Screening Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema

Yosefa Loshitzky challenges the utopian notion of a post-national "New Europe" by focusing on the waves of migrants and refugees that some view as a potential threat to European identity, a concern heightened by the rhetoric of the war on terror, the London Underground bombings, and the riots in Paris's banlieues. Opening a cinematic window onto this struggle, Loshitzky determines patterns in the representation and negotiation of European identity in several European films from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged, Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, and Michael Winterbottom's In This World, Code 46, and The Road to Guantanamo.

Loshitzky (Univ. of East London, UK) here expands on her earlier fine work on cinema and politics: The Radical Faces of Godard and Bertolucci (CH, Sep'95, 33-0195) and Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen (CH, Jul'02, 39-6318). She works through contemporary European films that foreground migration, with the goal of describing each film's view of 'fortress Europe.' Loshitzky returns to Bernardo Bertolucci in Besieged (1998), while picking out Godardian elements in both Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine (1995) and Michael Winterbottom's 'Camp Trilogy' (In This World, Code 46, The Road to Guantanamo). She also discusses the Swiss film Journey of Hope (1990) and Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things (2002). The range of films Loshitzky takes on is wide, but she makes no claim for comprehensiveness. She notes that she selects 'hegemonic' rather than 'minority discourse' films, i.e., films made by 'hosts' rather than 'strangers.' Given that principle of selection, this reviewer could have done with more unmasking of hegemonic ideology and less letting the films speak--however critically--for themselves. That said, this book is every bit as rewarding as the best recent work on European identity and the cinema, e.g., Rosalind Galt's The New European Cinema: Redrawing the Map (CH, Nov'06, 44-1429). Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and researchers. -- ChoiceS. C. Dillon, Bates College, September 2010

"Loshitzky makes the crucial link between the political screening of new immigrants by European governments and societies with the cinematic screening of these immigrants by European directors, all the while offering sensitive and thick readings of the films." --Hamid Naficy, author of An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking Indiana University Press Indiana University Press

"Mapped and argued with equal expertise, Yosefa Loshitzky's... monograph is a valuable contribution to the literature on diaspora and migration in contemporary cinema." --www.intellectbooks.co.uk

"[This is] a particularly relevant and even prescient publication, a most welcome addition to the growing number of books centred around the ever-perplexing premise of unravelling societal and by extension cinematic identity." --alphavillejournal.com, 8/8/2011

"[T]his is a valuable book for those interested in the study of migration and film." --Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1

"[T]his is a stimulating and informative survey that raises many questions about the political attitudes that underpin the broad European consensus on questions of immigration." --Journal of European Studies, 2011

"Written in a clear, concise, and engaging style, [this book] will appeal to both students and scholars of world cinema." --Frank Tomasulo, Florida State University

"This book is every bit as rewarding as the best recent work on European identity and the cinema... Essential." --Choice

Yosefa Loshitzky is Professor of Film, Media, and Cultural Studies at the University of East London. She is author of Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen, a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 2002, The Radical Faces of Godard and Bertolucci, and editor of Spielberg's Holocaust (IUP, 1997).

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Screening Strangers in Fortress Europe

1. Journeys of Hope to Fortress Europe: Cross-Border and Migratory Films

2. Cities of Hope: The Cinematic Cityscapes of Fortress Europe

3. The White Continent Is Dark: Migration and Miscegenation in Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged (1998)

4. Intifada of the Banlieues: La Haine Revisited

5. The Camp Trilogy: Michael's Winterbottom's In This World, Code 46, and The Road to Guantanamo

Afterword: Beyond Strangers and Post-Europe

Notes

Index