10.54103/2036-461X/22502
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2036-461X
22502
41
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Michael Gott, Screen Borders. From Calais to cinéma-monde, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023, pp. 216
Text.Serial.Journal
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Reviews / Comptes rendus
2024-04-05
2024-02-10
2024-04-05
2024-04-05
181-183
Cinéma & Cie
Massimiliano Coviello
2023
10.54103/2036-461X/22502
181
Link Campus University
2036-461X
41
en
183
Gott, Michael, and Thibaut Schilt, ed. 2018. Cinéma-monde: Decentred Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Michael Gott, Screen Borders. From Calais to cinéma-monde, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023, pp. 216
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/22502/20364
23
                                                                                       Michael Gott
                                                                                       Screen Borders.
                                                                                       From Calais to cinéma-monde
                                                                                       Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023, pp. 216
                                                                                       DOI https://doi.org/10.54103/2036-461X/22502




                                                                                         Where does contemporary Europe begin and            forms of degradation, including the annihilation
                                                                                       end? The provocative question posed by political      of singularities, their transformation into a
                                                                                       scientist Jean-François Bayart is the starting        frightening mass of invaders or even terrorists,
                                                                                       point of Michael Gott’s book Screen Borders.          victimisation, confinement to urban peripheries,
                                                                                       From Calais to cinéma-monde (Bayart 2009).            and criminalisation. Shifting boundaries are
                                                                                       The question has no single answer, but depends        also characterised by the constant presence of
                                                                                       on the mobility and background of the traveller.      monitoring systems: the stages of the migration
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       In order to boost unlimited tourism within the        experience and the attempts at integration are
                                                                                       EU, internal borders tend to disappear for            both overseen by a complex media environment.
                                                                                       Europeans. On the contrary, for migrants seeking        On the other hand, there are many artistic
                                                                                       to reach and cross the barriers of Fortress           productions      that    challenge       borderland
                                                                                       Europe, containment and expulsion facilities          restrictions and controls to promote otherness,
                                                                                       multiply. Calais and its jungle, the checks for       forms of creolisation and transcultural
                                                                                       crossing the Channel Tunnel, refugee camps on         narratives. As well as condemning the inability to
                                                                                       the islands of Lesbos and Lampedusa, the Ceuta        manage migration flows, borderland narratives
                                                                                       and Melilla border fences, the liquid borders of      provide a privileged context for understanding
                                                                                       the Mediterranean and the checkpoints along           Europe’s current issues and future challenges.
                                                                                       the forested borderlands between Poland and             Based on the assumption that the mental maps
                                                                                       Ukraine are some of the external borders and          and geographic concepts that define Europe can
                                                                                       peripheral locations that deny access to migrants     vary, Michael Gott’s Screen Borders contributes
                                                                                       in Europe. From the so-called migrant crisis of       to the visual and cultural history of contemporary
                                                                                       2015 to Brexit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine,   borders, both inside and outside Europe. If the
                                                                                       during the 21st century boundaries have become        “screen apparatus intersects and interacts with
                                                                                       ubiquitous across the territories of European         the narrative representation of borders that
                                                                                       states. These often unsuccessful attempts to          this apparatus helps to produce” (1), then the
                                                                                       contain the proliferation and acceleration of         concept of screen borders “hinges on and acts
                                                                                       migratory flows increase border anxieties in the      upon how narratives and images about inside
                                                                                       social composition and produce waves of media         and outside are framed, who is framing them,
                                                                                       overexposure that subject migrants to various         and what audience views the images projected


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                181
onto screens” (10). Gott, Professor of French          climate of intolerance and border anxieties of the
and Niehoff Professor of Film & Media Studies          pre- and post-Brexit eras.
at the University of Cincinnati, draws from              The second chapter focuses on the borderland
common research lines in cultural geography            potential of Atlantic and Mediterranean ports.
and interdisciplinary research fields such as          The five films analysed, including A Season
border and mobility studies to analyse a corpus        in France (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 2017), Le
of popular films, auteur fiction, documentaries        Havre (Aki Kaurismäki, 2011), and Journey
and TV series that fall under the category of          from Greece (Tony Gatlif, 2017), consider the
cinéma-monde. This expression, which Gott              perspective of residents in port cities and depict
already used in previous essays, refers to             their encounters with migrants and refugees, the
transnational audiovisual products that are            attempts at solidarity, and the social and legal
linked to the broader Francosphere (Gott and           barriers to hospitality.
Schielt 2018). The Francophone dimension of              The third and fourth chapters explore the
cinéma-monde can be found at various levels,           intersections of tourism with migration to
including production, distribution, and narrative.     investigate the overlapping zones between
Therefore, Gott analyses the ways in which the         free mobility within the EU (one of the founding
representative dimension, production systems,          principles of the European project), the excluding
funding schemes, and distribution networks of          barriers of the Schengen area, and the rigorously
the cinéma-monde interact with the borders and         controlled external borders of Fortress Europe.
borderlands of the EU.                                 Chapter 3 introduces a specific typology of
   Stations and tunnels, ports and airports,           cinematic travel labelled “touring cinema”, that
watery and forested borderlands: the chapters of       is, “a variant of tourism that frequently overlaps
Screen Borders develop, drawing from films and         with other types of mobility” (99). Through the
TV series set in these and other crossing spaces,      lens of touring cinema and of films partially set in
a dynamic cartography in which images mediate          airports, including Orly (Angela Schanelec, 2010),
and influence our cultural, political and ethical      One Day in Europe (Hannes Stöhr, 2005) and
understanding of borders. Let us follow some of        L’Italien (Olivier Baroux, 2010), Gott brings to light
the routes mapped in the five chapters.                the relationships between the representation
   The first chapter describes how Géographie          of mobility and the flexibility of transnational
humaine (Claire Simon, 2013), transforms the           networks related to financing, production and
interzone of the Gare du Nord into the largest         distribution. In Chapter 4, Italian-French co-
square in Paris, a microcosm marked by                 productions such as Eden Is West (Costa-Gavras,
departures and arrivals. In her documentary            2009), Terraferma (Emanuele Crialese, 2011)
Simon explores the station in the company of the       and Mediterranea (Jonas Carpignano, 2015)
camera and her collaborator Simon Mérabet, two         reconstruct the emotional and social dynamics
interfaces that capture the flow of exiles, migrants   —from fear to first-aid and labour exploitation—
and travellers, and return their life stories to the   that connect tourists on Italian and Greek shores,
spectators. Unlike a crossroads space like Gare        the migrants landing on those same shores and
du Nord, in the Channel Tunnel the function of         the everyday life of the locals.
filtering and separating those who are entitled to       TV series, thanks to their growing popularity
mobility from those who are not is more evident:       and to the emergence of a contemporary focus,
The Tunnel (Sky, Canal+, 2013-2017), drawing on        have become a useful tool for mapping the
the atmospheres of Nordic noirs—the series is          geographical and cognitive coordinates of the
an adaptation of the Swedish/Danish production         European space and for enabling the audience to
The Bridge (SVT1, DR1, 2011-2018)—depicts the          position themselves within it. With this in mind,



182                                                         Screen Borders. From Calais to cinéma-monde
the last chapter is devoted to European border
series, organised into three macro-categories:
networked borders such as the Norwegian
Occupied (Arte, TV2, 2015-2020) and the already
mentioned The Tunnel; forested borderlands
such as the Polish Wataha (HBO Europe, 2014)
and Capitani (RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg, Netflix, 2019);
and migration-focused narratives such as the
miniseries Eden (Arte, 2019).
  Despite the European obsession with creating
borders, the wealth of examples contained in
Screen Borders testify to how “the very act
of making a film or series about a borderline
transforms it into a potential borderland, a site of
dialogue [...]” (197). Gott’s book provides critical
and theoretical tools to scrutinise what we see on
the screens and what lies behind them, unmask
the stereotypes that promote the proliferation
of borders, and identify possible alternative
strategies.
                           Massimiliano Coviello
                       [Link Campus University]




REFERENCE LIST
Bayart, Jean-François. 2009. “Quelles frontières pour l’Union européenne?” Alternatives Economiques,
https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/frontieres-lunion-europeenne/00058495
Gott, Michael, and Thibaut Schilt, ed. 2018. Cinéma-monde: Decentred Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in
French. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.



Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                183
