Inaugural Lecture - Professor Tim Bergfelder Event

A Return to Heimat ? Regional Identities in Contemporary European Film Comedy

Since 2000, there has been a cluster of popular film comedies across Europe, which derive their humour from the relationship between parochial and regional identities and wider national and supranational contexts. Films in this vein include Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks, 2008) from France, Benvenuti al sud (Welcome to the South, 2010) from Italy, Die Kirche bleibt im Dorf (The Church Stays in the Village, 2012) from Germany, and Ocho apellidos vascos (Eight Basque Surnames, 2014) from Spain. The invocation of the region and the provincial as a contrast and counter-sphere to the nation and the urban is of course far from new and has been a regular trope across European cultures for a long time, the German concept of “Heimat” (or homeland) providing one discursive context for such phenomena. In my lecture I shall explore how the concept of Heimat may or may not provide a suitable model for understanding the re-emergence of the regional in European popular culture in the 2000s and 2010s.

If you wish to attend this exciting lecture please register before 22 May by following the link above. Please note you must register to attend and to receive joining instructions.

Refreshments will be served from 17:30.

Each of the Inaugural Lecture in Humanities will have an end of lecture collection for the speaker's nominated charity. For his lecture Professor Bergfelder has chosen to support the Refugee Council .