Suburban Landscapes in Eastern European Migrant Cinema
摘要
This chapter analyzes the significance of suburbs in the lives of Eastern European migrants as portrayed by European cinema from the end of the Socialist era to the present. Detecting a significant evolution in the representation of Eastern European migrants on the silver screen, the chapter highlights a major shift in the visual representation of suburbs. Films from the late 1980s to the first decade of the twenty-first century often follow the social-realist tradition of filmmaking and portray characters who are petty criminals or have underpaid blue-collar jobs, living in working class suburbs which are dominated by prefabricated tower blocks or abandoned buildings. The chapter finds three distinct trends in the representation of such housing projects: the spaces of marginalization, spaces of solidarity and spaces of gang activities. Films from the later period, however, often feature fashionably exclusive districts or inner city settings as the homes of Eastern European migrants. The chapter finds both sociological and film historical reasons for this change.