Transznacionális elmozdulások Valeska Grisebach Western (2017) című filmjében
Transnational Displacements in Valeska Grisebach’s Film, Western (2017)

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the transnational aspects of Valeska Grisebach’s 2017 film, Western that are relevant not only in the production process and the institutional structure of the film but also in its narrative and generic patterns. Reversing the East–West direction of the transnational labour migration, the film places German construction workers as foreigners in a small Bulgarian village displaying (mainly through the figure of the German protagonist) the experience of dislocation and placelessness. The paper examines the way in which the film stages quotidian encounters and conflicts between the German and the Bulgarian community and displaces hierarchical and homogenizing concepts that juxtapose Western Europe with Eastern Europe as its “other.” Grisebach’s Western connects languages, ethnicities and (film)cultures that are not homogenous themselves and creates a “contact zone” for rethinking the notion of the national, the local, the regional and the global. In this way, the film foregrounds the transformative potential inherent to transnational perspectives.

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