Who is Europe? - CVAC Global Week Film screening and round table discussion

Register now to join us for an evening film screening of 'Who is Europe?', a documentary by Dr Ian McDonald, Reader in Film Practice at Newcastle University, in conversation with Dr Yael Almog, Dr Hanna Ruszczyk and Prof Johnny Darling. 

A 'Global Week' event, hosted by CVAC in collaboration with Ustinov College, Durham.

• 28 February 2024, 6-8pm
• Seminar Room at Sheraton Park,  Ustinov College, Durham, DH1 4FL. 
• Free to attend; refreshments provided 
• Please register here so we know the catering numbers!

Who is Europe?

Who is Europe? (2019/30 mins) is a split screen documentary in three acts.  Filmed in Dresden, in Malilla (a Spanish exclave in Africa) and on the Hungarian/Serbian border, Who is Europe? presents snapshots of the ongoing 'crisis of identity' in/of Europe.  

A series of dualisms underpin the filmic treatment: ‘then and now’, ‘us and them’ and ‘here and there’. These are expressed in a split-screen format by a poetics of juxtaposition to highlight contrasts and dissonances. In portraying the tensions over the different experiences and understandings of Europe today, this film raises critical questions for our times: Who is Europe? Whither Europe? Who belongs?

Who is Europe? was made as part of an Europe-wide EU-funded research project, CoHERE – ‘(Critical Heritages: performing and representing identities in Europe)’, led by Prof Chris Whitehead and Dr Susannah Eckersley from Newcastle University. A key focus of the research, and the framework for the film, was on the ways that heritages are often used to create division, exclusion and isolation. For example, in Act 1 supporters of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) mobilise memories of the Allied bombardment of Dresden in 1945 to advance an anti-migrant politics today. While in Act 3, the emergence of a securitised border in Orbán’s Hungary is not simply a barrier against migrants from the Middle East and Africa (such as those young Moroccan men and boys in Melilla in Act 2), but is a new iteration in the palimpsest of divisions and orderings of Europe and its peoples.

Who is Europe? is also a provocation about what is meant by ‘heritage film’ and how we understand the relationship between research and film. The filmmaker and heritage researchers supported each other in approaching documentary practice-led research, not simply as a supplementary ‘show-and-tell’ concerned with ‘communicating the research’ to audiences, but as a different form of creative, critical and political research practice that offers alternative visions and understandings.

Further information about the film