1. in an Anti-Essentialistic Move, Benedict Anderson Fundamentally Reartic- Ulates the Idea of the Nation As an “Imagined Poli

NOTES INTRODUCTION 1. In an anti-essentialistic move, Benedict Anderson fundamentally reartic- ulates the idea of the nation as an “imagined political community” that constitutes itself around acts of imagining shared by a limited and sov- ereign community. The concept can be criticized in terms of the sup- posed uniformity attributed to such a community, but it retains all its value by pointing to the subjective construction of the values, myths, and traditions that shape and bind a nation together. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). A revised edition of this semi- nal book appeared in 2006, which I did not have the opportunity to examine. 2. I specifically refer here to the idea of a “heterogeneous nation-state” as conceptualized by Ralph Dahrendorf (“Il futuro dello stato nazionale,” Micromega 61.17 [1994]: 61–73) and the concept of “concentric circles of belonging” advanced by Anthony D. Smith (National Identity [London: University of Nevada Press, 1991]), which I will explore in the course of my argumentation. 3. The early Group for the Development of an Audiovisual Identity for Europe (DAVID) set up in 1988 and the later pan-European Eurimages support mechanism launched in 1989 and the many ongoing MEDIA (Measures to Encourage the Development of the Audiovisual Industry) programs in different stages of realization all bear witness to the unprecedented commitment to culture and identity. 4. The studies by Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (New York: Rutgers University Press, 1989), and Marsha Kinder, Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), best illustrate a national and inter- national interface in reconceptualizing the notion of national cinema. 5. This is how Giulio Andreotti, minister of the new centrist government of Alcide De Gasperi, would refer to the Neorealist films, adding “how undignified it was for the new nation to wash dirty linen in public.” 146 Notes 6. What I would call the Don Camillo case is especially revealing in its “repression.” The comedic series employed the characters of a country priest, Don Camillo, and a Communist mayor, Peppone, who are engaged in a constant battle in a small village in northern Italy. The con- frontation symbolically stages the political dilemma of the country at the time, that between the new forces of the Left and the conservative, pro-church, and pro-American government of the Christian Democrats, who had won the first elections of the new republic in 1948. These sparse data are more than sufficient to show why the series was discarded by the official culture, why it was not exported abroad—namely, to the United States—and yet was wildly popular with the domestic audience. 7. See Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), origi- nally published in French in 1979. 8. I will be more specific in the course of the work as to Gianni Vattimo’s formulation of what he considers the present condition of “late modernity” and its attributes. Here I refer freely to some fundamental concepts exposed in his major works: The Adventure of Difference: Philosophy after Nietzsche and Heidegger, trans. Cyprian Blamires (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture, trans. John Snyder (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); and The Transparent Society, trans. David Webb (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). 9. See Edward Said, “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community,” in Hal Foster, ed. The Anti-Aesthetic: The Postmodern Culture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), 148. 10. I am referring to the now canonical text of Edward Said, Orientalism, the appearance of which in 1978 set the tone for a profound and still ongoing critique of Eurocentrism and its effects. However, I agree with Samir Amin’s observation that Eurocentrism appeared for the first time in the nineteenth century and does not extend over the previous ages, namely, the Middle Ages, as Said instead indicates. See Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, trans. Russell Moore (New York: Monthly Review, 1989). 11. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multi- culturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994). Ironically, the multicultural and polycentric model indicated by Shohat and Stam to undo Eurocentrism can be effectively employed to assert Europeanism and therefore maintain a Western legacy. 12. See David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). Notes 147 CHAPTER 1 1. It should be noted that the Federated People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was established in 1945. Tito, its undisputed leader, was a Stalinist, but he had built a strong independent base from Moscow. Thus, when he and his party were expelled by the Cominform in 1948, Yugoslavia con- tinued to enjoy its peculiar status of being Communist and independent at the same time: it was and remained, however, under the constant threat of Soviet punishment. 2. Amin, Eurocentrism, xiii. 3. The quote is reported in Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1066. 4. Ibid. It is of extreme importance to acknowledge that the idea of supranationalism was intended to include the Soviet Union and other Western countries soon to be excluded from the first European coalition known as the EEC. This is expressed in the passionate words of the exiled Spanish minister and writer Salvador de Madariaga, chair of the cultural commission: “This Europe must be born. And she will, when Spaniards say, ‘our Chartres,’ Englishmen ‘our Cracow,’ Italians ‘our Copenhagen,’ and Germans ‘our Bruges.’... Then Europe will live.” Such a declaration from a marginalized outsider points to the inter- twined role of politics and culture in the shaping of the supranational idea of Europe at its inception, which is precisely what is being revived by today’s supranationalism. These words cannot but recall the similar fervor of Czech poet, president and convinced Europeanist Václav Havel in the new Europe of the 1990s. 5. Paul Hainsworth, “Politics, Culture and Cinema in the new Europe,” in Border Crossing: Film in Ireland, Britain and Europe, eds. J. Hill, M. McLoone and P. Hainsworth (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, University of Ulster and British Film Institute, 1994), 8. 6. Marx Beloff, Europe and the Europeans (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957), quoted in Davies, Europe, 1015. 7. If we think of West Germany in terms of the separate nation-state for- mally acknowledged in 1952 with the blessing of the United States, the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 can be seen as a signifier standing for a new country and the new ideas signified by it: nation-state, democracy, capitalism, and American hegemony. 8. Davies, Europe, 10. 9. This is how the first line of the Treaty posits the goal of Europeanism. See the Traité instituant la Commuunauté Economique Europeènne/ Trattato che istituisce la Comunitá Economica Europea (Rome: European Economic Community, 1957), 3. 148 Notes 10. Victoria de Grazia, “European Cinema and the Idea of Europe, 1925–1995,” in Hollywood & Europe, eds. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and Steve Ricci (London: BFI, 1998), 20. See the antecedent argumentation as to the omission of culture in the EEC Treaty by Thomas H. Guback, “Cultural Identity and Film in the European Economic Community,” Cinema Journall, vol. XIV, no.1 (Fall 1974): 2–17. 11. George Ross, “Confronting the New Europe,” New Left Review 191 (1992): 51. 12. See Ross’s mise au point in his “Confronting the New Europe,” 52. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Trattato che istituisce la Comunità Economica Europea, 3. Unless other- wise indicated, all translations are mine. 16. Davies, Europe, 1064. 17. Ibid., 1068. The United States has always posed as the leader of the United Nations, and as such has often imposed its own decisions, regardless of other countries’ concerns and objections. They did so especially when they had just liberated Europe and felt the right to dictate their own terms. 18. Davies, Europe, 1117. 19. The fact that Spain was kept under Fascist rule after World War II was congenial to the United States, which feared the spread of Communism. Thus Spain came to be the southwestern bastion against the potential advancement of the “Red Scare” at the price of its own marginalization from the rest of Europe. 20. The film received global critical praise crowned by the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a nomination for the EFA in 2006. Revealingly, it was awarded the Special Prize at the Cottbus Film Festival of the Young East European Cinema, as well as the Audience Award, Best Romanian Film Award, and Transylvania Trophy at the Transylvania Film Festival in 2006. 21. Ralph Dahrendorf, Perchè l’Europa? Riflessioni di un Europeista scettico (Rome: Laterza, 1997), 35. The book appeared in its original version with the more revealing title Warum EUropa? Nachdenkliche Ammer- kungen eines skeptischen Europaers. 22. Allemagne 90 neuf zéro is a Gaumont-Antenne Deux coproduction spo- ken in French and German, massively filled with intertitles and citations referring to European cultural heritage: Karl Marx Strasse, Pushkin, Goethe, Kafka, and Martin Luther Strasse, among others. 23. The sense of a leveling of history in the appellation of “Year 0,” has almost become a trope to indicate the end of an era and the absence of a new beginning, as is witnessed in two films from the Balkans—from Notes 149 different sides—that reprise the same title: Serbia, Year 0 (2001) by Goran Markovic and Tirana, Year 0 (2001) by Fatmir Koçi. 24. Here Godard plays with the Latin word finis, which means both “end” and “border.” Thus he is able to refer to the demise of Germany, as well as the borders of Germany, erased and to be redrawn.

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