ABSTRACT

This book offers a range of accounts of the state of "European Cinema" in a specific sociopolitical era: that of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 and the more recent refugee and humanitarian crisis. With the recession having become a popular theme of economic, demographic, and sociological research in recent years, this volume examines representations of the crisis and its attendant market instability and mistrust of neoliberal political systems in film. It thus sheds light on the mediation, reimagination, and reformulation of recent history in the depiction of personal, cultural, and political memories, and raises new questions about crisis narratives in European film, asking whether the theoretical notion of "national" cinema is less or more powerful during moments of sociopolitical turbulence, and investigating the kinds of cultural representations and themes that characterize the narratives of European documentary and fictional films from both small and large national markets.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction

Contested terms, the European Union contribution, and a financial crisis

chapter 2|14 pages

France after the crisis

Work, home, and flexible solidarity in Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (2011) and Ma part du gateau (2011)

chapter 3|14 pages

Spanish science fiction film in times of emergency

Crisis and entrapment in Nacho Vigalondo's Extraterrestrial and David and Álex Pastor's The Last Days

chapter 5|13 pages

Undocumented migration in European borderlands

Relocating the crisis in contemporary documentaries

chapter 6|13 pages

Post-2008 European comedies of crisis

La vida inesperada and Casse-tête chinois

chapter 8|15 pages

French and Italian coproduction redux

The Fondo initiative

chapter 9|13 pages

The contemporary Serbian film industry

Issues of production and distribution (2008–2017)

chapter 11|18 pages

The Greek new wave

Representing work and unemployment in crisis