Europe (Un)Divided: How Peace Was Won and the War Never Lost in Wim Wender's Lisbon Story (1995) and Emir Kusturica's Bila Jednom Jedna Zemlja/Underground (1995)

Author： Preuss Evelyn

Publisher： Routledge Ltd

ISSN： 1478-2804

Source： Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Vol.15, Iss.1, 2007-04, pp. : 47-54

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Abstract

The Berlin Wall not only divided Cold War Europe, but also unified it. Serving as a projection screen, it allowed each side to project the other as a continuation of the Nazi regime and itself as the opposite of that grim reign, the vindication of history incarnate. Given the way a basically cinematic apparatus facilitated these memory politics, film-makers on both sides of the former divide probed the historical depth of the present while seeking to redeem their medium from ideological compromise. Yet, what could be understood as a common project yielded very different results, as a comparison of Wim Wender's Lisbon Story and Emir Kusturica's Underground: Once Upon a Time There Was a Country, two German co-productions released on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, shows. While Wenders portrayed Europe as having overcome past struggles through its unification, in Kusturica's uncannily integrated Europe genocide continues. Revealing are the different responses both films elicited. While Wender's touting of EU ideology was taken for granted to the extent that Lisbon Story was perceived as apolitical, Kusturica's film was, after a sharp outcry by ideologues, practically banned on the grounds that it allegedly violated the NATO embargo against Serbia.