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Deploying the term ‘late-colonial'to describe a body of largely French films made during, and in response to, the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), this book revolves around one question – what is late-colonial French cinema? – generating two answers. Firstly, Sharpe argues that late-colonial cinema represents a formally and thematically important, yet unappreciated tendency in French cinema; one that has largely been overshadowed by a scholarly focus on the French New Wave. Secondly, Sharpe contends that whilst late-colonial French cinema cannot be seen as a coherent cinematic movement, school of filmmaking, or genre, it can be seen as a coherent ethical trend, with many of the fifteen central case studies explored in Late-colonial French Cinema filtering the Algerian War of Independence through a discourse of ‘redemptive pacifism'.

Looking Beyond Neoliberalism explores how cinema is responding to the economic crisis that sprang to public attention in 2008 and continues to shape our politics and societies. Bringing French and francophone Belgian films into dialogue with carefully selected theories, O'Shaughnessy develops insights and an analytical framework that will become important resources for other scholars of contemporary cinema. This book explores cinema's capacity to register mutations in subjectivity, the material grounds for identity construction and the machinic dimension of neoliberal subjection. It also probes its capacity to imagine alternative economies and identities and an exit from neoliberal labour. By developing fresh insights into political cinema, this book provides engages with cinema's response to neoliberalism in crisis.

Ginette Vincendeau discusses the artistic value of his films in their proper context and comments on Jean-Pierre Melville's love of American culture and his controversial critical and political standing in this English language study.

The look and feel of metropolitan France has been a notable preoccupation of French literary and visual culture since the 1980s. Numerous writers, filmmakers and photographers have been drawn to articulate France's contrasting spatial qualities, from infrastructural installations such as roads, rail lines and ports, to peri-urban residential developments and isolated rural enclaves. In doing so, they explore how the country's acute sense of national identity has been both asserted and challenged in topographic terms. This wide-ranging collection of essays explores how the contemporary concern with space in France has taken shape across a range of media, from recent cinema, documentary filmmaking and photographic projects through to television drama and contemporary fiction, and examines what it reveals about the state of the nation in a post-colonial and post-industrial age. The impact of global flows of capital, trade and migration can be mapped through attention to the specificities of place and topography. Investigation of liminal locations, from seaboard cities and abandoned industrial sites to refugee camps and peasant smallholdings, interrogates the assertion of a national territory (and, by extension, a national identity) through the figure of the hexagon, and highlights the fluidities, instabilities and lines of flight which render it increasingly unsettled.

Like its French-language companion volume Le Cinéma français contemporain: Manuel de classe, Alan Singerman and Michèle Bissière's Contemporary French Cinema: A Student's Book offers a detailed look at recent French cinema through its analyses of twenty notable and representative French films that have appeared since 1980. Sure to delight Anglophone fans of French film, it can be used with equal success in English-language courses and, when paired with its companion volume, dual-language ones.Acclaim for Le Cinéma français contemporain: Manuel de classe'From Le Dernier Métro to Intouchables, Bissière and Singerman cover the latest trends of French cinema, emphasizing context and analytical method as Singerman did in Apprentissage du cinéma français (Focus 2004). The authors offer a selection of films most French cinephiles will applaud, and they incorporate insights from some of the best critical work on French cinema. Students of French film will also find all the bibliographical pointers they need to dig deeper, and instructors will appreciate the pedagogical components included in the chapters.'—Jonathan Walsh, Department of French Studies, Wheaton College, Massachusetts'This remarkable book comes to us from two seasoned teachers and critics and beautifully complements an earlier work, Alan Singerman's Apprentissage du cinéma français. The time period covered, more targeted here than in the preceding text, is admirably well chosen, and the breakdown by broad category, each offering multiple options, guides the teacher while offering a choice among an abundance of interesting films. The preliminary chapters, both succinct and informative, give students an excellent overview of French cinema as a whole and of the technical knowledge needed for film analysis. Each of the subsequent chapters offers an indispensable introduction discussing the plot, director, production, actors, reception, and context of the film in question and also provides a very useful filmography and bibliography… an exemplary work.'—Brigitte E. Humbert, Department of French and Francophone Studies, Middlebury College

Le Ciné Françs is an irresistible illustrated guide and primer to the best of French films, starting with the 1950s, through the spectrum of French New Wave, and on to modern-day confections. Starring the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, and Jeanne Moreau, and directed by iconoclasts such as Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, and Jean-Luc Godard, French movies are as touching, beautiful, and romantic as they come in all of film. Le Ciné Françs captures their spirit in whimsical detail. Each movie is covered with a plot summary; back stories; and illustrations by author/artist Anne Keenan Higgins of highlight scenes, costumes, props, and characters that are as enchanting as the films themselves. This gorgeously gifty tribute to French cinema is not just for movie buffs or followers of international films, but for all who are enchanted by French culture.

Decades before the emergence of a French self-styled'hood'film around 1995, French filmmakers looked beyond the gates of the capital for inspiration and content. In the Paris suburbs they found an inexhaustible reservoir of forms, landscapes and social types in which to anchor their fictions, from bourgeois villas and bucolic riverside cafés to post-war housing estates and postmodern new towns. For the first time in English, contributors to this volume address key aspects of this long film history, marked by such towering figures as Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati and Jean-Luc Godard. Idyllic or menacing, expansive or claustrophobic, the suburb served divergent aesthetic and ideological programmes across the better part of a century. Themes central to French cultural modernity – class conflict, leisure, boredom and anti-authoritarianism – cut across the fifteen chapters.

In Exception Taken, Jonathan Buchsbaum examines the movements that have emerged in opposition to the homogenizing force of Hollywood in global filmmaking. While European cinema was entering a steady decline in the 1980s, France sought to strengthen support for its film industry under the new Mitterrand government. Over the following decades, the country lobbied partners in the European Economic Community to design strategies to protect the audiovisual industries and to resist cultural free-trade pressures in international trade agreements. These struggles to preserve the autonomy of national artistic prerogatives emboldened many countries to question the benefits of accelerated globalization.Led by the energetic minister of culture Jack Lang, France initiated a series of measures to support all sectors of the film industry. Lang introduced laws mandating that state and private television invest in the film industry, effectively replacing the revenue lost from a shrinking theatrical audience for French films. With the formation of the European Union in 1992, Europe passed a new treaty (Maastricht) that extended its legal purview to culture for the first time, setting up the dramatic confrontation over the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1993. Pushed by France, the EU fought the United States over the idea that countries should preserve their right to regulate cultural activity as they saw fit. France and Canada then initiated a campaign to protect cultural diversity within UNESCO that led to the passage of the Convention on Cultural Diversity in 2005. As France pursued these efforts to protect cultural diversity beyond its borders, it also articulated'a certain idea of cinema'that did not simply defend a narrow vision of national cinema. France promoted both commercial cinema and art cinema, disproving announcements of the death of cinema.

In a world defined by the flow of people, goods and cultures, many contemporary French films explore the multicultural nature of today's France through language. From rival lingua francas such as English to socio-politically marginalised languages such as Arabic or Kurdish, multilingual characters in these films exploit their knowledge of multiple languages, and offer counter-perspectives to dominant ideologies of the role of linguistic diversity in society. Decentring France is the first substantial study of multilingual film in France. Unpacking the power dynamics at play in the dialogue of eight emblematic films, this book argues that many contemporary French films take a new approach to language and power, showing how even the most historically-maligned languages can empower their speakers. This book offers a unique insight to academics and students alike, into the place of language and power in French cinema today.

Through its analyses of twenty notable and representative French films that have appeared since 1980, Le Cinéma français contemporain: Manuel de classe offers an eagle-eyed view of recent French cinema that will delight advanced students of French as well as Francophone students of French film.

Racines et déracinements au grand écran examine les représentations de la migration dans le cinéma français contemporain. L'héritage du passé colonial français, la décolonisation et les vagues d'immigration vers l'Hexagone continuent de jouer un rôle majeur dans la société française d'aujourd'hui. Les débats liés à l'« identité nationale » et à l'insécurité, la banalisation du programme du Front National, les reconduites à la frontière de Roms ou la crise des migrants en Méditerranée font que la question migratoire est une préoccupation pour la société et la scène politique française. L'ouvrage analyse comment des réalisateurs français tels que Yamina Benguigui, Laurent Cantet, Philippe Faucon, Philippe Lioret ou Marie-Claude Pernelle abordent les trajectoires migratoires (passées et présentes) propres à l'espace national français et les débats qu'elles suscitent. Racines et déracinements au grand écran examines representations of migration in contemporary French cinema. The historical legacy of the French colonial past and of decolonization, with its subsequent waves of immigration to the Hexagone continues to impact French society. Debates over “national identity” and insecurity, the increasing success of the Front National platform, the recent Roma repatriations, and migrant crisis in the Mediterranean are only a few examples of the importance of the migration question in French society and politics today. The book analyzes how migratory trajectories (past and present) within the national French space, and the debates surrounding them, have been addressed by contemporary French directors - amongst others Yamina Benguigui, Laurent Cantet, Philippe Faucon, Philippe Lioret and Marie-Claude Pernelle - in their films.

This book examines the expression of a Jewish identity in French films and the characteristics used by filmmakers to portray this nebulous concept in movies produced after the Shoah and World War II. Throughout a sixty-year span, French directors struggled to define Jewish identity and a correlation with the larger question of French national identity. The study delves into the larger question of Jewish identity as characterised in works of cinematic fiction in accordance with the history of the Jews of France, using the centrality of the emancipation paradigm of 1791 and the theoretical frame provided by Jean-Paul Sartre's Réflexions sur la question juive. The book identifies and describes three categories of films produced between 1950 and 2010 that represent the manner in which directors portrayed an evolving Jewish identity and its relation to French society, rejecting the practice of labeling a film as “Jewish” because of the ethnicity of a director or writer. Based on extensive research including the review of over 200 full-length films, the book provides an overview of features addressing the concept of Jewish identity and includes a Descriptive Filmography of productions matching the author's definition of a Jewish-identity film. From the template La Grande Illusion to contemporary releases, the book argues that French Jewish-identity films dwell in the sociological realm of Jewishness, as the epicenter of tension is rooted in identity rather than religion.

Both a precursor to and a critical member of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda weaves documentary and fiction into tapestries that portray distinctive places and complex human beings. Critics and aficionados have celebrated Varda's independence and originality since the New Wave touchstone Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) brought her a level of international acclaim she has yet to relinquish. Film historian Kelley Conway traces Varda's works from her 1954 debut La Pointe Courte through a varied career that includes nonfiction and fiction shorts and features, installation art, and the triumphant 2008 documentary The Beaches of Agnès. Drawing on Varda's archives and conversations with the filmmaker, Conway focuses on the concrete details of how Varda makes films: a project's emergence, its development and the shifting forms of its screenplay, the search for financing, and the execution from casting through editing and exhibition. In the process, she departs from film history's traditional view of the French New Wave and reveals one artist's nontraditional trajectory through independent filmmaking. The result is an intimate consideration that reveals the artistic consistencies and bold changes in the career of one of the world's most exuberant and intriguing directors.

Gendered Frames, Embodied Cameras: Varda, Akerman, Cabrera, Calle, and Maïwenn is the first book to link these five filmmakers together through an analysis of the relationship between filming one's own body and the creative body. Through engaged artistic practices, these female filmmakers turn the camera to their bodies as a way to show the process of artistic creation and to produce themselves as filmmakers and artists in their work from 1987–2009. By making visible their bodies, they offer a wider range of representation of women in French film. Through avant-garde form, in which tangible corporeal elements are made image, they transform representational content and produce new cinematic bodies with the power to influence signifying practices in contemporary French culture. By rendering visible their artistic practice and praxis and their camera in their work—reflexive practices that also unite these filmmakers—these women also visually claim the role of filmmaker and creative subject. Thus they establish their authority in a film industry in which women's participation and recognition of their achievements have historically been lower than that of their male counterparts.

An exciting book for incorporating French cinema and culture into a French language course. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a single movie and includes tools for students watching the film, discussing and writing about the film, and understanding the film in a broader cultural context. This best-selling textbook continues to define language learning through film.Included in each chapter, is vocabulary helpful to understanding and discussing the film, structured exercises in understanding the film once it has been viewed—especially for discussion in class—and an accompanying reading for each film designed to provide perspective on the film itself.New to the fourth edition:- Four new award-winning films- Revised selection of readings- Handy textboxes providing clarifications, examples, and how to avoid common mistakes- Screen shots of characters in Premiere Approche- Companion website offering links to film trailers, interviews, and other online resourcesThe Films (new in bold):Inch'Allah dimanche | Jean de Florette | Manon des sources | Ressources humaines | Joyeux Noël | Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain |L'esquive | Ridicule | La veuve de Saint-Pierre | Les femmes du 6e étage | Welcome | Au revoir les enfants | 8 femmes | Cyrano de Bergerac | Le hussard sur le toit | Molière | Le dernier métro | Le dîner de cons

This book brings together for the first time five French directors who have established themselves as among the most exciting and significant working today: Bruno Dumont, Robert Guédiguian, Laurent Cantet, Abdellatif Kechiche, and Claire Denis. Whatever their chosen habitats or shifting terrains, each of these highly distinctive auteurs has developed unique strategies of representation and framing that reflect a profound investment in the geophysical world. The book proposes that we think about cinematographic space in its many different forms simultaneously (screenspace, landscape, narrative space, soundscape, spectatorial space). Through a series of close and original readings of selected films, it posits a new ‘space of the cinematic subject'. Accessible and wide-ranging, this volume opens up new areas of critical enquiry in the expanding interdisciplinary field of space studies. It will be of immediate interest to students and researchers working not only in film studies and film philosophy, but also in French/Francophone studies, postcolonial studies, gender and cultural studies.Listen to James S. Williams speaking about his book http://bit.ly/13xCGZN. (Copy and paste the link into your browser)

Chapter 1 - Introduction to French Cinema Chapter 2 - Renowned French Films Chapter 3 - Famous French Actors and Actresses Chapter 4 - French Film Directors Chapter 5 - French Film Awards

Quelle est l'image des quartiers difficiles au cinéma? Est-ce la même image, souvent stéréotypée et stigmatisée que celle qu'en donnent généralement les médias? Les films de banlieue sont-ils aujourd'hui un nouveau genre au sein du cinéma français? Comment a évolué l'image des personnes principaux, de la famille, des rapports hommes-femmes, ou de la violence et de la religion? Comment sont abordées les questions d'intégration dans ces films? Et que nous disent aussi l'usage de la musique, de l'architecture, ou les conditions de production et de réception des films de banlieue? C'est par l'analyse novatrice d'un vaste corpus de plus de 40 films, combinant tableaux statistiques et analyses de fond, que l'auteur tente de répondre à ces questions. De Laisse béton à Banlieue 13, en passant par Le Thé au harem d'Archimède, De Bruit et de fureur, La Haine, La Squale ou Ze film, l'auteur fait le pari d'une approche « totale » qui ne se limite pas à quelques films emblématiques. Il en ressort une image hétérogène et nuancée des cités et de leurs habitants, radicalement différente de celle avancée généralement par les médias d'information, et qui remet à plat un bon nombre de stéréotypes. Par la construction progressive d'un espace cinématographique qui n'est pas (ou plus) le lieu menaçant de l'Autre, ces films invitent, dans un grand élan d'optimisme et de justice, à une réconciliation de la France avec ses banlieues.

Unraveling French Cinema provides a much needed introduction to the complexities of French film for students, cineastes, and the movie-loving public. Looks at the differences between French and American national cinema Explores how French directors shape their films around two potentially divergent goals: the narration of a story and an elaboration of some theory about film itself. Demystifies the'difficulty'of French cinema, allowing the American movie-goer to enjoy films that are too often perplexing at a first viewing. Offers extended analyses of classic, New Wave, and contemporary French films—including L'Atalante, Adele H., The Rules of the Game, and Cache.

'Le Fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain'was the surprise boxoffice success of 2001, with nine million spectators in France, and more than 30 million worldwide. The film turned Audrey Tautou into an international star, in her iconic role as Amelie, a naive French Parisian who devotes herself to mending the lives of the people around her. Shot on location in Paris, the film combines poetic and magical realism with stylish cinematography, original use of colour, state-of-the-art special effects, and an evocative soundtrack; together these have produced a popular film of universal appeal. Isabelle Vanderschelden examines the film's production within the French film industry. She analyzes the issues of genre and narrative that it presents so well. She looks in depth at the film's key scenes, as well as at Jeunet's distinctive visual style and cinematography and his use of digital technology. The national and international receptions of Amelie are explored to establish why the film has caught the public imagination and whether it marks a renewal in the cultural diversity and distinctive identity of the French film industry.This book will be essential reading for cinema lovers and students alike.

In this first major study of French colonial and postcolonial cinema, Dina Sherzer compiles essays by some of the foremost scholars on the subject who interrogate and analyze the realities behind the images of the nation's past and present. Through an examination of France and its colonies, multiethnic contemporary France, and cinematic discourses which have been and are being produced about France's colonial past, these authors explore how the images relay underlying assumptions and their relation to historical and political facts. A variety of subjects and viewpoints inform these studies, which cover the entire range of films on that topic. The authors expound upon the role French and Francophone films are currently playing in reconstructing and imagining France's colonial past. Not only do the essays examine how French cinema has represented the encounter of French citizens with individuals from former colonies during the colonial era; they examine how French cinema has portrayed and has come to terms with the immigration of former colonial subjects to France. In addition, the book features another postcolonial facet by analyzing films of directors from the former colonies who give their own representation of colonialism and presentation of their culture. This study is a major contribution to postcolonial research. Race, gender, and geography are central themes throughout this book that presents innovative material that contributes to the history of French cinema and emphasizes how cinema participates in and is a part of national culture.

Ousselin sets out to show that Europe is essentially a literary fiction and that the ongoing movement towards European unity cannot be understood without reference to the literary works that helped bring it about.

French Queer Cinema looks at queer self-representation in contemporary auteur film and experimental video in France. Whilst there is growing research on representations of queer sexualities in France, this is the first comprehensive study of the cultural formation and critical reception of contemporary queer film and video. French Queer Cinema addresses the socio-political context informing both queer DIY video and independent gay cinema, including films such as Patrice Chéreau's Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train, Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's Drôle de Félix, François Ozon's Le Temps qui reste and André Téchiné's Les Témoins. Taking up the recent Anglo-American attention to queer migration, the book looks at gay fantasies of Arab (beur) men, as well as beur self-representation in Europe's fastest-selling gay DV porn production Citébeur. Further chapters cover transgender dissent, and the effects of AIDS and loss on the formation of gay identities.Key Features•Provides a full, up-to-date account of the formation, reception and setting for contemporary queer film and video in France.•Situates cinematic representations of migration, social exclusion and queer sexualities in the context of recent repressive legislation on sex work and immigration.•Covers the work of less well-known directors such as Christophe Honoré, Sébastien Lifshitz and Gaël Morel.

This book looks at a much-debated phenomenon in contemporary cinema: the re-emergence of filmmaking practices (and, by extension, of theoretical approaches) that give precedence to cinema as the medium of the senses.France offers an intriguing case in point here. A specific sense of momentum comes from the release, in close succession, of a series of films that exemplify a characteristic awareness of cinema's sensory impact and transgressive nature: Adieu; A ma soeur; Baise-moi; Beau Travail; La Blessure; La Captive; Dans ma peau; Demonlover; L'Humanité; Flandres; L'Intrus; Les Invisibles; Lady Chatterley; Leçons de ténèbres; Romance; Sombre; Tiresia; Trouble Every Day; Twentynine Palms; Vendredi soir; La Vie nouvelle; Wild Side; Zidane, un portrait du XXIème siècle. These films, amongst others, typify a willingness to explore cinema's unique capacity to move us both viscerally and intellectually. Martine Beugnet focuses on the crucial and fertile overlaps that occur between experimental and mainstream cinema. Her book draws on the writings of the likes of Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty and Bataille, but first and foremost, she develops her arguments from the films themselves, from the comprehensive description of specific sequences, techniques and motifs which allows us to engage with the works as material events and as thinking processes. In turn, she demonstrates how the films, envisaged as forms of embodied thought, offer alternative ways of approaching those questions that are at the heart of today's most burning socio-cultural debates: from the growing supremacy of technology, to globalisation, exile and exclusion, these are the issues that appear embedded here in the very texture of images and sounds.

Pendant la deuxième partie des années trente, la France connaît une série de soubresauts politiques considérables. Entre idéal et renoncement, le pacifisme cristallise les passions, structurant la société française en profondeur. Comment décrire le rapport des Français à la guerre? Quel rôle a joué la culture de la paix dans la débâcle? L'analyse de film peut aider à répondre à ces questions. Ce livre dévoile un pan méconnu de l'histoire du cinéma français, et apporte un éclairage nouveau sur ce moment de déliquescence républicaine, période fondamentale pour comprendre la France du XXè siècle.

This book sets out to investigate and theorise mediations of lesbian desire in a substantial corpus of films (spanning the period 1936-2002) by male and female directors working in France and also in French-speaking parts of Belgium, Canada, Switzerland and Africa. The corpus is unique in never before having been assembled, and represents a valuable tool not just for researchers but also for university teachers creating courses both on lesbianism in film and on sexuality in French cinema. A fair number of the 89 texts treated are mainstream films which have achieved high critical acclaim and/o.

One of the most gifted directors of the post New Wave, Maurice Pialat is frequently compared to such legendary filmmakers as Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson. A quintessentially realist filmmaker, who, like Bresson, was also trained as a painter, Pialat's particular form of realism influenced an entire generation of young filmmakers in the 1990s. This volume is the first book-length study of Pialat's cinema in English. It provides an introduction to a complex and difficult director, who saw himself as a marginal and marginalised filmmaker, but whose films are deeply rooted in French society and culture. Pialat was long considered the only major filmmaker to portray ‘la France profonde', the heart of France - the people who, as he put it, ‘take the subway'. Taken as a whole, Pialat's work can be seen both as an oblique autobiography and the portrait of a fundamental institution - the family - over several generations.

'Kieslowski's last films have indelibly marked the past decade. His cinema has renewed the representation of the human subject and emotion in film: space and luminous surface reveal the finest, most fragile impressions of states of mind and human consciousness. This study is the first to offer specific focus on Kies'lowski's last films, on his French-language cinema and its place within the broader context of French film-making. Engaging with Deleuze's discussions of the time-image, and recent work in trauma theory, Emma Wilson offers radical insights into the innovation in Kies'lowski's explorations of memory, temporality, loss and desire. A charged defence of Kies'lowski's work, Memory and Survival offers new readings of this cinema of blind chance and fleeting beauty.'

During the past decade or more the American remake has increasingly characterized Hollywood's relationship with the French cinema, as films ranging from classics like A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) to contemporary comedies like Trois Hommes et un Couffin (Three Men and a Baby) and La Cage aux Folles (Birdcage) are adapted for US screens.In this comparative, interdisciplinary study Carolyn Durham shows how the remake phenomenon reveals striking differences not just in film theory but also epitomizes larger issues of competition, political and economic tensions, and social, gender, and aesthetic constructs. Durham establishes the metaphor of Euro Disney, which American investors envisioned as the quintessential transcultural entertainment but many French denounced as'a cultural Chernobyl,'and then applies it to a close analysis of the films, showing how significant changes between original and remake further our understanding of national identity in both countries. France's belief in its own cultural superiority, she writes, leads to a perceived duty to'disseminate French culture worldwide in the guise of civilisation itself,'an attitude that clashes with Hollywood's filmmaking hegemony and its'openness to new ideas, including the foreign.'While the central concern is the meaning of cross-cultural differences, this engaging and incisive book also outlines an ongoing battle between a nation convinced of its aesthetic and cultural patrimony and an American industry driven by its own sense of global destiny.