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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.
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FILM CULTURE IN TRANSITION
EUROPEAN CINEMA FACE TO FACE WITH HOLLYWOOD THOMAS ELSAESSER Amsterdam University Press
European Cinema
European Cinema Face to Face with Hollywood
Thomas Elsaesser
Amsterdam University Press
Cover illustration: Nicole Kidman in Dogville Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Lay-out: japes, Amsterdam isbn (paperback) isbn (hardcover) nur © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Table of Contents
Preface
9
Introduction European Cinema: Conditions of Impossibility? []
National Cinema: Re-Definitions and New Directions European Culture, National Cinema, the Auteur and Hollywood []
ImpersoNations: National Cinema, Historical Imaginaries []
Film Festival Networks: the New Topographies of Cinema in Europe []
Double Occupancy and Small Adjustments: Space, Place and Policy in the New European Cinema since the s []
Auteurs and Art Cinemas: Modernism and SelfReference, Installation Art and Autobiography Ingmar Bergman – Person and Persona: The Mountain of Modern Cinema on the Road to Morocco []
Late Losey: Time Lost and Time Found []
Around Painting and the “End of Cinema”: A Propos Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse []
Spellbound by Peter Greenaway: In the Dark ... and Into the Light []
The Body as Perceptual Surface: The Films of Johan van der Keuken [] Television and the Author’s Cinema: ZDF’s Das Kleine Fernsehspiel []
Touching Base: Some German Women Directors in the s []
6
European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood
Europe-Hollywood-Europe Two Decades in Another Country: Hollywood and the Cinephiles []
Raoul Ruiz’s Hypothèse du Tableau Volé []
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