Usuario:Al377227
Minority and Immigrant Representation in Recent European Cinema
A paper for the 5th European Film Academy (EFA) Conference, London, UK, June 2009
The representation of minority and immigrant experience has been taken up by a wide cross-section of contemporary European filmmakers, including Michael Winterbottom and Stavros Ioannou. The work of these filmmakers addresses many of the most prominent and controversial aspects of contemporary European immigration and multiculturalism, such as the influx of Afghani and Kurdish displaced persons and political refugees, the human trafficking of women in Europe’s sex industries, and the challenge [purportedly] posed by Muslim minorities to European secularism. While the films dealing with these issues employ conventions long associated with European cinema, the incommensurabilities of immigrant and minority experience require you to penetrate the spectatorial dynamics framing multiculturalism debates in contemporary Europe. Nothing to do with the billion-dollar-asset blockbusters Hollywood’s tycoons exhibit at American theaters daily.
Identification
Two recent films, Michael Winterbottom’s In This World (2002) and Stavros Ioannou’s Roadblocks (2000), use documentary realism to document the journeys of immigrants into contemporary Europe. Both filmmakers tell their stories in a remarkably immediate manner -- shooting on location with a minimal crew, primarily working off threadbare scripts without pre-determined dialogue and purposefully casting non-professional actors in their real-life occupations and circumstances. Yes, what you see in these films is complex social equilibria of minority and majority identities. In This World is dominated by the journey itself. Roadblocks focuses on the experiences of Kurdish refugees “on site”. With their journey being interrupted, the protagonists of Roadblocks have more time for conversation, remembrance and songs of protest, and sharing of dreams about the future.
These films’ mechanisms of identification collapse rather than explain the differences that structure contemporary European societies. For the documentary realism of In This World and Roadblocks obscures the social distance between their characters and spectators. Do this and you will fail to articulate the fears and desires that inform dominant conceptions of minorities and immigrants. Yet by addressing these films’ strategies of identification and disidentification you can begin to create an ethical framework through which to evaluate contemporary European cinema.