Poetics of the Borders: Meeting Points and Representational Border-Crossings in Contemporary Central and Eastern European Cinema

Abstract

Meeting Points and Representational Border-Crossings in Contemporary Central and Eastern European Cinema is intended as an effort to refocus the current scholarship of the cinema on migration to provide a contribution towards change of paradigm in researching representations of migration. The two main notions are proposed here: that of the poetics of the borders and meeting points. The “borders” and the “meeting points” are not defined in terms of contrasting identities, separating cultures and societies. Instead, they are oriented toward dealing with shared emotions, spaces, representations, and experiences and go beyond the stereotypical trope of locals meeting strangers, and “us” versus “them,” instead emphasizing the quality of the contact and discovery of the Other (regardless of change happening or not). They represent narratives that are not mainly about widely perceived negative aspects of migration, such as conflicts, sexual exploitation, harassment, and trafficking, and seek to move beyond the concept that “they are coming/we are leaving.” The metaphor of the “meeting point” is used here in order to redefine not only the spaces of contact, but also to close the emotional, psychological and cultural chiasmus between these meetings.