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The article discusses the significance of establishing a cinematographic museum or depository in Paris, France that houses historical cinematography. Animated photography is expected to become an agreeable method of studying the past for it will provide a direct view of the past. Furthermore, it will turn to a singularly efficacious teaching process. It is stated that cinematographic print which portrays thousand negatives making up a scene is not a mere historic document but a piece of history. Considering all these importance, cinematographic prints should have a section in a museum, shelf in a library and a cabinet in archives.

The thesis of this paper is that governments of some otherwise enlightened states are increasingly fearful of acknowledging the restraints imposed on them by existing international law. They are also reluctant to enter into new commitments by way of international conventions that would expand the reach of international law. The paper asks whether these fears are based on a true understanding of international law or on some distorted view of it. It will draw comparisons and some contrasts between Australia and the United States in their reactions to a number of recent events as well as to some enduring situations of contemporary relevance. Had time (and the limits of my research) permitted, one might also have examined public attitudes toward international law in China, Japan, and Russia in this context, where similar fears appear to be entertained. France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, also enlightened states, appear by contrast to belong to a group more dedicated to international law. As Robert Kagan has recently remarked, the experience of two world wars at close quarters, and the formation of the European Union, have made the European countries more dedicated to process, where the United States is more interested in results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses early French fiction about the cinematograph, prior to the publication of the first history of cinema in French, specifically examining the figurative force of reference to the new medium in literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the fire accident that destroyed a commercial warehouse in which Bibliotheque du Film had stored part of its holdings in Paris, France. Lists of collections destroyed in the fire; Significance of the destruction; Number of materials destroyed in the fire; Consequences of the fire.

The article presents the impact of American Jewish aid in post-Holocaust France. During the German occupation of France in World War II, the Vichy collaborationist rule affected gravely the life of Jewish population in France. Jewish communities have been disorganized and they faced discriminatory legislations that restricted movements, property ownerships, and civil liberties. Approximately 76,000 Jews were deported as the Nazi attacked the European Jewry. However, in August 1944, as Paris was liberated by Charles de Gaulle's forces, the Jews began rebuilding their institutional life. The American Jewish organizations who gave financial aid to returning Jews are featured in this paper.

The article addresses the controversy over the invention of the sound motion picture. It examines Parisian journalists' attempts to write the history of synchronised sound films in reaction to the U.S. film industry's eventual conversion to sound. Between April and October 1935, newspapers in Paris, France, carried a series of polemical article concerning the inventor of the talking picture. On the occasion of the death of inventor Thomas Edison on October 18, 1931, a series signed pseudonymously Phil M. Daly which appeared in the New York trade paper "Film Daily" looked back at the Kinetophone. The arguments between the various trade journals and newspapers climaxed at the end of October 1935.

This article examines the Foreign Relations documents of the U.S. and the papers of government officials in the Truman administration that reveals the possibilities for peace in the Middle East in 1949 and the opportunities present for the U.S. to have played a major role in the peace process. The first Arab-Israeli war came to an end with the signing of an armistice agreement between Egypt and Israel on the island of Rhodes, on February 24, 1949, under the direction of United Nations Mediator Ralph Bunche. Within the next five months, successful armistice agreements were concluded between Israel and Trans Jordan, Lebanon and Syria; and permanent peace negotiations were expected to follow before the year's end. In order to appreciate the possibilities for peace in the Middle East in 1949, we must go back to December 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly, in anticipation of the end of hostilities between the Arabs and Jews, established a Palestine Conciliation Commission consisting of representatives from France, Turkey and the U.S. Its major task, which was to be pursued concurrently with the armistice negotiations, was to negotiate peace treaties between Israel and the Arab states. Along with its pursuit of permanent peace, the Commission was also to formulate a plan for the internationalization of Jerusalem and to arrange for the repatriation and resettlement of approximately 725,000 Palestinian Arab refugees.

The article presents a change of contrast between the culture and tradition of France and Africa. When the great colonial exhibition on the eastern outskirts of Paris, closed its doors in 1931, it had drawn the most unusual number of 34 million visitors, who had come to watch this sumptuous display of France's colonial grandeurs. Under the patronage of Presence de Lyautey, the man who had turned the ancient kingdom of Morocco into a modern colony, the exhibition aimed at persuading the audience that, in the midst of the Great Depression. Lyautey's success in Morocco had firmly established the principle that France had nothing to gain from the destruction of native cultures and society.

The article offers information on the book "Des Tibbonides à Maïmonide. Rayonnement des Juifs andalous en pays d'Oc médiéval," edited by Daniéle Iancu-Agou and Elie Nicolas. It recalls that the book resulted from a December 2004 conference held in Montpellier, France in celebration of the 800th death anniversary of Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. The conference is said to have focused on the reception of the work of Maimonides among the Andalusian Judeo-Arabic culture in Provence.

Historical narratives help construct social identities, which are maintained through differentiation between in-groups and ''others.'' In this article, we contend that Fatima Besnaci-Lancou's texts, as well as her reconciliation work--in which she enjoins Beurs and Harkis' offspring to write a new, inclusive, polyphonic narrative of the Algerian War--are an example of the positive use of textually mediated identity (re)construction. Her work suggests the possibility of implementing a moderate politics of empathetic recognition of the (often migration-related) memories of ''others'' so as to reinforce French national belongingness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay aims to show the difficulties of restoring and interpreting Abel Gance's La Roue (1922). It provides details of the film's evolution from script to screen and the history of its various release versions, including modern attempts at restoration. Aiming to solve some of the difficulties many critics have had when examining Gance's film, it offers an analysis of key aspects of the film, negotiating a balance between its innovative form and dramatic content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late eighteenth century, Jewish authors in France and Prussia started to articulate their political ideas through polemics against the Catholic Church. The fact that Jews were able to employ anticlerical tropes despite their precarious legal and social position underscores the importance of anticlerical polemics for the emergence of new forms of civic belonging in a period when Jews became, or dreamed of becoming, citizens for the first time. Anti-Catholicism served as an expression of new horizontal alliances with other social groups and--in the case of France--of Jews' dedication to a state defined against anti-revolutionary clergy. Unlike antisemites in the late nineteenth century, who denounced Jews for dividing the nation with their anti-Catholicism, Enlightenment thinkers accepted the anticlericalism of Jews such as Moses Mendelssohn because they saw it as proof of Jews' ability to transcend parochial Jewish concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing the 'Circe' episode of "Ulysses" in Paris, Joyce expressed interest in the play "Les Mamelles de Tirésias," for which Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term "surrealist." "Les Mamelles" husband's birth of 40,050 children in a single day is paralleled not only in Bloom's instantaneous production of eight metallic children but also in the episode's unceasing generative energy. If the massive production of children in "Les Mamelles" is purposive, the production of "Circe" is out of control, embodying both the pleasures and the dangers of industrial capitalism, an endless production of commodities that seems to offer change but generates instead a phantasmagoria. Reading "Circe" and "Les Mamelles" alongside Walter Benjamin's understanding of the effects of the capitalist city—explored in the "Arcades Project" in Paris while Joyce was finishing "Ulysses" there—allows us to see how "'Circe" moves beyond the limits of Surrealism and offers another way of conceiving of the avant-garde. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

War newsreels distributed in France from 1914 to 1918 comprise a body of work which has long been ignored by traditional film historians. In order to draw attention to this material, this article, summarising many years of the author's work on the subject, places these films in their context of production and analyses them in detail, showing that they are valuable sources both for documenting the socio-cultural history of the time and for the history of the cinematograph. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways in which the challenge of reconciling a politically divided country is reflected in the memory culture of the early French Restoration. It analyzes both the official politics of representation and a broader popular discourse. The main argument is that these popular (lyrical) texts provided a specific way of dealing with the Restoration's central problem of how to deal with the presence of the revolutionary past which was challenging the legitimacy of the present order. By combining certain symbolic-metaphoric devices with a style of pathos, these texts created a sentimental cultural practice of reconciliation which made it possible to remember the fundamental political conflict and simultaneously make it disappear behind the strong emotions that were evoked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the manuscript context of the songs of Thibaut de Champagne that were either marginalized in or excluded from A. Wallensköld's 1925 edition. An evaluation of the placement and ordering of Thibaut's songs in the codices, as well as their rubrics and melodies, affords an understanding of the construction of these chansonniers, obscured through decades of reliance on print editions. A rapid scrutiny of these linguistically (C) and musically (R) marginal manuscripts both reveals how little we know about the transmission of trouvère lyric and underscores the importance of a material-philological approach for all future editions of the trouvères. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1288, thirteen Jews were martyred in Troyes in the county of Champagne. Two elegies about the event—one in Hebrew, one in Old French—are attributed to Jacob bar Judah of Lorraine. In this essay, I present evidence that Jacob leaned on both the "Song of Roland" and the Legend of the Ten Martyrs in his constructions of the martyrdom so as to establish frameworks for memorializing and understanding the tragedy. French and Jewish influences are woven together in both elegies, just as they were in medieval French Jewish life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, the author addresses the question of melodic variance in Old French song from the perspective of editing such songs in ways that not only preserve but highlight variance as a core aesthetic principle. In so doing, he attempts to show how music and text must gain equal attention in editorial matters--the two may never be separated at any time, except in the most artificial and provisonal ways--in determining significant variance. He then turns attention to how such principles might be made more apparent in critical editions of trouvère lyric. In conclusion, he posits that variance must not be hidden in notes and marginalia, but rather pushed to forefront of the editorial enterprise, as variance becomes the foundational principle on which the trouvère art is--somewhat paradoxically--built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a comparative approach to explore privatization and its consequences on public law values. It discusses the French model for protecting these values, which limits the scope of privatization and applies a legal regime within which public law norms play an active role. While it does not suggest that this model can or should be applied in the United States, it does express that the French experience can enrich American debates on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What was the legacy of the 1871 Paris Commune at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905? Was it understood as part of an obsolete revolutionary tradition or as something new? The French left responded equivocally even as the 190 revolution provided a comparison, and as Lenin identified the practical lessons of 1871. Once the Bolsheviks came to power, the Commune would be given new life as a legitimizing agent for the USSR. French Communists would also adopt the Leninist reading. This article examines the "rupture" of 190 and the transformation of the revolutionary tradition from the perspective of the French left, Parisian workers and Russian émigrés, and in light of the funeral of the former Communard Louise Michel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 1840, France was rocked by the news that, following the disappearance in Damascus of a Capuchin monk and his assistant, the Jews of that town had been accused of ritual murder. French political interests in the region meant that they took a great interest in the proceedings. Feeding this interest was an ongoing fascination with the Orient, including its Jewish population. The willingness of many French to believe that the Jews of Damascus were indeed guilty of ritual murder was fueled by depictions of Oriental Jews as rapacious or sensual. In France, Jews were conspicuously involved in trying to help their coreligionists in Damascus, and this led some commentators to question their loyalties. Orientalist stereotypes of Jews ultimately led to freer and more aggressive criticism of Jews in French society. The Damascus Affair provided the starting point for such criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I describe and analyze three principles of First Amendment doctrine. First, the Establishment Clause generally forbids governmental expression that has the purpose or effect of promoting or endorsing religion. Second, and conversely, private religious expression is broadly defined and is strongly protected by the Free Speech Clause. Third, as an implicit exception to the first principle, the government itself is sometimes permitted to engage in expression that seemingly does promote and endorse religion, but only when the expression is noncoercive, nonsectarian, and embedded within (or at least in harmony with) longstanding historical tradition. Comparing these three principles to the demands of French laïcité, I conclude that the United States and France share fundamental common ground on the first principle, but that the second and third principles demonstrate that the American approach is in some respects more protective and tolerant of religious expression in the public domain. I suggest that these variations are not accidental, but rather are the product of historical, philosophical, and cultural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with four films, which were released between 1956 and 1960 by East Germany's state owned film company DEFA and were co-produced by French companies. The four films referred are: Gerard Philipe's Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel/Les AventuresdeTillL'Espiègle, Raymond Rouleau's Die Hexen von Salem/Les Sorcières de Salem, Jean-Paul Le Chanois's two-part Die Elenden/Les Misérables and Louis Daquin's Trübe Wasser/Les Arrivistes. These films reveal some striking insights into the interplay of cold-war politics, cultural policy, and film production in East Germany and France during the 1950s. All the four films suggest the need to re-center the very definition of national cinema through the dialectic of co-productions catalyzed in the west by the economic imperative of international competition under cold-war conditions. For the French producers the cooperation with the DEFA studios was an economic opportunity. State-run DEFA was used by the Communist Party to create high quality films for mass consumption that would educate and inform the public about the evils of the past and address the viewer as the imaginary socialist citizen of the future.

The infamous but ostensibly forgotten massacre of Algerians in Paris was not suddenly rediscovered in the late 1990s, but in fact had remained in the collective memory of North African immigrants. Two novels by Rachid Boudjedra, Topographie idéale pour une agression caractérisée (1975) and Le vainqueur de coupe (1981), attest to the persistence of these memories. Both memory and an appreciation of history are necessary to move successfully in the city. These novels suggest how the urban immigrant community may produce and use history, as Boudjedra's characters become creators of lieux de mémoire. The development of immigrant lieux de mémoire nonetheless differs from that of "native" French places described by the historian Pierre Nora. Today, France is attempting simultaneously to manage memories of its recent history and to include immigrants and their descendants in the very society that is only now recollecting parts of their history. Discovering what might constitute lieux de mémoire for immigrants and their descendants is therefore vital to understanding the contemporary multiethnic French society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will attempt to clarify the issues that crystallized around the historical film in France in 1927. French cinema developed in concert with the nation, so the cinema's re-enactment and interpretation of the past, its commonplaces and myths, naturally served to reinforce a sense of belonging to the nation. Rooted in national values, it developed continuously throughout the 1920s, a decade when the genre took on great importance not only because of the upsurge in the production of costume dramas, but more profoundly because of the debates these productions triggered about the status of French film. From this point of view the year 1927, which was generally recognized as one of the great successes of French cinema, was a high point of this attempt to reaffirm a national superiority that had been lost since the Great War.

This article examines whether 1927 is the year of film heritage in France. The series of events in 1927 marked the emergence of common concerns for those involved in the defense and promotion of film, concerns that had been considered separate until this time such as the history of film, resources available to future historians, and the films to conserve. The discovery of film's past and its investigation pre-dated the silent film era. The talking film was simply a catalyst that allowed this concern for the past to be taken up by the film press and viewers, but the necessary tools and practices to bring film history into focus had already been established. Although 1927 may not be the year in which film heritage was invented, it most assuredly set the stage.

This article recounts historical epic films in 1926-1927, that played significant role in establishing what would become a long and controversial tradition of a cinema of quality in France. Some French historical epics took their subjects from the middle eighteenth to middle nineteenth centuries, or from fifteenth century France, when an initial sense of national unity was being forged. In one way or another, these films served to address the devastation and loss that the French population experienced as a result of World War I. By resurrecting historical moments of French glory and tragedy, they contributed to the memory work required for the country's restoration and a renewal of the French national character.

Compares the French and U.S. modes of education regulation facing modernity. Political and philosophical contexts of education in France and the U.S.; Examples of education models and their critics; Discussion on two types of modes of regulation.

Examines the French colonial initiative of commemorating Indochinese soldiers and workers who perished in the First World War. Importance of the practice of colonial commemoration in France; Information on the Temple du Souvenir Indochinois of Nogen-sur-Marne in Paris; Analysis of the shifting meanings of colonial commemoration.

Focuses on a piece of writing "With Pascin at the Dôme," a section of Hemingway's Paris memoir. Writer's meeting with the painter Jules Pascin at the Dôme; Resurrection of an event in the distant past as apparent objective of the sketch; Actual combination of details as a product of Hemingway's imagination dramatizing the most important themes of industry and idleness, poverty and affluence, innocence and corruption in this book.

This essay examines politics in Francophone Cameroon and its impact on the making of the Cameroonian constitution of 1960. Politics in Francophone Cameroon was characterized by violence, bloodshed, and the suppression of civil liberties. This political turmoil was the handiwork of French administrators, who indulged themselves in the uphill task of exterminating anti-French Cameroonians. Prime Minister Ahidjo used the turmoil as a pretext to obtain emergency powers from parliament to design Cameroon's constitution. The constitution was adopted in a referendum while a state of emergency was in force, the French army was protecting the Ahidjo government against its citizens, and French administrators were present to rig the vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an essay on the legal problems encountered during the publication of James Joyce "Ulysses." Legal confrontation in USA with publication of "Ulysses" in installments in the American magazine, "The Little Review"; Reason for confrontation as its being "obscene, lewd, or lascivious "; Publication of the first British edition in Dijon, France by the Egoist Press in early 1920s in the face of risk of legal prosecution in U. K.; Discussion on the piracy of Ulysses in the United States; Reversal of decree against "Ulysses" and admittance to the USA in 1933, followed by other English-speaking countries.

Focuses on the implications of the nuclear weapons cooperation between France and Israel in 1947 to 1957. Motives of France in developing nuclear weapons system; Status of the Israeli nuclear policy; Influence of the participation of Israel in the Suez War.

The article presents a focused discussion on gender and jobs in the Jewish community in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. It tells of problems in resources and the construction and images of Jewish women. It states that even where statistical data exist, one problem for determining sex ratios can be the language itself. It explains that the disparity between image and reality in the realm of gender roles and labor force participation has been tenacious. When it comes to France, economic activity and class status are gendered.

This article describes the relatively unknown film archive of Albert Kahn, and attempts to explain why such a valuable repository of nonfiction footage could remain isolated within the vibrant film culture of France. From 1908 until 1931, when financial conditions forced him to cease operations, Kahn sent cameramen to almost fifty countries and assembled a collection of film documenting everyday life from around the world. Ironically, Kahn himself was notoriously camera shy, only a single posed image of him is in existence. Kahn began the collection as part of a much more vast utopian and humanitarian project to advance peace through cultural understanding. However, the relative anonymity of the project prevented it from accomplishing much towards this goal.

Presents information on the Mus é e M é morial pour la paix museum, which opened on June 6, 1988 in Caen, France. Reason for the construction of the museum; Role of the museum in the commemoration of the French people who died in Normandy during World War II; Discussion of the ways in which the war's trauma is represented in the museum.

The article profiles French technician, cameraman and projectionist Eugene Augustin Lauste. Lauste worked with Edison in 1888 and with other film pioneers, such as Dickson, the Lathams and the Mutoscope Co., in the U.S., France and Great Britain. He was involved in pioneering experimentations to record sound on film long before the commercial release of sound-capable films "Don Juan" and "The Jazz." He acquired skills related to machines, electricity, recording and transmitting of sound when he worked with Edison. He contributed to the development of cameras and projectors when he worked with the Lathams.

The article discusses how the assimilationist elites have responded to the evolution of Jewish anti-Zionism in France, Germany, Great Britain and U.S. The battle between Zionists and assimilationists in Western and Central European Jewry has brought a great impact in the history of Jewish self-definition as a group. The battle has also opened the opportunity for liberty, equality and economics in France. The development of Diaspora Judaism in the U.S., and the reinforcement of Jewish emancipation in Great Britain are also discussed.

The article discusses the influence of Dreyfus affair on French Jewish sociologists. The author reflects on Aron being a rationalist and a Jew. He states that Aron rejected the idea that there could exist a Jewish way of being a sociologist. He compared the beliefs of French sociologist linked in varying degrees to Judaism including Emile Durkheim, Lucien Levy-Bruhl and Marcial Mauss. The author declares that Durkheim was proposing a sociological interpretation of the theory of scapegoat, Mauss' interpretation of antisemitism moderates his Dreyfusard involvement and Levy-Bruhl was a Frenchman who never stopped feeling Jewish. He concluded that Jewish sociologists and anthropologists preserved a kind of hidden faithfulness that moved them to public action and unexpected commitments.

The article discusses Jewish resistance in France during World War II. It focuses on the period of correspondence between various sections of French Committee for National Liberation and the Lisbon delegation World Jewish Congress. Tragic specificity of fate of Jews during World War II, political culture of French Jews involved in the French resistance and the relationships between different forms of political and humanitarian are discussed. An overview of the development of massive resistance movement and an intermediary between Foreign Jews and the French Population are presented. The author suggests that all aspects of Jewish resistance must be considered within the framework of the Resistance in France without ignoring the fact that the Jews were victims of genocide.

The article explores the activities of the Alliance Israé Universelle which was founded in 1860 in Paris, France. It serves as political pressure group that aims to protect and advance the rights of Jews throughout the world and was considered as the first transnational organization designed for the purpose. It is said that the Alliance's activities includes the take over of the local school Jewish school in 1897 with community interactions. On the other hand, the Alliance was situated in a small community in Thrace, Demotica with a population of 1000 and in close proximity to Edirne, was considered a colony and a quiet representative of the Thracian Jewish communities.

The article examines the earliest known published Zionist manifesto, "Letter of a Jew to his Brethren," which was published in a Paris newspaper called "Ami Des Lois." It questions the authorship of this document and argues that the document appears to have been a French government-inspired smoke screen and a "disinformation" campaign intended to mislead the public and the English about the French intentions on the invasion of Egypt in 1798 led by Napoleon Bonaparte, the then Emperor of France. Further, the contents of the "Letter" and two articles which appeared in the newspaper "The Decade," are compared and their similarities presented which suggest a thoroughly secular and practical solution to the Jewish problem of restoration.

The article discusses an inquiry on the legal status of Jews in the Danubian Principalities after the Crimean War. The participation of France and England during the war in March 1854 was triggered by the situation of Christian subjects in the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. There have been efforts by Jewish leaders to draw the attention of their respective governments to the status of Jews in the area. Topics discussed during the Peace Congress, which was held in Paris, France in February 1857. The Congress of Paris has confirmed the international character of the Rumanian question.

The article discusses the relationship between French socialism and antisemitism in the late nineteenth century. Numerous socialists, from an examination of socialist literature of this period, felt the antisemitic movement to be an effective agent for drawing attention to the financial feudality with which the antisemites identified the Jews and against whom the socialists were struggling. The mutual exploitation between antisemites and socialists turned into a strange kind of symbiosis, which many socialists and antisemites found congenial and unproblematical. A brand of antisemitism that developed within the socialist ranks contained elements hostile to Jews.

Focuses on the details of the 'Protocol of Sevres' regarding the British-French-Israeli collusion against Egypt in Paris, France. Officials involved in the operation; Reasons for the involvement of each nation in the war against Egypt; Outline of the protocol.

Examines the French academic community's response to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. French scholars' efforts to speak out against the incident; Limiting effect of France's involvement in Africa on the French Africanist community's ability to reflect on their scholarly practice in light of the crisis.

This article discusses the emergence of the French New Wave in the film industry. According to the French press, New Wave refers to the novel lifestyles of 1950s French youth. It shows modern trends among U.S. and British youth. However, film critics use New Wave to designate unconventional, youth-oriented French films. Examples of these youth-oriented French films include "Et Dieu créa le femme," directed by Roger Vadim and "Les Amants," directed by Louis Malle. There have been several competing perspectives on the concept of New Wave in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The article focuses on the fire that destroyed the Bazar de la Charité cinema in Paris, France on May 4, 1897. An operator reportedly lit a match near an ether lamp, thereby causing the fire. More than 100 persons perished in the fire. It became fashionable to wear only black in Paris after the tragedy, and some evening entertainments were called off. Details of the investigation are discussed. The ramifications of the fire are examined, particularly changes it precipitated in procedures, equipment, and research toward safety stock.

The article presents a reprint of the essay "Written Scenarios of Early French Cinema: Screenwriting Practices in the First Twenty Years," by Isabelle Raynauld, which appeared in the book "Les vingt premières années du cinéma français." It summarizes the results of research conducted at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, France, where the author discovered that over 10,000 screenplays were registered from 1907-1923. It offers a historical as well as a narratological analysis of the first French screenplays.

The article examines the strategies of the French state to maintain film production during pre-national, national and post-national phases in cinema. The pre-national period after World War I saw French industrialists attempt to produce internationally-marketed superproductions and then try to create a united European industry in order to compete with American cinema. The introduction of sound brought about the national phase, where the state sought to intervene in an attempt to protect a cinema perceived as contributing to national cultural, economic and political interests. The post-national phase of current French cinema reflects the state's attempt to adapt cinema to be transnational forms of a world economy.