Abstract
Europe is not a unitary space, and there are still sharp distinctions between Eastern Europe and Western Europe, distinctions which are brought out in a number of contemporary Eastern European films. Images of the West, and of what it means to be a Westerner or a European, have inevitably changed over the last few decades, and in this chapter I compare images from the communist period with images that can be found in at least a small number of art house films from the early 21st century. In the films I examine, there is a blurring of boundaries between Western Europe and the West more generally. Either way, contemporary images of the West in the Eastern European films I examine are rarely positive, and rarely buy into the image of Europe promoted by the European Union.
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Mazierska, E. (2015). The East Meets the West in Contemporary Eastern European Films. In: Bondebjerg, I., Redvall, E.N., Higson, A. (eds) European Cinema and Television. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137356888_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137356888_8
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