Screening Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema. By Yosefa Loshitzky.

Abstract

This book comes replete with a generous encomium from Hamid Naficy, author of An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001). The books invite comparison. Whereas Naficy was able to show how filmmakers from migrant backgrounds were beginning to find their voice, Loshitzy concentrates on how directors of both European and migrant origin are adjusting European national cinemas to take account of new transnational and diasporic realities. Although her typologies are not elaborated, Loshitzky provides useful and suggestive categorizations of this fresh wave. In discussing films about migration, she finds three genres: films about journeys of hope, those about the Promised Land and those about the experiences of second-generation migrants. The first genre is evidently an echo of Journey of Hope (Switzerland 1990), a prize-winning film about the despairing journey of a Kurdish Muslim whose wanderings in the Swiss Alps lead to injury, death and the crushing of all hope. Likewise, those in the category of ‘The Promised Land’ often depict exploitation, disillusion and difference. This is in marked contrast with many of the films made in the USA about the Ellis Island immigrants, which focused on their impoverished past and initial hardship but ultimate triumph and success. Though more diverse, films depicting the experiences of the descendants of migrants often emphasize cultural alienation, lack of acceptance and the negative aspects of multiple affiliations, particularly when one of those affiliations is to Islam.