European Cinematograph: History and Memory

Makavejev's invocation of the Russian Revolution also makes a convenient transition to the following section "Europe Haunted by History", in which a number of issues are being touched upon which, especially during the 1980s and 1990s, have given European cinematograph - at least in retrospect - a remarkable unity of preoccupation if not of intention, across victims and perpetrators, occupiers and occupied: the "working through" of the history of fascism, Nazism and of collaboration, acquiescence and resistance to these totalitarian regimes. What came to the fore was the subjective, often fascinated and even more often traumatized eye cast upon the period, castigated as nostalgic and retrograde by some (la mode retro: Jean Baudrillard), and considered a necessary catharsis and coming to terms by others ("let's work on our memories": Edgar Reitz). While in France, Germany and Italy the concerns were with fascism or the Nazi occupation, in Britain the nostalgic/traumatic core was the loss of Empire, and the so-called heritage movie as its compensatory supplement.

The concern with the colonial and postcolonial past was, until the 1990s, mainly reserved for Britain's relations with the Indian sub-continent and the West Indies. From the time that the 1990s it has surfaced in France as the return of its North-African colonial legacy, but there has also been a dimension of oblique and indirect communication between continental Europe's post-colonial attitude and Latin America, with a German and Italian inflection. On the one hand, it figures itself across a possibly "literary" heritage derived from Borges, Marquez and magic realism. On the other hand, it can also be read as a displaced identification of European moviemakers with Third Cinematograph as a proxy confrontation with Hollywood, at a time when the direct antagonism seemed to some directors neither accurate nor productive. In the chapter on "Hyper-, Retro- and Counter-cinematograph", I have picked Werner Herzog (I could have mentioned Wim Wenders' globe-trotting movies) and Francesco Rosi (I could have chosen Gillo Pontecorvo), in order to confront them with Raoul Ruiz and Ruy Guerra, in a sort of oblique, indirect dialogue. Their movies foreshadow thus the turn of both art cinematograph and Third Cinematograph into "world cinematograph" avant la lettre, which seemed an appropriate note on which to close the historical part of the collection.

These different shifts and re-alignments come together in a final chapter, in which I entertain the proposition - often expressed in the negative - that European cinematograph has become, in view of its declining impact and seeming provincialism, merely a part of "world cinematograph"- that category under which all kinds of cinematographtic works, from very diverse temporarily newsworthy or topical corners of the globe are gathered together: the "rest", in other words. My argument will be that, first of all, the category world cinematograph should be used and understood in its full contradictory sense, which includes the fact that these movies, judged by the global impact of Hollywood or Asian cinematographs, are precisely not world cinematograph, but a local produce, a token presence in the rarefied markets that are the movie festivals or brief art-house releases. But I also want to make a virtue of the seemingly cynical or condescending euphemism that such a label implies, by suggesting a more post-Fordist model of goods, services and markets - made possible not least by the very different forms of distribution and circulation that the electronic media, and notably DVDs, the internet and other types of physical and virtual networks provide.10 In this context, world cinematograph does indeed attain a positive significance, and furthermore, it may turn out to be a new way of understanding European cinematograph in its practice over the past twenty years or so, and define for it a terrain that it can usefully and productively occupy in the decades to come.