Europe & Love in Cinema

摘要

This interdisciplinary volume which goes back to the international research project 'Europe: Emotions, Identities, Politics' and a subsequent workshop entitled 'Europe in Cinema, Cinema in Europe' is positioned at the interface of cultural history and film studies and departs from the assumption that cinema and the analysis of films is a particularly useful field for the study of the cultural imaginary of specific societies at specific historical moments. The editors, on the one hand, state that the aim of the collection is to 'explore the cultural implications of the treatment of love in a number of European fiction films' (p. 3), on the other hand, they also suggest a vaguer idea as the common denominator of the contributions, namely an exploration of the 'triangulation of the concepts of "Europe", "love" and "cinema"' (p. 4). A main point of departure for bringing together these three concepts is the fact that the concept of 'romantic love' is one of the main characteristics of Europeanness. In their introduction the editors show how this concept has evolved over time and how, in this way, private feelings have always had public consequences.