Abstract
Jones investigates the international appeal of European films. He argues that most European films are unpopular outside their country of origin because they are low-budget productions with culturally specific or controversial stories than only appeal to niche audiences. Nevertheless, drawing on industry data, focus group interviews and textual analysis, he demonstrates that some European films do successfully travel within Europe because they possess certain characteristics. These include major film awards, the involvement of international stars and/or a critically acclaimed ‘auteur’ director, and pre-sold material (e.g. based on a bestselling book). He also uses a case study, that of French comedy drama Untouchable (Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano 2011), to show that even European films without these characteristics can still sometimes appeal to international audiences if they are shrewdly marketed and tap into wider social concerns.
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Notes
- 1.
Mediating Cultural Encounters through European Screens (MeCETES) was a three-year project (2014–2017) on thetransnational production, distributionand reception of European film and televisiondrama. Supported by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Programme under grant number 291827, it involved partners from the University of York, University of Copenhagen and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. The author was a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the ‘film’ strand of the project, based at the University of York. He was responsible for gathering, analysing and disseminating data on which European films travel well within Europe, how these films represent other European nations, cultures andidentities, and howaudiences engage with such screen fictions. He also managed the project website and blog: www.mecetes.co.uk.
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Jones, H.D. (2020). Crossing Borders: Investigating the International Appeal of European Films. In: Lewis, I., Canning, L. (eds) European Cinema in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33436-9_11
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