Since World War II, numerous national cinemas have emerged across Europe, offering alternative visions shaped by those different cultures. This course will examine a spectrum of those cinemas in depth, investigating the cultural and social circumstances that underpin them, the local and global pressures of the film industry at that time, the manifestos that often initiated those film movements, the aesthetic similarities and differences which shaped each, and the evolution that describes the historical paths of each cinema. In the first half of the course, we will examine modern film movements from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, England, and other European countries as they evolve through the second half of the twentieth century. In the second half of the course, we will concentrate on the most important contemporary films in Europe today. Alongside a specific focus on the movements and their films, we will consider larger questions of nationhood, globalization, new media, and the purported dominance of Hollyworld as these issues become configured through film and media culture.