Cinema Beyond the City ─ Small-Town and Rural Film Culture in Europe

This innovative study offers a comparative history of cinema in rural and small-town Europe from the early 1900s to the present. Leading scholars explore cinema's development as a social, cultural and economic institution crucially intertwined with the processes of urbanization, industrialization and the rise of consumer capitalism.

Judith Thissen is Associate Professor of Film History at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She has published widely on the subject of film culture, cinema audiences and social history in international journals and numerous anthologies. She is the co-editor of Contemporary Culture: New Perspectives on Arts and Humanities Research (2013). In 2011, she launched with Frank Kessler a series of workshops devoted to Comparative Cinema History, focussing in particular on Europe.

Clemens Zimmermann is Professor of History and Chair of Cultural and Media History at Saarland University, Germany. He has published extensively on media history, rural-urban relations, and the European metropolis. He is the author of Die Zeit der Metropolen (3rd edition 2015) and Medien im Nationalsozialismus (2007). His edited books include Industrial Cities: History and Future (2013) and Creative Urban Milieus: Historical Perspectives on Culture, Economy and the City (with Martina Hessler, 2008).