Contemporary European Science Fiction Cinemas charts the evolution of European science fiction cinema in the 21st century, a period in which Europe itself has faced myriad crises. Key to this study is an exploration of how European science fiction responds to prevalent issues such as the financial crisis, political extremism and violence, large-scale migration and indeed the potential breakup of the European Union itself. What futures does science fiction cinema envision for Europe? Is it capable of moving beyond dystopian visions of a continent beset by seemingly omnipresent turbulence? Emphasising science fiction’s unique ability to estrange, exploit and reflect upon popular concerns, this book directly engages with such questions, accounting for ongoing mutations in the very nature of the European project as it does so.

This book offers a range of accounts of the state of "European Cinema" in a specific sociopolitical era: that of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 and the more recent refugee and humanitarian crisis. With the recession having become a popular theme of economic, demographic, and sociological research in recent years, this volume examines representations of the crisis and its attendant market instability and mistrust of neoliberal political systems in film. It thus sheds light on the mediation, reimagination, and reformulation of recent history in the depiction of personal, cultural, and political memories, and raises new questions about crisis narratives in European film, asking whether the theoretical notion of "national" cinema is less or more powerful during moments of sociopolitical turbulence, and investigating the kinds of cultural representations and themes that characterize the narratives of European documentary and fictional films from both small and large national markets.

Explores the intersections of science fiction cinema and Marxism.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, transnational European cinema has risen, not only in terms of production but also in terms of a growing focus on multiethnic themes within the European context. This shift from national to trans-European filmmaking has been profoundly influenced by such historical developments as the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent ongoing enlargement of the European Union. In European Cinema after the Wall: Screening East–West Mobility, Leen Engelen and Kris Van Heuckelom have brought together essays that critically examine representations of post-1989 migration from the former Eastern Bloc to Western Europe, uncovering an array of common tropes and narrative devices that characterize the influences and portrayals of immigration. Featuring essays by contributors from backgrounds as divergent as film studies, Slavic and Russian studies, comparative literature, sociology, contemporary history, and communication and media studies, this volume will appeal to scholars of film, European history, and those interested in the impact of migration, diaspora, and the global flow of cinematic culture.

This book interrogates the relations between nostalgias of today and past utopias in the context of the space age of the 20th century and its cinematic representations in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia. Once an enthusiastic projection, then a promising and uncanny present, and eventually an assemblage of nostalgic signifiers, in the history of world cinema, this space age has been linked primarily to the genre of science fiction. Here, aspects of the space age such as humanity’s imminent expansion to space, interplanetary travel, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, and intergalactic governance and economy were both celebrated and critically interrogated as cosmopolitan ideals and nation-branding strategies. This book presents the contemporary relevance of this genre as heritage and legacy, archive and canon, and a nest of forgotten ideals and warnings, as well as nostalgic anchoring points. The author analyzes over 30 Soviet science fiction films, foregrounding their structures of utopia and their evolution over time, in order to trace both their transnational positionalities, transmedial resonance, and impact on post-Soviet Russian films about the space age. Concepts, crucial to the understanding of space futures of the past, such as utopianism, otherness, liminality, and no(w)stalgia are activated to draw out the fictional tenants of the memory of the Soviet space age, and to establish the limits and potentialities of Soviet (exra)terraformative ambitions.

New Perspectives on Contemporary German Science Fiction demonstrates the variety and scope of German science fiction (SF) production in literature, television, and cinema. The volume argues that speculative fictions and explorations of the fantastic provide a critical lens for studying the possibilities and limitations of paradigm shifts in society. Lars Schmeink and Ingo Cornils bring together essays that study the renaissance of German SF in the twenty-first century. The volume makes clear that German SF is both global and local—the genre is in balance between internationally dominant forms and adapting them to Germany’s reality as it relates to migration, the environment, and human rights. The essays explore a range of media (literature, cinema, television) and relevant political, philosophical, and cultural discourses.