French Blockbusters
French Blockbusters

Author: Charlie Michael

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-07-17

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1474424244

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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 across a swath of recent French-produced cinema, French Blockbusters offers the first book-length consideration of the theoretical implications, historical impact and cultural consequences of recent popular films that are rapidly changing what it means to make - or to see - a `French' film today. From English-language action vehicles like Valerian 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 (Toledano & 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

French B Movies
French B Movies

Author: David A. Pettersen

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2023-03-07

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0253064910

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In the impoverished outskirts of French cities, known as the banlieues, minority communities are turning to American culture, history, and theory to make their own voices, cultures, and histories visible. Filmmakers have followed suit, turning to Hollywood genre conventions to challenge notions of identity, belonging, and marginalization in mainstream French film. French B Movies proposes that French banlieue films, far from being a fringe genre, offer a privileged site from which to understand the current state of the French film industry in an age of globalization. This gritty style appears in popular arthouse films such as Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine and Bande de filles (Girlhood) along with the major Netflix hit series Lupin. David Pettersen traces how, in these works and others, directors fuse features of banlieue cinema with genre formulas associated with both Hollywood and Black cultural models, as well as how transnational genre hybridizations, such as B movies, have become part of the ecosystem of the French film industry. By combining film analysis, cultural history, critical theory, and industry studies, French B Movies reveals how featuring banlieues is as much about trying to imagine new identities and production models for French cinema as it is about representation.

A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema
A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema

Author: Alistair Fox

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-01-27

Total Pages: 717

ISBN-13: 1444338994

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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

French National Cinema
French National Cinema

Author: Susan Hayward

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0415307821

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This revised and updated edition of a successful and established text provides a much-needed historical overview of French cinema from its roots through to the political and social developments in the 1990s and beyond.

French Blockbusters
French Blockbusters

Author: Michael Charlie Michael

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-07-17

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1474424252

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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. From English-language action vehicles like Valrian 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 (Toldano & 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. Cutting across a swath of 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.

French Cinema: a Very Short Introduction
French Cinema: a Very Short Introduction

Author: Dudley Andrew

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-10-18

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0198718616

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It is often claimed that the French invented cinema, and although their prominence may have been supplanted by Hollywood today, the French film industry remains both prolific and highly lauded. Exploring the entire French cinematic oeuvre, Andrew teases out the distinguishing themes, to bring the defining features of French cinema to light.

French Cinema
French Cinema

Author: Rémi Fournier Lanzoni

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2004-03-31

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 9780826416001

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To a large extent the story of French filmmaking is the story of moviemaking. From the earliest images through the silent era, Surrealist influence, the Nazi Occupation, New Wave and presently, Lanzonu examines a considerable number fo the world's most beloved films from each era, providing insight into our favourite films.

Modern France
Modern France

Author: Michael F. Leruth

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-10-18

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 1440855498

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This volume offers perspective on modern French society and culture through thematic chapters on topics ranging from geography to popular culture. Ideal for students and general readers, this book includes insightful, current information about France's past, present, and future. France is the country most visited by international tourists. Aside from clichéd images of baguettes and the Eiffel Tower, however, what is French society and culture really like? Modern France is organized into thematic chapters covering the full range of French history and contemporary daily life. Chapter topics include: geography; history; government and politics; economy; religion and thought; social classes and ethnicity; gender, marriage, and sexuality; education; language; etiquette; literature and drama; art and architecture; music and dance; food; leisure and sports; and media and popular culture. Each chapter contains an overview of the topic and alphabetized entries on examples of each theme. A detailed historical timeline covers prehistoric times to the presidency of Emmanuel Macron. Special appendices offer profiles of a typical day in the life of representative members of French society, a glossary, key facts and figures about France, and a holiday chart. The volume will be useful for readers looking for specific topical information and for those who want to develop an informed perspective on aspects of modern France.

Action Cinema Since 2000
Action Cinema Since 2000

Author: Chris Holmlund

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-05-16

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1839022795

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Action Cinema Since 2000 addresses an increasingly lively and evolving field of scholarship, probing the definition and testing the potential of action cinema to reframe the mode for the 21st century. Contributors examine a broad range of content, from blockbusters to smaller independent films, originating from China, Korea, India, France, the USA, and Mexico. Ranging from JSA: Joint Security Area (Gondonggeonygbi guyeok) (2000) to Polite Society (2023), they consider the changing modes of action cinema, with streaming assuming global importance and an ever-increasing number of generic blends. They consider under-explored areas of action film, particularly how race, ethnicity, gender, and age figure in narratives and through image and soundtracks. Overall, the book demonstrates how 21st century action cinema engages with and reflects geopolitical, creative, and industrial developments. Contributors argue that it continues to offer fantasies of empowerment and mobility that say much about how power is understood in diverse contexts today.

Irreversible
Irreversible

Author: Tim Palmer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-12-12

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1137478624

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Gaspar Noé's Irreversible is uncompromising and visceral, an essential piece of modern cinema. Punctuated by dazzling avant-garde techniques, the film depicts, in reverse-chronological order, a woman's rape and her boyfriend and friend's subsequent hunt for vengeance through the underworld of Paris. Confrontational yet influential, Irreversible has polarized audiences since its release in 2002, making it until now almost impossible to study dispassionately. This first book-length study of Irreversible situates Noé's work in the ecosystem of contemporary French media, exploring how Irreversible and a larger-scale cinéma du corps actually inspired France's film resurgence in the early twenty-first century. From there, Palmer shows Irreversible to be one of the most subversive star vehicles in recent world cinema, in the form of its iconic lead performers, Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci, and Albert Dupontel. Investigating the spectrum of reactions created by Noé's film - through its pugnacious stylistic design, its on-screen deconstruction of Paris, its international critical reception and its unexpectedly utopian counterpoints to violence and despair - the book generates a new rational dialogue about Irreversible that challenges any instinct simply to reject or condemn it.