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In 2004, eight formerly communist East Central European states acceded to the European Union, an event which was celebrated as the final overcoming of the post-war division of Europe into East and West and the ‘return to Europe’ of those states which had been ‘kidnapped’ by the Soviet Union. To mark the accession, an Austrian film production company commissioned five East Central European directors to make short documentary films under the collective title Über die Grenze: Fünf Ansichten von Nachbarn (Across the Border: Five Views From Neighbours). Drawing on geopolitical analysis of the dichotomy of Europe and Eastern Europe which underpinned the European Union enlargement discourse, this paper examines the Czech episode České Velenice Evropské as a film which explores the ways in which borders have been conceptualized and identities (re)framed in the context of European Union enlargement. At the moment when the Central European states’ symbolic ‘return to Europe’ is being realized, director Jan Gogola reflects on the meaning of European Union accession for Central Europeans, on shifting borders and their implications for the construction and understanding of identities of self and other, and on the dynamics of openness and closure in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When detaching oneself from this picture that cities in East Central Europe were “outdated,” one is quick to recognize that cities there were emerging and became at least regional metropolises. Hence, the article assumes that their development and rise took place because of a productive and dynamic reciprocal relationship between knowledge transfer and urban as well as social modernization, which developed in a tight conjunction with rising national movements. Starting from an analysis of recent research on East Central European cities, the article introduces knowledge transfer as an important, broadening perspective on the cities there, because it focuses on main factors establishing a multilayered connection between knowledge transfer and urban development in the modern age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]