European Cinema

European Cinema

Introduction

When we see the contemporary European cinema from the eyes of Hollywood, we can safely argue that it is very united in its themes. So when we construct a crude binary for contrasting, cinema is either commercial or political, American or European, popular or an art house.

Discussion

The concept of art cinema is the main concept regarding the contemporary European cinema. We can describe it as socially committed, aesthetically innovative and humanist in its outlook. What has always been discussed is that the contemporary European cinema is said to be more explicit in sexual terms and so, its approach is a bit more daring. The humanist approaches is concerned with films that are about normal ordinary individuals and how their real lives are expressed.

The contemporary European cinema does not really position itself to celebrity and superstardom rather; it focuses on visual style and foregrounds realism over the structures of classic narration. The main emphasis of the European contemporary cinema is on aesthetics instead of egos.

When we study contemporary European cinema, it is very obvious that the European cinema challenges common conceptions in a film. In the European cinema, the tendency is very obvious to challenge narrative, ideology, conventions in the subject matter and mise-en-scene. In the European cinema, there is a difference in narrative and water tight conclusions that are usually seen in the cause and effect equation of Hollywood. In the contemporary European cinema, we feel a sense of randomness and we see that the peripheral events are usually ended on unhappy notes.

When we are thinking in terms of aesthetics, we observe that the European art films are usually marked with realism that has a certain emphasis on the visual style. This realism is kind of psychological and the sexual realism is thought to be raw. Sexual encounters in the contemporary European cinema are not emphasized over romantic affairs but rather existentialism plays a very important role among the characters in order to develop that aspect.

In the contemporary European cinema, the visual style emphasizes a lot on the europeanness of the film and great importance is placed on the looks of the sequences and scenes as compared to the institutionalized spectacle of Hollywood. Sequences in the European cinema are very appropriately constructed so that more can be represented instead of just the narrative. European cinema tends to suppress action as compared to the Hollywood, which is very much dependant on special effects, explosions and actions.

In the last few decades, the identity of European cinema has become a very political debate in which the divergent and resounding issues such as cultural identities and market shares have been mixed up. In all of the forums, the discussion is on the basis of two major fields including the American cinema that is built on industrial parameters and the hybrid set of European cinematographies that are built on the basis of medium sized productions catering to the minority, under the umbrella of cinéma d'auteur. Extremely lopsided historical conflicts such as film art versus ...