Nearly from the start, cinema has registered, dramatized, and produced
images of migration and its attendant anxieties. Indeed, movies have
been fuelled by the movements of peoples thanks to the striking stories
and images these always engender. After glancing at two distinct efforts
in the 1960s in which cinema aimed to capture a mass phenomenon for a
mass audience (one from Classic Hollywood, the other from the periphery
of India), I will interrogate 21st-century strategies to come to terms with
what the art form’s limitations may be. Can cinema get its arms around
something so complex, multidimensional, and contested as migration?
Jia Zhangke’s success in bringing internal Chinese migration to light
may not be easily replicated by filmmakers in other nations faced with
migration issues that cluster at their borders. Perhaps other art forms are
naturally more capable in this regard. To isolate what cinema has done
best, however, I will draw attention to films set on the edges of Europe.