Decentring France

Multilingualism and power in contemporary French cinema

Author:
Gemma King
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In a world defined by the flow of people, goods and cultures, many contemporary French films explore the multicultural nature of today's France through language. In a cinematic landscape increasingly characterised by multiculturalism and linguistic diversity, a number of contemporary French films are beginning to represent multilingualism as a means of attaining and exerting social power. This book is the first substantial study of multilingual film in France. Unpacking the power dynamics at play in the dialogue of eight emblematic films, it argues that many contemporary French films take a new approach to language and power. The book begins in central Paris in Polisse and Entre les murs, then travels to the banlieue in Un prophete and Dheepan. It then heads to another culturally loaded but very different space with Welcome and La Graine et le mulet, whose border-crossing stories unfold in the port cities of Calais and Sete respectively. Then, in London River and Des hommes et des dieux, the book steps off French soil, travelling to the English capital and former French colony of Algeria. It explores characters whose lives are marked not only by France, but by former colonies, foreign countries and other European states. In its depiction of strategic code-switching in transcultural scenarios, contemporary French multilingual cinema shows the potential for symbolic power inherent in French, other dominant Western tongues, and many migrant and minority languages. The book offers a unique insight into the place of language and power in French cinema today.
eISBN:
9781526113597
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526113597
Online Publication Date:
03 Oct 2017
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‘Starting off with a brief overview of French cinema from the silent period to the present, King then focuses on eight films that are both multicultural and multilingual, and examines how the use of Kurdish, Tamil, Arabic and other languages within these films empowers the cultures they represent as well as the languages themselves. King argues that by refusing to “center” the French language in contemporary French cinema, these films – among them Jacques Audiard's Dheepan (2015) and Un prophète (2009), Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs (2008), Philippe Lioret's Welcome (2009) – force cinemagoers into a deeper engagement with issues of class, race, nationality, and cultural privilege.'
G. A. Foster
CHOICE, Vol. 56, No. 2

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Dance and politics

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Author:
Dana Mills

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21 Nov 2016
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
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Dance has always been a method of self- expression for human beings. This book examines the political power of dance and especially its transgressive potential. Focusing on readings of dance pioneers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, Gumboots dancers in the gold mines of South Africa, the One Billion Rising movement using dance to protest against gendered violence, dabkeh in Palestine and dance as protest against human rights abuse in Israel, the Sun Dance within the Native American Crow tribe, the book focuses on the political power of dance and moments in which dance transgresses politics articulated in words. Thus the book seeks ways in which reading political dance as interruption unsettles conceptions of politics and dance.

Cover Tony Garnett

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Author:
Stephen Lacey

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Online Publication Date:
19 Jul 2013
Subjects:
  1. Film, Media and Music
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This is a book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the ‘must-see’ series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Tony Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts his career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions, focusing on the ways in which he has helped to define the role of the creative producer, shaping the distinctive politics and aesthetics of the drama he has produced, and enabling and facilitating the contributions of others. Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic is also examined, through the documentary-inspired early single plays to the subversion of genre within popular drama series.
Cover Theorising Media

Theorising Media

Power, form and subjectivity

Author:
John Corner

Book

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Online Publication Date:
19 Jul 2013
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  1. Film, Media and Music
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