While popular European cinema is strongly linked with the dominant American version of popular film, it cannot be read simply as Hollywood in foreign dress. The styles, stars and genres of popular European cinema - Swedish melodramas, Italian horror movies, French musicals - all have their own conventions, superfically similar to Hollywood and yet cerainly distinct from it. The popular cinema of EUrope has been suprisingly little studied as both art and social document. Popular European Cinema B seeks to fill this gap while illuminating two compelling contemporary issues: the nature of the 'popular' and the new Europe. Popular European Cinema examines the reasons why films that are most popular with audiences in any one European country are seldom successful elsewhere. Audiences themselves represent diverse class, gender and ethnic identities that complicate the question of antional cinema, not least with recent developments n formeerly communist Eastern Europe adn post-colonialist Western Europe. Through their individual studies, the contributors here open up a new area of study, using the medium of film to focus a wider discussion of popular European culture.