Overview

This course will explore representations of the city in French films since 1995. It will be based around four key films that share a focus on issues of exclusion, such as the place of immigrants / foreigners in modern French cities and also tensions between city centres and peripheries of major urban areas. The extent to which the four key films fit in with the renewal of social and political film making since 1995 will be assessed, as will whether they reproduce or challenge political and cinematic clichés (e.g. representations of immigrants / ethnic minorities). This will be complemented by analysis and discussion of the relationship between cinematic techniques and political ideas in all of the films studied.

Guy Austin, Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996). Susan Hayward, French National Cinema, (London and New York: Routledge, 2005). Susan Hayward, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). O’Shaughnessy, Martin. 2003. ‘Post-1995 French Cinema: Return of the Social, Return of the Political?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 11 (2): 189-203. Journal accessible via library website. Phil Powrie (ed.), French cinema in the 1990s : continuity and difference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Phil Powrie and Keith Reader (eds.), French Cinema: A Student’s Guide (London: Arnold, 2002). Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: beur and banlieue film-making in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

Learning Outcomes

• Contextualize films in relation to cinematic trends and socio-political developments contemporary to their production.

• Critically assess a film or extracts of a film, demonstrating awareness of how cinematic techniques contribute to meaning.

• Demonstrate knowledge of key trends in French cinema since 1995.

• Understand the importance of cinema and cinematic culture in France, notably in relation to the images of French cities which it projects.