A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema

A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema
Author: Alistair Fox
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 717
Release: 2015-01-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1444338994

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

A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema

A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema
Author: Alistair Fox
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 712
Release: 2015-01-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1118585364

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

Contemporary French Cinema

Contemporary French Cinema
Author: Alan J. Singerman
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2018-09-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1585108944

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

French Blockbusters

French Blockbusters
Author: Charlie Michael
Publisher:
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN:

The digitised spectacles conjured by a word like 'blockbuster' may create a certain cognitive dissonance with received ideas about French cinema - long celebrated as a model for philosophical, economic and aesthetic resistance to globalised popular culture. While the Gallic 'cultural exception' remains a forceful current to this day, this book shows how the onslaught of Hollywood mega-franchises and new media platforms since the 1980s has also provoked an overtly commercialised response from French producers eager to redefine the stakes and scope of their own traditions. Cutting a swath through recent French-produced cinema, French Blockbusters offers the first book-length consideration of the theoretical implications, historical impact and cultural consequences of a recent grouping of popular films that are rapidly changing what it means to make - or to see - a 'French' film today. From English-language action vehicles like Valérian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Besson, 2017) to revisionist historical films like Of Gods and Men (Beauvois, 2011) and crowd-pleasing comedies like Intouchables (Tolédano & Nakache, 2011), the variously filiated 'local blockbusters' from contemporary France brim with the seeds of cultural contradiction, but also with the energy of a forceful counter-history. Charlie Michael earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently teaches film and media studies in the Atlanta area. He co-edited the Directory of World Cinema: France (2013) and his work has also appeared in SubStance, The Velvet Light Trap, Quebec Studies, French Politics, Culture & Society, and A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema.

Music in Contemporary French Cinema

Music in Contemporary French Cinema
Author: Phil Powrie
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2017-06-29
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3319523627

This book explores composed scores and pre-existing music in French cinema from 1985 to 2015 so as to identify critical musical moments. It shows how heritage films construct space through music, generating what Powrie calls “third space music,” while also working to contain the strong women characters found in French heritage films through the use of leitmotifs and musical cues. He analyses fiction films in which the protagonists perform at the piano, showing how musical performance supports the performance of gender. Building on aspects of musical performance, and in particular the use of songs performed in films, Powrie uses a database of 300 films since 2010 to theorize the intervention of music at critical moments as a “crystal-song”. Applying Roland Barthes’s concept of the “punctum” and Gille Deleuze’s concept of the “crystal-image,” Powrie establishes the importance of the crystal-song, which reconfigures time as a crystallization of past, present and future.

The French Cinema Book

The French Cinema Book
Author: Michael Temple
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2018-01-18
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1349929093

This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a key textbook offers an innovative and accessible account of the richness and diversity of French film history and culture from the 1890s to the present day. The contributors, who include leading historians and film scholars, provide an indispensable introduction to key topics and debates in French film history. Each chronological section addresses seven key themes – people, business, technology, forms, representations, spectators and debates, providing an essential overview of the cinema industry, the people who worked in it, including technicians and actors as well as directors, and the culture of cinema going in France from the beginnings of cinema to the contemporary period.

L’Auberge espagnole

L’Auberge espagnole
Author: Ben McCann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2018-05-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317189248

Part romantic comedy, part sitcom, part social drama, L’Auberge espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) recounts a familiar ‘youth’ ritual – the move from university to ‘the real world’, the often complicated personal, romantic and cultural encounters that ensue, and the moral uncertainties that characterize that key biological and physiological developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood. French director Cédric Klapisch showcases the extraordinary colour and beauty of Barcelona’s architecture, and places his hero Xavier at the heart of this smartly written film, which makes a series of wry observations on educational exchange programmes, multi-culturalism, and the direction European youth might take in the twenty-first century. This book addresses the topic of Europe’s youth generation, paying particular attention to the ways in which the film depicts the transition from adolescence to adulthood as allegory for the experiences of European society as it moves through periods of readjustment towards uncertain futures. It also looks into the ecosystem of contemporary French cinema, the Erasmus programme and its influence on youth experience, and identity politics in relation to ‘nationhood’ and ‘European-ness’. The book also examines the two sequels to the film – Russian Dolls (2005) and Chinese Puzzle (2013) – and how the complications faced by the main characters across the trilogy suggest that the move to adulthood is a never-ending process of growing up and reaching a level of self-actualization.

Paris in the Cinema

Paris in the Cinema
Author: Alastair Phillips
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1838717544

'Paris in the Cinema' offers a new approach to the representation of Paris on screen. Bringing together a wide range of renowned French and Anglophone specialists in film, television, history, architecture and literature, the volume introduces, challenges and extends ideas about the city as the locus of screen modernity. Through a range of concrete and historically-specific case studies, ranging from particular districts such as Saint-Germain-des-Pres and les banlieues (the suburbs) in French cinema, to iconic figures such as the detective Maigret and the lovers, and from locations such as the hotel, the building site and the Eiffel Tower to filmmakers such as Agnes Varda and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, this unique text demonstrates how the cinematic city of Paris now constitutes a major archive of French cultural history and memory.

French Cinema: A Very Short Introduction

French Cinema: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Dudley Andrew
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2023-09-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0191028711

It is often claimed that the French invented cinema. Dominating the production and distribution of cinema until World War 1, when they were supplanted by Hollywood, the French cinema industry encompassed all genres, from popular entertainment to avant-garde practice. The French invented the "auteur" and the "ciné-club"; they incubated criticism from the 1920s to our own day that is unrivalled; and they boast more film journals, fan magazines, TV shows, and festivals devoted to film than anywhere else. This Very Short Introduction opens up French cinema through focusing on some of its most notable works, using the lens of the New Wave decade (1958-1968) that changed cinema worldwide. Exploring the entire French cinematic oeuvre, Dudley Andrew teases out distinguishing themes, tendencies, and lineages, to bring what is most crucial about French Cinema into alignment. He discusses how style has shaped the look of female stars and film form alike, analysing the "made up" aesthetic of many films, and the paradoxical penchant for French cinema to cruelly unmask surface beauty in quests for authenticity. Discussing how French cinema as a whole pits strong-willed characters against auteurs with high-minded ideas of film art, funded by French cinema's close rapport to literature, painting, and music, Dudley considers how the New Wave emerged from these struggles, becoming an emblem of ambition for cinema that persists today. He goes on to show how the values promulgated by the New Wave directors brought the three decades that preceded it into focus, and explores the deep resonance of those values today, fifty years later. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The Legacy of the New Wave in French Cinema

The Legacy of the New Wave in French Cinema
Author: Douglas Morrey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-09-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501311913

In this study of the impact and influence of the New Wave in French cinema, Douglas Morrey looks at both the subsequent careers of New Wave filmmakers and the work of later film directors and film movements in France. This book is organized around a series of key moments from the past 50 years of French cinema in order to show how the meaning and legacy of the New Wave have shifted over time and how the priorities, approaches and discourses of filmmakers and film critics have changed over the years. Morrey tackles key concepts such as the auteur, the relationship of form and content, gender and sexuality, intertextuality and rhythm. Filmmakers discussed include Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Chabrol and Rohmer plus Philippe Garrel, Luc Besson, Leos Carax, Bruno Dumont, the Dardenne brothers, Christophe Honoré, François Ozon and Jacques Audiard.