Europes and Contrary Tides: Filmmaking
in the New Europe
|
This conference is free
and open to the public. |
A conference
sponsored by University
of Wisconsin-Madison
The Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street |
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| Description | Participants |
European cinema’s history now spans over 100 years, and its filmmakers
continue to produce some of the most fascinating, exciting, and unpredictable
films in the world today. As Europe carries through with its efforts
to unify itself economically and perhaps culturally into what Mikhail
Gorbachev once called a post-Cold War “single European home,” it is nevertheless
fully evident today that the idea of “Europe” remains highly contested
and ever contradictory. Now that the threat of a return to a Cold War
global climate appears very real, the current state of alarm and renewed
tension requires sustained meditations on the great diversity of cultures
and ways of life found throughout the world, including within a Europe
whose economic unification in no way reflects ideological, social or cultural
homogeneity. The various cinemas of Europe, in their continuing tradition
of stylistic and narrative experimentation, offer us a glimpse into the
conflicts and also commonalities of European film and popular culture
– a culture that is in a constant state of flux. This conference is intended
to offer a forum for the discussion of the various currents – though also
the contrary tides – in European filmmaking today, and will include presentations
on the cinema of migrant communities, filmmaking in the African diaspora
in Europe, new regional trends within national European cinemas, as well
as those perennially inevitable questions relating to the funding, distribution
and exhibition of European films in a market dominated by Hollywood products
and marketing methods. We have organized a series of presentations by
an international gathering of film scholars, as well as two filmmakers,
all of whom will offer their perspectives on these and other issues relating
to contemporary filmmaking in Europe.
All events associated with this conference are free and open to the public.
Handicapped access to the Pyle Center is through the front door at 702
Langdon Street. For handicapped access to 4070 Vilas Hall (821 University
Avenue), enter at the third floor ramp on the corner of Park Street and
University Avenue, take the elevator to the fourth floor, and exit to
the mezzanine.
The conference was coordinated by Patrick Rumble, with the assistance
of Ayten Kilic, Catherine Farry, and Crister Garrett at the Center for
European Studies, and with essential contributions from the UW-Madison
organizing committee: Kata Beilin, David Bordwell, Keith Cohen, Kelley
Conway, Juan Egea, Toma Longinovic, Marc Silberman and Aliko Songolo.
We would also like to thank the following groups for their support: the
European Studies Alliance, the Center for African Studies, and the Department
of French and Italian. The conference is offered in association with
the Wisconsin Film Festival, a public program of the UW-Madison Arts Institute,
and we are grateful to its Director, Mary Carbine, for her collaboration.
Thursday, March 14 - Wisconsin Cinematheque (4070 Vilas Hall)
Film Screening
7:00 p.m. Sombre (Dir. Philippe Grandrieux, France, 1998.
35mm)
9:00 p.m. I.D. / Pièces d’identités (Dir. Mweze
Ngangura, Congo/Belgium, 1999. 35mm).
Mweze Ngangura will be present to discuss his
film with the audience.
3:00 p.m.
Opening Remarks:
Gilles Bousquet (Dean, International Studies)
Jane Tylus (Associate Dean, College of Letters and Sciences)
Patrick Rumble (Director, Center for European Studies)
3:15 - 5:30 p.m.
Mweze Ngangura (Sol'Oeil Films, Kinshasa / Film
Sud, Brussels), My Experiences as an African Diaspora Filmmaker
Respondent: Aliko Songolo (Director, African Studies Program,
UW-Madison)
Short Coffee Break
Marvin D’Lugo (Clark U.), Old and New Genealogies
of Spanish Cinema
Respondent: Kata Beilin (Spanish and Portuguese, UW-Madison)
Reception 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. Pyle Alumni Lounge
9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Marc Silberman (UW-Madison), Popular Cinema,
National Cinema, and European
Integration: The German Case
Respondent: Crister Garrett (Center for European Studies,
UW-Madison)
Short Coffee Break
Deniz Göktürk (UC-Berkeley), Role Play on the
Border: Turkish-German Comedies
Beyond Identity Politics
Respondent: Keith Cohen (Comparative Literature, UW-Madison)
Short Coffee Break
Nevena Dakovic (U. of Belgrade), Yugoslav Cinema
of the 1990’s: Quest for Identity
Respondent: Toma Longinovic (Slavic, UW-Madison)
2:00 – 5:45 p.m.
David Bordwell (UW-Madison), Angelopolous and
the Cinema of Austere Spectacle
Short Coffee Break
Nicole Brenez (U. of Paris I), News of the French
Avant-Garde
Respondent: Kelley Conway (Communication Arts, UW-Madison)
Short Coffee Break
Vito Zagarrio (U. of Rome), The “Beautiful
Life” of the New Italian Cinema
Respondent: Grazia Menechella (French and Italian, UW-Madison)
Closing Remarks: Patrick Rumble (UW-Madison)
David Bordwell is Jacques Ledoux Professor
of Film Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Director of
the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. He is the author
of several books on film theory and film history. His most recent book
is Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment
(Harvard University Press, 2000).
Nicole Brenez is Maître de Conférences at
the University of Paris I and the Curator of programs of experimental
cinema at the Cinémathèque française in Paris. She is the author
of Jeune, dure et pure! Une histoire du cinéma d’avant-garde et expérimental
en France (Paris: Cinémathèque française, 2001); De la figure
en général et du corps en particulier: l'invention figurative au cinéma
(Brussels: De Boeck Université, 1998); and Poétique de la couleur
(Paris: Auditorium du Louvre/Institut de l'Image, 1995).
Nevena Dakovic is Associate Professor of
Film Theory in the Department of Theory and History, University of Arts
in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Her scholarly work touches on a wide variety
of topics in European and American cinema, and she is the editor of Mediated
Identities (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2001).
Marvin D’Lugo is Professor of Spanish and Adjunct
Professor of Screen Studies at Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts).
He is author of The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing
(Princeton UP, 1991) and Guide to the Cinema of Spain (Greenwood,
1997). He recently edited a special issue of Post-Script: Essays on
Film and the Humanities on contemporary Spanish Film in National and
Transnational Contexts (Winter/Spring, 2002). He is currently working
on a book on Spanish cinema and the Transnational Imaginary.
Mweze Ngangura studied cinema at the Institut
des Arts et Diffusion (IAD) in Brussels. After his studies he returned
to Zaire and became a fellow in three higher education institutes of Kinshasa.
In 1980 he made his first documentary Cheri Samba, a portrait of
a young popular painter from Kinshasa. There followed Kin Kiesse
on the sweet and sour joys of Kinshasa la Belle. He wrote and co-directed
La vie est belle in 1987. His 1999 film ID / Pièces d’identites
was the winner of the most prestigious award in African cinema, the Etalon
del Yennenga at FESPACO 99. He is the founder of Sol'Oeil Films in Kinshasa
and Film Sud in Brussels.
Deniz Göktürk was born in Istanbul, studied
in Konstanz, Norwich(GB), and Berlin, where she received her Ph.D. in
1995. She joined the German Department at Berkeley in fall 2001. She is
collaborating on an interdisciplinary research project on "Axial
Writing: Transnational Imagination and Cultural Policy" (funded by
the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council "Transnational
Communities" Program). Her publications include a book on literary
and cinematic imaginations of America in early twentieth-century German
culture: Künstler, Cowboys, Ingenieure: Kultur- und mediengeschichtliche
Studien zu deutschen Amerika-Texten 1912-1920 (1998) as well as articles
on migration, culture and cinema. As a translator from Turkish into German
she co-edited an anthology of contemporary Turkish literature, Jedem
Wort gehört ein Himmel (1991, with Zafer Senocak), and translated
novels by Aras Ören and Bilge Karasu. She is currently working on The
German Cinema Book (published by the British Film Institute, co-edited
with Tim Bergfelder and Erica Carter) and on a book on "Ethnic Role-Play
in Transnational Comedies."
Marc Silberman is Professor of German and
Chair of the German Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He has authored or edited several books, including Rethinking Peter
Weiss (New York: Peter Lang, 2000); Brecht on Film and Radio
(London: Methuen, 2000); Contentious Memories: Looking Back at the
GDR (New York: Peter Lang, 1998); and German Cinema: Texts in Context
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995).
Vito Zagarrio is a film director and historian
of the cinema, with a PhD from New York University. He teaches film studies
at the Universities of Florence and Rome III. He has directed two feature-length
films, La donna della luna (1988) and Bonus malus (1993),
and several short-features, including Un bel dì vedremo (1989),
Intolerance (1996) and Elogio del sudicio (2000).
He has directed many documentaries and specials for television. He has
published scholarly books on Frank Capra and Francis Ford Coppola, and
has edited many volumes on various areas of film, including two books
on contemporary Italian cinema.
This conference is sponsored by the Center
for European Studies, with the European
Studies Alliance, the African
Studies Program, and the Department
of French and Italian,
and in association with the Wisconsin
Film Festival, a public program of the UW-Madison
Arts Institute.
For more information, please contact:
The Center for European Studies
213 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive
The University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison WI 53706 U.S.A.
Tel: (608) 265-6295
Fax: (608) 265-9541
Email: european@intl-institute.wisc.edu
Website main page: http://uw-madison-ces.org/