Abstract

Academic Sponsors: Dr. Alexander Etkind, Slavonic Department, MML Dr. Emma Wilson, French Department, MML

Conveners: Dr. Matilda Mroz, Slavonic Department, MML Rosa Barotsi, French Department, MML

The twenty first century began as a time of mourning. All parts of Europe have had their share in the process. This seminar pursues the idea that European film is the cultural genre that performs the work of mourning in exchange with other genres and cultures. There is a circulation of memory across Europe, and the cinema plays a unique role in the process. The seminar focuses on the relationship between contemporary cinema and war, repression, genocide, and other traumatic events in Eastern and Western Europe. It seeks to explore the unique shapes that the cinema gives to the experiences of loss, victimhood, hope, and reconciliation. We will discuss contemporary West and East European films in the wider theoretical framework of memory, mourning, forgetting, and forgiving.

Each seminar will consist of two parts, a film screening and, a week later, a 45-minute paper with discussion. All films will be presented with English-language subtitles. Screenings and seminars will take place in Keynes Hall, King’s College, Cambridge.