Constructing a Flemish Cinema: Film Policy and National Identity in Flanders

(Hardback)

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Focuses on the history of government subsidies for feature films in Flanders (the northern, Dutch-language region of Belgium) and its role in stimulating a Flemish identity. It provides an empirical contribution to the study of the relationship between film, national identity and governmental film policy. This book is a timely empirical contribution to the underdeveloped field of Belgian film history. By focusing on film policy, the book contributes to the long neglected but currently burgeoning international field of film policy studies. Furthermore, because of its focus on film policy, the book provides an original contribution to the international research tradition on the relationship between film and national identity by going beyond an examination of textual representations.

Author Bio

Gertjan Willems is Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is a part-time Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University, Belgium. He has been a guest lecturer or visiting scholar at the University of York, UK, the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the Universit Paris 2 Panthon-Assas, France. Since 2016, he is chair of the Film Studies section of ECREA. Alexander De Man is a PhD fellow of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) conducting research in a joint fellowship at the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS) at Ghent University, Belgium and at the the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi) at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His research project, entitled The diaspora kino-eye, aims to critically investigate Flemish institutional film policy frameworks and practices with regard to diaspora cinema and analyze its textual representations of diaspora identities, cultures, and spaces. He holds a masters degree in Communication Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium, specializing in Film- and Television Studies (magna cum laude). Previously, he worked as an online editor at the international film festival of Ghent and assisted in the inter-university infrastructure Cinema Ecosystem (CINECOS) project.