Why the Wake Up Europe! Film Festival is important to me

These are troubling times, when the open society is under threat, when some of the basic tenets of democracy are being challenged, when my own country, Britain, is going through a nervous breakdown, and when a coscienza Europea is needed more than ever before. That is why, just ahead of these vital European elections, our festival of reflection and engagement promises to be so important and exciting.

Recently, in Dublin I attended a “dramatic reading” by the great French public intellectual Bernard Henri Levy, “Looking for Europe”. A two-hours’ long one-man show, lamenting the rise of populism and ignorance while searching for the essence of Europeanness, what the impressive M. Levy reminded me of was the value of sitting down to reflect upon the many things we all take for granted. His passion served to engage us all in emotional terms. But what the event most of all depended upon was on making us all think.

BHL, as he is popularly known, stressed the importance of our common European culture, even – he was in Ireland after all – reminding us of how James Joyce’s great novel “Ulysses” is such a quintessentially European text, featuring a story derived from ancient Greece but centring upon Leopold Bloom, the son of a Hungarian Jew who converted to Protestantism and who himself later becomes a Catholic.

Yet there was something missing. There was no debate, no discussion, no exchange of ideas. What I want from the Wake Up Europe! Film Festival is absolutely to be made to think about many things we all take for granted, just like BHL’s talk, but then to have an open discussion about what we have seen, experienced and thought during the films.

Much of my time is spent at my desk, reading books and papers or communicating by email. What I need is the emotional engagement of the Festival’s great documentaries, and then the stimulus to further deeper thought and reflection of a discussion with others who have seen the films too.

I can’t wait.