1. Introduction: The Identity of European Cinema

Lewis and Canning address a set of key questions regarding form, aesthetics, industry, and identity in mapping the critical debates necessary to outline the territory of European cinema in the twenty-first century. They do so by building on extant scholarship to create a picture of a field impossible to delimit but characterised by diversity and difference, marked by complex production and funding landscapes, caught between oppositions to and adaptations of Hollywood approaches, experiencing tensions between old and new, and operating in an increasingly post-national, pan-European, and transnational reality. They go on to outline the structure of the book and its relevance to contemporary students and conclude by giving a brief overview of each chapter.