Society For Cinema and Media Studies

Vancouver

March 2-5, 2006

Reconciliation and Unification: Cinematic Reponses to E.U. Expansion

This panel seeks to explore how various European films and filmmakers from
Western and East-Central Europe as well as the Balkan states are responding
to the expansion of the E.U. and, more broadly, European history following
the collapse of communism. This panel asks: Is there a totalizing or even
coherent image of Europe that emerges from such films? Does this cinema
imply that a unified Europe fully reconciled with the turmoil of 20th
century history is even possible? Moreover, how do we understand such films
in light of the fact that one of the reasons cited for the Dutch and French
rejection of the E.U. constitution is resistance to further European
expansion, in particular the entry of Turkey into Europe?

Presenters may focus on, for example, how specific cinemas from Western
Europe have represented the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, the collapse of
borders between countries, and migration into the West from the former
fringes of Europe and even the Middle East. They might also explore these
questions as they are imagined in individual films, such as Fatith Akin's In
July (2000) and Head-On (2004), Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique (2004) or
Michael Haneke's Code Unknown (2000) and The Time of The Wolf (2003).
Conversely, presenters may ask how national cinemas from East-Central Europe
and the Balkans have understood the transition from communism to capitalism
and the multiple processes related to integration into the West, issues that
are explored for instance by Emir Kusturica in his epic film Underground
(1995) and in Bela Tarr's Satantango (1994).

Please e-mail 200-300 word proposals and a brief bio by August 15, 2005 to:

Zoran Samardzija

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

zs2_at_uwm.edu

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Received on Sun Jul 17 2005 - 16:04:51 EDT