Over the past few years, the possible identity of European cinema has become
a matter of political debate in which such resounding and divergent issues as
market share and cultural identities are mixed up. The discussions at every
forum are based on the existence of a ring between two magnetic fields: American
cinema built on industrial parameters, Taylorist production systems and highly
popular narrative models as against a more hybrid set of European
cinematographies based on medium-sized productions, united under the umbrella of
cinéma d’auteur, catering to a minority. Film art versus industry, auteur versus producer, national styles versus globalisation. An extremely lop-sided historical conflict whose distinctions have shown themselves over the past few decades to be increasingly unsustainable.
In the process of politically and economically integrating a European Community project, the need for a “Eurocinema” is also invoked. A strangely homogeneous body whose force appears to be dictated by criteria of cultural exceptionality, but above all by economic interests in the face of a highly attractive potential market, even if it is made up of already occupied national markets and weak, clearly autarchic industries. In order to combine both these urgent needs, proposals are made to offer incentives for European cinema by means of legal provisions and run it with public and private support. A protected object that creates a continental brand image, although it is barely able to consolidate the production, distribution and projection structures of the different European countries dominated by the American supermarket.
To these criteria are often added matters of an identitarian nature. European cinema has constituted a repository of historical, political and cultural memory. It has traditionally been identified with the heritage of the artistic and aesthetic avant-gardes of the 20th century and at certain times in history has been associated with a project for stabilising the collective identity. The films, the stories, are interwoven into the language and the cultural memory of a country and, consciously or unconsciously, shape an idiosyncrasy. But the idea of a national cinema raises many questions, not just because it is a global phenomenon that has no need of political unity or territorial boundaries, but also because of the normative and doctrinaire features of this attachment that seeks to homogenise the parts of a multiple and diverse whole. In short, the identitarian spirit of European cinema presupposes the heterogeneity of film-making in the different countries of Europe, the national code being used to name borders, geographies and languages.
Even so, it would seem necessary to organise an institutional, pragmatic and textual reflection on national cinematographies in the epoch of globalisation. If cinema is a barometer sensitive to cultural and political events, the changes during the past few decades in Europe need to be analysed: the crisis of the nation-state, the decentring of Europe between the countries of Eastern Europe and those of the Mediterranean, the emergence of a Europe of the regions, the demographic transformation of the European population in the direction of multiethnic and multicultural communities, factors determining the idea of a deterritorialised, Babel-like Europe caught up in a permanent process of redefining itself geo-politically, economically and culturally.
These are some of the points of reflection framing our project. A multiple itinerary in which production policies, aesthetic standards, cultural borders and peripheries, and consumer typologies -research perspectives that have traditionally gone their separate ways- all come together. Within this vast array of maps, to be approached through a theoretical framework that cuts across subject boundaries and is open to multiple hermeneutics of analysis, a series of questions emerges of great relevance at the present time. What foundation does, or should, European cinema have in order to acquire a substance of its own as a Community project? What role do linguistic borders play in a “Europe without borders”? Is there an ethics allowing the oeuvre d’auteur to be framed in a particular language, time and country? Is there room in the Atlas of Cinema to talk about big and little fictional territories? Which aesthetic currents define this imaginary territory called Europe in the present dispersal of the arts and mass cultural practices? Placing ourselves within the dynamics of globalisation, what role ought cinema to play in the debate between cultural singularity and standardisation, national idiosyncrasy and the homogenisation of customs and forms? Is it possible to speak of a national community of cinema-goers or a differentiated national collective sub-conscious, or must one talk of a domestic audience formatted by television? And in the face of the intense circulation of images and their recycling in the media, is it possible to detach cinema from the audiovisual landscape as a whole? What impact do technological changes have on the spheres of production and reception?
Communications for the Congress must be structured in five major areas or panels:
- Aesthetic categories and discourse regimes of contemporary European cinema.
- Author / Genre / Seriality.
- Concepts and lines of development of national cinemas (singular or unitary experiences).
- Fiction / documentary / film essay / animation.
- Industrial policies and technological perspectives for the audiovisual sector on a European scale.
Aimed at:
