Introduction: dialogues with Hollywood.

The contributors to this special edition of Studies in European Cinema were all participants in the second annual meeting of the European Cinema Research Forum at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in January 2002. The aim of the conference was to debate and analyse the tensions between European cinema and its 'others' both within the context of European culture and beyond. This has subsequently given rise to a British Academy Networks Project entitled `Screening Identities: Reconfiguring Identity Politics in Contemporary European Cinema', which is currently investigating the relationship between film-makers within the European Union and those on its eastern and southern borders. However, in this present volume one can explore what transpired to be a main focus of the conference: namely European film culture's parasitic, conflictive and at times romantic relationship with Hollywood. Hollywood has had a profound effect on the history of European cinema and vice versa. In the 1920s and 1930s, United States was a magnet for the cream of Europe's film industry and a refuge for many seeking exile, the immigration of European directors.