24/11/2007

On the 11th of June this year, Wim Wenders gave a speech in front of the European Parliament about the meaning of European identity (read the full speech here). I wonder if this event somehow influenced the Torino Film Festival in choosing him for one of their two retrospectives. I like to believe it did. The subject matter Wenders brought to the table was, in short: does Europe have a soul? In other words, is it something more than an economic agreement so that you don’t have to change currency when you travel?

According to Wenders, there’s absolutely no doubt that it is - but not for the people who live in it. Europe is a unified subject when seen from the outside; for the millions of immigrants who try to get inside our borders. The ‘European dream’ is for them similar to how the American dream once was for the millions of Europeans (such as John Cassavetes’ Greek father) who tried to reach the new continent. Nowadays, are we the European people aware of this? And, most importantly, are we able to define ourselves?

The answer is actually very simple: there exists a European culture if the people of Europe, and especially we, the young people (who are about the same age as this festival - 25 years old) create it. For over two millennia we have travelled across our continent, slaughtered and loved each other: we definitely have some history, and some good stories to tell. Then of course, Wim Wenders reasons as a director: the best way to build European culture is to make great European films. With due apologies to all other art forms, I’m sure that the cinephiles who will spend the next ten days together, enjoying celluloid overdoses, will surely agree. Let’s see what happens.