The Foreign Land

Joanna Krakowska

Abstract

A book review of Ewa Mazierska’s European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory and Politics (2011). The author of the book takes on the task of presenting important events of the twentieth-century history of Europe, and narratives dealing with those events, through the prism of films of various genres and made by film-makers from a number of countries. In six chapters dealing with amongst others the Holocaust, European terrorism and the fall of communism the author analyses films, and their intertextual, medium and historiographical context. The reviewer draws attention to the methodological awareness of the author, and the efficiency with which she harnesses and uses extensive historical literature on the subject. At the same time she expresses some doubts about the analyses of specific films outside of their local, and therefore more nuanced, context. However regardless of the controversialanalyses Mazierska’s book confirms the importance of film as a historical source, and an impulse for meta-historical reflection.