Reference Sources for French and Francophone Cinema
Books on French and Francophone Cinema
A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema by
A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema presents a comprehensive collection of original essays addressing all aspects of French cinema from 1990 to the present day. Features original contributions from top film scholars relating to all aspects of contemporary French cinema Includes new research on matters relating to the political economy of contemporary French cinema, developments in cinema policy, audience attendance, and the types, building, and renovation of theaters Utilizes groundbreaking research on cinema beyond the fiction film and the cinema-theater such as documentary, amateur, and digital filmmaking Contains an unusually large range of methodological approaches and perspectives, including those of genre, gender, auteur, industry, economic, star, postcolonial and psychoanalytic studies Includes essays by important French cinema scholars from France, the U.S., and New Zealand, many of whose work is here presented in English for the first time
ISBN: 9781118585429Publication Date: 2014-12-02
French Cinema: From its Beginnings to the Present by
To a large extent, the story of French filmmaking is the story of moviemaking. From the earliest flickering images of the late nineteenth century through the silent era, Surrealist influences, the Nazi Occupation, the glories of the New Wave, the rebirth of the industry in the 1990s with the exception culturelle, and the present, Rémi Lanzoni examines a considerable number of the world's most beloved films. Building upon his 2004 best-selling edition, the second edition of French Cinema maintains the chronological analysis, factual reliability, ease of use, and accessible prose, while at once concentrating more on the current generation of female directors, mainstream productions such as The Artist and The Intouchables, and the emergence of minority filmmakers (Beur cinema).
ISBN: 9781501303074Publication Date: 2015-10-22
French National Cinema by
This revised and updated version of a successful and established text, French National Cinema offers a thorough and much-needed historical overview of French cinema at a time when it continues to grow in popularity with films such as Amelie and Belleville Rendez-vous. Brought wholly up to date to include political and social developments in French cinema in the 1990s, its fresh approach and groundbreaking new writing on the subject offers a much further understanding of French cinema and its relationship with the French national identity. New subjects covered include: the GATT negotiations of 1993 French cinema's increasing dependence on investment from television the rise of the multiplex the implications of the introduction of digital technology. Ideal for all students of cinema, film studies and film history, this book traces the eco-history of the French film and its key figures and movements, and it places them in their wider political and cultural context.
ISBN: 0415307821Publication Date: 2005-10-12
Republic of Images by
Chronicling one of the greatest and most popular national cinemas, Republic of Images traces the evolution of French filmmaking from 1895-the year of the debut of the Cinematographe in Paris-to the present day. Alan Williams offers a unique synthesis of history, biography, aesthetics and film theory. He brings to life all of the major directors, setting before us the cultures from which they emerged, and sheds new light on the landmark films they created. He distills what is historically and artistically unique in each of their careers and reveals what each artist has in common with the forebears and heirs of the craft. Within the larger story of French cinema, Williams examines the treasury of personal expression, social commentary, and aesthetic exploration that France has produced so consistently and exported so well. It is the tale of an industry rife with crises, and Williams offers a superb narrative of the economic, political, and social forces that have shaped its century-long history. He provides biographical sketches of filmmakers from the early pioneers of the silent era such as Louis Lumière and Alice Guy to modern directors such as Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol, and François Truffaut. Some of their careers, he shows, exemplify the significant contributions individuals made to the development of French fllmmaking; others yield illuminating evidence of the problems and opportunities of a whole generation of filmmakers. Throughout, he presents critical analyses of significant films, from The Assassination of the Duc de Guise (1908) to works by the post-nouvelle vague directors. Williams captures the formal and stylistic developments of film in France over nearly one hundred years. Free of cant and jargon, Republic of Images is the best general account available of the rich interplay of film, filmmaker, and society. It will delight both general reader and student, as well as the viewer en route to the video store.
ISBN: 0674762681Publication Date: 1992-03-01
Past Forward: French Cinema and the Post-Colonial Heritage by
In Past Forward: French Cinema and the Post-Colonial Heritage, author Dayna Oscherwitz focuses on the world of French films with a new lens. Drawing upon a wealth of research and the examination of popular French movies, Oscherwitz offers fresh perspectives not only on the unique importance of motion pictures and their indelible influence on French character, but on current debates regarding individual and collective memory. Past Forward traces the development and ascension of the French heritage film--those historical and costume dramas focusing on prestigious French subjects, events, and settings. These motion pictures, preeminent during a period of globalization and fear over the affects of immigration in 1980s France, quickly came to embody a specific version of French national and collective identity: one that idealized the past, condemned the present, and created an institutional form of memory. Oscherwitz presents the intriguing notion that French heritage films are not exclusively expressions of nationalism and nostalgia as has commonly been asserted. On the contrary, although these movies were born out of a perceived loss of French culture, their ambivalence toward traditional hallmarks of nationalism opens them up to new interpretation. Also in contrast to typical conceptions, the author suggests that these heritage films are far from cinematic bastions of multicultural backlash; instead, she argues, popular culture has in its own fashion reinserted the history of colonialism and immigration into the national past, thus reimagining heritage itself. Against this backdrop, Oscherwitz goes on to investigate the multicultural worlds of beur and banlieue movies--cinema seemingly in direct contrast with the heritage film--offering the theory that these films serve as a "countermemory" to an institutionalized one and provide alternative models of collective memory and identity. Through careful analysis of several examples, Oscherwitz demonstrates how these two seemingly different realms--heritage and multicultural cinema--are far from mutually exclusive in the construction of French identity. Throughout the volume, numerous well-known French movies are reexamined, inviting new interpretations of and challenging old views through investigations of familiar cinematic works. Past Forward is arevolutionary volume that boldly reimagines our ideas about French film and its role in communicating history and memory.
ISBN: 0809385880Publication Date: 2010-09-15
Ousmane Sembene and the Politics of Culture by
Undoubtedly one of Africa's most influential first generation of writers and filmmakers, Ousmane Sembene's creative works of fiction as well as his films have been the subject of a considerable number of scholarly articles. The schemas of reading applied to Sembene's oeuvre (novels, short stories and films) have, in the main, focused either on his militant posture against colonialism, his disenchantment with African leadership, or his infatuation with documenting the past in an attempt to present a balanced and nuanced view of African history. While these studies, unquestionably contribute to a better understanding of his works, they collectively ignore Sembene's relentless preoccupation with culture in his entire career as a writer and filmmaker. The collection of essays in Sembene and the Politics of Culture sets out to fill that gap as the contributors at once foreground Sembene's fixation on the centrality of culture in the articulation of the discourse of national consciousness and reevaluate his intellectual and artistic legacy within an overarching framework of African liberation. The contributors critically reassess the ideological underpinnings of Sembene's thoughts, his role as one of the foundational pillars of African cultural production, and his relevance in current discourses of nationhood. They do so through a wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches that draw on linguistics, feminist theory, film theory, historiography, Marxist criticism, psychoanalysis and a host of other approaches that give novel insights in the critical analysis of the works under study. In the part entitled "Testimonies," a collection of conversations with people who worked closely with Sembene, each of the interlocutors provide illuminating insights into the man's life and work. The variety of themes and critical approaches in this critical anthology will certainly be of interest not only to students and scholars of African literature and cinema at various levels of intellectual and cultural sophistication but also anyone interested in the analysis of the nexus between power, culture, and the discourse of liberation.
ISBN: 9780739192542Publication Date: 2014-11-12
Bande de Filles by
Few films in the twenty-first century have represented coming-of-age with the beauty and brutality of Bande de Filles (or Girlhood). This book provides an in-depth examination of Céline Sciamma's film, focusing on its portrayal of female adolescence in contemporary Paris. Motivated by the absence of black female characters in French cinema, Sciamma represents the lives of figures that have passed largely unnoticed on the big screen. While observing the girls' tough circumstances, Sciamma's film emphasises the joy and camaraderie found in female friendships. This book places Girlhood in its cinematic as well as its sociocultural context. Pop music, urban violence, and female friendships are all considered here in a book that draws out the complexity of Sciamma's deceptively simple portrayal of coming-of-age. Thoughtful, concise, and deeply contemporary, this book is perfect for students, scholars, and general readers interested in youth cultures, European cinema, gender, and sexuality.
ISBN: 9781351031622Publication Date: 2020-01-20
Claire Denis by
Widely regarded as one of the most innovative and passionate filmmakers working in France today, Claire Denis has continued to make beautiful and challenging films since the 1988 release of her first feature, Chocolat. Judith Mayne's comprehensive study traces Denis's career and discusses her major feature films in rich detail. Born in Paris but raised in West Africa, Denis explores in her films the legacies of French colonialism and the complex relationships between sexuality, gender, and race. From the adult woman who observes her past as a child in Cameroon to the Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in Paris and watches a serial killer to the disgraced French Foreign Legionnaire attempting to make sense of his past, the subjects of Denis's films continually revisit themes of watching, bearing witness, and making contact, as well as displacement, masculinity, and the migratory subject.
ISBN: 9780252096396Publication Date: 2005-03-30
The Films of Claire Denis by
The films of Claire Denis probe the idea of global citizenship and trace the borderlines of family, desire, nationality and power. Her films, including Chocolat, Beau travail and White Material explore connections between national experience and individual circumstance, visualizing the complications of such dualities. Following a foreword by Wim Wenders, international contributors explore the themes she addresses in her films, such as kinship and landscape, neo-colonialism and New French Extremity. Original interviews with an editor, actor and two composers familiar with Denis's working style and with Denis herself, also reveal fresh facets of this intrepid filmmaker.
ISBN: 9781848859548Publication Date: 2014-10-01
Photography and Cinema: 50 Years of Chris Marker's La Jetée by
Eclecticism seems to be one of the most recognized features of Chris Marker's work. He is often presented as a filmmaker and a photographer, a poet, a translator, a cartoonist, a visual artist, an editor, a software designer and a television and video director. Given the 50 years since the release of his most well-known film, La Jetee (1963), this volume fosters discussion of the intertwining of photography and cinema within a framework that analyses Marker's influence in film and photography's scholarship. In the last ten years, many books have been published on the subjects of photography and cinema, discussing not only the history of both media, but also the transformations they have undergone through digital revolution that came to blur the frontiers between them. Furthermore, the theory of photography has been raised to a new level, presenting new and fresh thinking, raised through innovative philosophical, historical and cultural approaches, as well as through the recognition of the importance and impact that photography and cinema, as documentary media, have had in the field of modern and contemporary art. Acknowledging this rich context, this book builds on recent research on photography and cinema, recognizing how digital technology has brought about new ways of working with images, in addition to raising new theoretical issues concerned with them. No author could be more stimulating and inspiring than Marker to start such a journey; his movies, La Jetee in particular, have consistently been a source of inspiration to future generations of directors, as well as critics and scholars.
ISBN: 9781443872010Publication Date: 2015-03-01
Finding books and other materials
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To find books on a particular topic in One Search, try using words from the following subject headings. Once you're in a catalog record, you can click on other relevant subject heading links to display other items in that category
- Motion pictures -- France
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- Oxford BibliographiesThese annotated bibliographies can guide you to scholarly books on your topic. Explore French Cinema
Finding Articles
Databases for finding scholarly articles on the broader topic of cinema studies are listed on the Cinema Studies Research Guide.
- FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals DatabaseResources for film history, theory, and criticism from The International Federation of Film Archives. Citations and select full-text of academic and popular film journals as well as holdings information of silent-era film archives.
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