Anikó Imre wrote in 2005 that “returning to Europe” had become an indispensable slogan in Eastern European politics and rhetoric. This message by the Hungarian film scholar has now taken on new forms and connotations, considering that this is a time when the Ukrainian people have been plunged into a war in the middle of Europe and Eastern European countries and their cultures are seeking to decolonise their present and re-evaluate their past.

Imre will be in Riga to give a lecture on the production of transnational content  in Eastern European capitals, which have emerged to become global hubs of runaway production in the past few decades. Content producers have taken advantage of significant incentives such as high tax rebates, a skilled and inexpensive workforce and reduced labor and environmental regulations in the region. Mobile media industries are generally seen in a “purely” economic light, where labor exploitation and peripherality are considered depoliticized economic exchange that benefits both states and corporations. 

One reason for this is that East European service industries play a central role in commercial nationalism or nation-branding. Not only can what is in some cases a centralized and oppressive domestic media environment coexist with a state-funded infrastructure built to produce borderless popular entertainment, but the latter can substitute for political participation domestically and prove the viability of a nation-states as modernizing and democratic. 

Imre will integrate studies of platform imperialism and critical media industry studies with culturalist and postcolonial approaches to focus on two major areas of currency in marketing “commercial nationalism” through the mobile service industries: the range of places for which East European locations, including cities, castles, mountains and rivers, typically double up to represent other places; and the typical genres that these locations invite, most prominently spy drama, horror and high fantasy.

The lecture is financially supported by the Latvian Academy of Culture and the RIGA IFF.

Entry – free of charge with no prior registration
Language – English, with no translation in Latvian