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).

Assessment Strategy

-threshold -C- - C+: In order to merit the award of credit, students should demonstrate a basic understanding of the cinematic and thematic issues related to the films studied, and be able to provide analysis of the films¿ significance. They should also demonstrate an awareness of critical thinking on the films and the period studied.

-good -B- - B+: Students attaining the higher grades in this course will have engaged with an appropriate range of cinematic and thematic issues related to the films studied, and will demonstrate and ability to assess the films in relation to established critical debates about French cinema. They will contextualize the films in relation to appropriate cinematic and trends and socio-political issues.

-excellent -A- - A+: Students attaining the highest grades in this course will have produced innovative responses to the films studied that situates the core films in relation to other relevant films and also cinematic and socio-political issues. They will have supplemented this analysis with the confident and thoughtful engagement with a range of secondary materials. They will have demonstrated a very high level of understanding of the individual films in terms of both their content, cinematic techniques and contextualized them in relation to cinematic trends and socio-political issues.