The Europeanization of Cinema: Interzones and Imaginative Communities

4. Interzone Dis/continuous: The Borders of Europe

Chapter 4 Interzone Dis/continuous The Borders of Europe The Border as Ideational Space Borders are first ideational before they are spatial geographical. The liberation of the camera, the ability of the moving image to move in space, is crucial here. Cinema , the cinematic apparatus, provides an edifice whereby the imagination of spatial and geopolitical relationships come together. As an aspect of the cinematicapparatus ,wecanconsiderhowvisualaestheticstrategies,technological innovations, and social policy result in images with particular angles and perspectives.Choicesofdepthoffield,establishingshot,andadistantorproximate frame position spectators vis-à-vis the image but also within an entire imaginative world of affective possibilities. The camera can reveal who is with andagainst“us.”Itcanalsogiveasenseofheterogeneousdiffusionthatunderminesaneasydistinctionofusversusthem .Itcanestablishdistancethrougha simplepansothatwhatisveryimmediatemovesoutsidetheframeandoutside the visual field. It can establish closeness, zooming across galaxies to make a connection between two figures staring out two windows light years apart. The cinematic apparatus can support a world divided by cartographic borders and it can produce a world organized according to countervailing rationales. The work of the cinematic apparatus can affirm spatial-political regimes of powerorcriticalcinematicimagescancountervaildictatesofreigningauthority .Theblacklinesrunningdownofficialmapsinordertodividenation-states could never fully contain or describe the lived experience of any of the people Interzone Dis/continuous • 109 inhabiting territories they divided. People may live on borders, but that experience is not to be confused with the drawing of borders between people. The latterrequirestheenvisioningofadividedworld.Thedivisioncausedbyborders may be influential but it is never complete. And even, or especially when, the passage across borders is most restricted, the border space itself becomes all the more influential, a place of fantastic imaginative potential and affectively experienced disruption. Bordersarealwayspermeable,neverhermetic.Indeed,theopeningdiscussion of bridges in the introduction highlights that borders are as much about connections as disconnections, placements as displacements. The very spatial orientation of borders as contiguous, a line running down a map through the middle of a river, is itself a visual construct, a historical convention. Critical radical geographers have developed elaborate systems of signification to represent the complexity of human interaction over expanses of space. The cinematic image has likewise and more spectacularly developed an extensive anddetailedvisuallanguagetorepresentspatialrelations.Paralleleditingand jumpcutsarestandardsofmontagethatenabletherepresentationofboundariesandconnectionsoverexpansesofspace .AfilmlikeOneDayinEurope(Stöhr, 2005) can resort to this rich visual language to offer various representations of the connections and disconnections across the vast continent of Europe. The cinematic apparatus can open and close borders and bridges even better than guards at checkpoints. Aswesawinthelastchapter,visualregimensmaycometodefinethepolitical imaginary on either side of a border, but they are never commensurate with the livedexperienceoftheborderregions.Inexploringtheinterzonetothispointwe have considered various aspects of the cinematic apparatus: production, distribution , projection, governance parameters of state apparatus, economic organization ,reception,andsoforth.Thischapterbeginswithafocusontechnology and imaginative space. As was explored in the insightful film Videogramme einer Revolution [VideogramsofaRevolution] (Farocki and Ujica, 1992) the mobile handheldvideocameraplayedanimportantroleintheopeningofEasternEurope .We couldextendtheanalysisofthatfilmtorecognizehowingeneralasthebordersof EasternEuropewerefallingandchanging,thedigitalrevolutionfurtherliberated the camera in its ability to record time and move in space. The liberated camera joined in the exploration of liberated space. Liberating the Camera, Opening Space From the point of its invention, the film camera has been central to the apparatus of cinema. By giving motion to the still image the camera immediately 110 • Chapter 4 opened up new possibilities of representing the passage of time. The dynamic explorationofspace,however,requiredfurthertechnologicaldevelopmentsand aestheticexperimentation,especiallytheliberationofthefilmcamerafromthe static tripod. To be sure, expanded spatial movements have a long history. The “phantom rides” of early cinema offered the first traveling shots by typically mounting a camera on the front of a train. In the 1920s, cinematographer Karl Freund developed fundamental techniques of the entfesselteKamera, the mobile camera. Films like F. W. Murnau’s DerletzteMann [TheLastMan] (1924) or Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927) transformed cinematic aesthetics and gave the frame newdynamismbyliberatingthecamera’stripod.Dollyandcraneshotsquickly becamestandardtechniquesofclassiccinematiclanguage.Inthecourseofthe century of cinema, the mobility of the apparatus has developed through alternating advances in the size of the camera and the development of new support mechanisms.Lighthandheldcameraswith8mmfilmwereintroducedalready in1923,andthenthetechnologicaladvancementsofSuper8made“smallfilm” a central part of cinematic experimentation in the 1960s. For “large film” in 1976,theintroductionofthecounterbalancingsupportsystemofthesteadicam stabilized the jerky handheld frame and expanded the possibilities of visual language even further. The spatial liberation of the camera is not simply a matter of technological indulgence; rather, the liberated lens expands cinema’s semiotic field. It captured new axes of movement so that rather than the standard eye-level shot of classicalcinema,themobilecameraacceleratedthedisengagementoftheframe fromahumanperspective.1 Thevideomonitorandroboticarmdevelopedinthe 1980s marked a new support mechanism. Wim Wenders used that technology to great effect in DerHimmelüberBerlin [WingsofDesire] (1987) not just to develop an “angelic perspective” but also to infuse the vision of the divided city of Berlin with...