Visualization of Europe

This paper is an attempt to discover how European identity is being visualized in the discourse of the EU cultural and media policy. To be more precise, the research will be focused on cinematic narratives of European identity, in other words, the author will try to define the way united Europe is filmed. Departing from the idea of Stuart Hall, the author argues that identity is constructed not outside but within representation which allows us to say that film as a form of representation constructs those points of identification which we call “a cultural identity”. However, it should be noted that this research doesn't pose the question of “Europeanness” of European cinema, neither is it intended to dwell on the issue of “Pan-European” cinema. The aim is to reveal certain interconnection between the way such concepts as “European identity” and “European integration” are treated in the domain of cultural policy of the EU and the way these concepts are filmed. This will be achieved through the analysis of the EU's visual strategy on the example of the short films provided through the EUTube channel, launched by the European Commission as a video sharing web-site in 2006.