Getting even and becoming equal: Warsaw through the European lens (1980s–2000s).

The article discusses the shifting image of the Polish capital in a series of European feature films made over the past 25 years (all of them realised with significant Polish or East European involvement), with particular attention to the way in which these co-productions negotiate and imagine Warsaw's status as a ‘European’ city. In contrast to pictures from the 1980s – with their focus on stories of East-West defection and portrayals of Warsaw as an undesirable Eastern Bloc setting – productions from the mid- and late 1990s bring into view journeys to the Polish capital (rather than away from it) and shift attention to the city's location in between two historic centres of power (Western Europe and the Soviet Union). Post-communist Warsaw then becomes the ideal (masculine) site to settle Cold War scores and ‘get even’ with the East and the West alike. The post-accession period, in turn, marks a shift towards a politics of location characterised by multilateral cooperation within the ‘New Europe’. A highly intriguing example of both diegetic and institutional Europeanisation is provided by the Scandinavian-Polish co-productionThe Woman That Dreamed About a Man(2010), which offers a reflexive and intertextual take on Warsaw as a desirable shooting location. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]