Although a long-established and influential genre, this is the first comprehensive study of the European road cinema. Crossing New Europe investigates this tradition, its relationship with the American road movie and its aesthetic forms. It examines such crucial issues as individual and national identity crises, and phenomena such as displacement, diaspora, exile, migration, nomadism, and tourism in postmodern, post-Berlin Wall Europe. Drawing on the work of Said, Hall, Shields, Urry, Bauman, Deleuze and Guattari and other critical theorists, Crossing New Europe adopts a broad interpretation of ‘Europe’ and discusses directors who have long been associated with the road movie, such as Wim Wenders (Alice in the Cities, Lisbon Story) and Aki Kaurismäki (Leningrad Cowboys Go America!); authors with a distinctive vision of the road, such as Eric Rohmer, Werner Herzog and Patrick Keiller; and more recent contributions such as Morvern Callar, Calendar, Code Unknown, Dear Diary and The Last Resort.

Ewa Mazierska is Reader in Contemporary Cinema at the University of Central Lancashire. Laura Rascaroli is Toyota Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the National University of Ireland, Cork. They are co-authors of The Cinema of Nanni Moretti: Dreams and Diaries (Wallflower Press, 2004).

April 2006
224 pages
978-1–904764–67–0    £16.99 (pbk)
978-1–904764–68–7    £45.00 (hbk)

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chapter samples
Introduction

reviews

'The scope of theory...is impressive, as are the lucidity, accessibility and cogency of Mazierska and Rascaroli’s overall interpretive application.'
Polona Petek, Senses of Cinema

'Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie provides a highly informative, accessibly written and remarkably comprehensive transnational perspective on European film. Providing the first systematic analysis of the road movie genre in a European context, this book marks an important scholarly intervention, and is likely to become an indispensable reference for scholars, students and fans of European cinema.'
Tim Bergfelder, Southampton University

'It is frankly astonishing to read that, according to the back cover of Crossing New Europe, this new text represents “the first comprehensive study of the European road movie. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the new international division of labor, the adage of “ever closer union”: all are shown in this book to have ramifications for the cinema. We see that they shift debates within Film Studies away from an insistence on radical aesthetics, and instead toward issues which will best reflect the circumstances of this more transnational Europe: displacement, migration, exile, diaspora, and the status of the nation-state in a context of ever increasing globalization. In this, Mazierska and Rascaroli’s new book is warmly welcome, providing a solid introduction to a very interesting category: the European Road Movie'
Steve Choe, Transit

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