man's Land [2003] Europe Haunted by History and Empire
Is History an Old Movie? [1986]
Edgar Reitz' Heimat: Memory, Home and Hollywood [1985]
Discourse and History: One Man's War - An Interview with Edgardo Cozarinsky [1984]
Rendezvous with the French Revolution: Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes [1989]
Joseph Losey's The Go-Between [1972]
Games of Love and Death: Peter Greenaway and Other Englishmen [1988]
Border-Crossings: Filmmaking without a Passport
Peter Wollen's Friendship's Death [1987]
Andy Engel's Melancholia [1989]
On the High Seas: Edgardo Cozarinsky's Dutch Adventure [1983]
Third Cinema/World Cinema: An Interview with Ruy Guerra [1972]
Ruy Guerra's Erendira [1986]
Hyper-, Retro- or Counter-: European Cinema as Third Cinema Between Hollywood and Art Cinema [1992] Conclusion
European Cinema as World Cinema: A New Beginning? [2005]
European Cinema: A Brief Bibliography
Life of Sources and Places of First Publication
Index