Exile is the dominant theme of our times. It can be found in the forced migration of populations but also in the temporal, cultural and physical alienation of the individual's experiences of the postmodern world. This is a world of unstable, shifting identities dominated, and perhaps most acutely expressed by, the fluidity of the visual image. The essays in this volume examine issues such as remembering and forgetting trauma and nostalgia, time and space, social and sexual exclusion in relation to visual media and new technologies, cinema and the visual arts. The multi-facetted and interdisciplinary exploration of exile and displacement - whether geographical, temporal, corporeal or performative - provides an important analysis of a significant and fascinating aspect of contemporary culture.

Terence Davies has made some of the most innovative, harrowing, and hauntingly lyrical films of the contemporary era. This is the first ever book-length study of his work, combining detailed analysis of all his films with a persuasive and stimulating investigation of key filmic issues of time and memory, identity and selfhood, and the nature of literary adaptation, as well as a previously unpublished interview with Davies himself. The book demonstrates that Davies's films successfully subvert traditional division between 'popular' culture and 'art-house' cinema. Gardner explores not only Davies's debt to social realism, the British Documentary movement, and Ealing comedies, but equally to the European auteur tradition and to the great Hollywood musicals and melodramas that continue to inspire him. It provides fresh insight into the centrality of music in Davies's work, and into his conviction that film itself is closer to music than to any other art form. -- .

Italian cinema currently finds itself in a transitional phase after a highly successful period in which it was associated with the work of directors such as Rossellini, Visconti, Fellini, and Pasolini, and with innovative styles of film-making, principally neorealism. This book explores the evolution of Italian cinema over the last twenty years, with particular reference to modern masterpieces such as Tornatore's Oscar-winning Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. The volume focuses on the work of some of the most prominent directors of recent times, combining an auteurist perspective with an incisive overview of the most important thematic and stylistic developments in modern Italian film-making. A broad range of theoretical approaches has been selected, embracing cognitive, aesthetic, psychoanalytical, and sociological perspectives. This approach has been adopted with a view to providing the most illuminating analyses of the radically diverse work of different directors, rather than attempting to impose a single critical perspective or theme upon films that range from social realism to horror. Significantly, these different approaches are complemented by detailed discussions of the technical arrangements of given film sequences, since another of the volume's aims is to encourage a greater familiarity with the effects of mise-en-scene, montage, sound, and camera movement.

The role of space and place in the creation of visual narratives constitutes one of the most dynamic and exciting debates in contemporary film studies. How does film construct space? What are the spatial codes and strategies that it uses? What is the relationship between space and time in film? How do spatial constructs enable us to understand new concepts of identity and the politics and geographies of exile and displacement? Such questions, whose importance to contemporary film and culture is fundamental, are explored in wide-ranging, challenging essays that re-evaluate and extend recent theoretical debate in relation to the regional and national cinemas of Europe. Alongside critical essays by scholars of international repute the book contains original contributions by practising film directors Characterised by its interdisciplinary, cross-national focus, it is thematically structured to provide an insight into smaller and less well-explored cinemas as well as those of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Spain. Authoritative, lively, and jargon-free, these essays provide the reader with a clear understanding of the significance of space and place, and a fresh perspective on the fascinating diversity of European cinema.

The identity of European cinema, like the identity of Europe itself, is multiple, complex, and fascinating. Providing both a general survey of contemporary European cinema production, distribution and exhibition and detailed critical analysis of specific films, directors, and national cinemas, this volume offers a stimulating and thought-provoking contribution to current film debate.
While the book's critical essays offer keen insight into the complex identities of European cinema, its combination of breadth and detail, and its interdisciplinary focus and background ensure its wider relevance to anyone interested in questions of contemporary culture and European affairs in general. Its stylistic clarity and freedom from jargon make it readable and accessible. The essays have been written by respected academics working in a number of disciplines including Film and Media Studies, Modern Languages, and Cultural Studies.
Topics include questions of memory and identity; filmic autobiography and first-person narration; cultural identity; peripheral voices; popular film and political film. Individual directors, and different national cinemas, including those of France, Germany, Northern Ireland, Russia, Scotland and Spain, are viewed in a wider pan- European context.