| Summary: | In this article I propose to show that film can challenge some of our political and geographical common sense. The article will be about Eastern Europe, while arguing that Eastern Europe does not exist. To illustrate what I mean by that statement, I will will begin with a conversation I had a few months ago with a friend. We talked about the German novelist Günther Grass and I said that I didn’t much appreciate his writing in the Tin Drum, because it is so rooted in East Germany. By that I meant the flat planes of Eastern Prussia. My friend, who thought that I referred to the DDR, said, “Yes, but Günther Grass was a West German author.” I replied, “That is true, and he was born in Gdańsk.” So at stake in this nice example of miscommunication was the use of the term ‘East’: is this a geographical or a political term?
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