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Nazi-occupied France, 16 July 1942. The French police arrest 13,152 Jewish residents of Paris and hold them at the Vélodrome d’Hiver before facilitating their deportation to extermination camps, over two-thirds to Auschwitz. Not until 1995, on the fifty-third anniversary of the Vél’ d’Hiv roundup, was the French authorities’ complicity in this event officially acknowledged in a speech by newly elected president Jacques Chirac: ‘France, land of the Enlightenment and of Human Rights … France, on that day, committed an irreparable act.’ Reframing remembrance: Contemporary French cinema and the Second World War argues that Chirac’s speech marked a shift in the way French society, and its filmmakers, commemorated the Second World War. By following Henry Rousso’s model (outlined in Le syndrome de Vichy), viewing historical films as vectors of memory, this book analyses cinematic representations of the Occupation as expressions of commemoration. It charts the evolution of Second World War stories told on French screens and argues that more recent films are concerned with the collective experience of the Occupation, the pedagogical responsibility of historical films and with adopting a self-reflective approach to their narrative structures. With its catalogue-like structure and clear thematic analysis of key concepts such as resistance, collaboration and legacy, Reframing remembrance is an informative and accessible investigation into French cinema and its treatment of the Second World War.
seminar on democracy in the coming weeks, motivated by Lula’s situation. The seminar was the suggestion of Dominique de Villepin, who was French foreign minister and prime minister during the government of [President Jacques] Chirac. Villepin is a republican in the French sense, a democrat, but he isn’t a man of the Left. He recently said to me, ‘The world misses Brazil,’ because Brazil was bringing a soft power that isn’t only for its own benefit. As soon as we put our house in order… sure, it is clear that we need to stop cutting down the Amazon
's Second World War commemorative trajectory would take place in September 2019, that of Jacques Chirac himself. Just like Pisar, Wiesel and Veil before him, Chirac's legacy as a catalyst for the devoir de mémoire was brought to the fore in many tributes. Many obituaries cited his Vél’ d’Hiv speech as a key moment not only for his political career but for French history. Haïm Korsia, France's grand rabbi, praised Chirac's curiosité pour le monde, sa connaissance du judaïsme et son goût pour l
and their representatives, Prime Minister Edouard Baladur and Jacques Chirac: unemployment and Europe (Mitterrand 1994; Rocard 1994; Stasi 1994). In effect, Europe became already in 1995 one of the two most important issues in French domestic politics: some would even say, the most important. In 2001, both main presidential candidates Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin had developed their own visions of Europe and of France in Europe. A clear example of the shifting political meaning of European institutions was the attempt by the Socialist Party to present Jacques
Madelin, included representatives of different wings of these three parties (RPR, DL and GE): from the followers of President Jacques Chirac to supporters of former Speaker of the National Assembly Philippe Séguin, former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, and various public figures, regional representatives, women politicians, and so on. In France proportional lists have to pass a 5 per cent threshold. If a list does not get 5 per cent of the total of votes, it gets no seats. In preventing the smallest coalitions from being represented, this threshold hinders the excessive
’ ( 2005 : 39). In order to consolidate a sense of French national identity, a myth was established to reinforce France's reputation as a collective, unalloyed nation of resistance fighters. This myth was subsequently cemented in numerous French films representing the period. The key focus of this book is to discuss the function of historical films as acts of commemoration and explore how French films about the Second World War made between 1995 and 2015, following a speech delivered by newly elected President Jacques Chirac, shifted the way the Occupation was
state system ... [would] mean the end of the French Republic, and thus of France’. 89 The prospect of a ‘strategic bargain’ between France and Germany on political union which was up for discussion in a forthcoming inter-governmental conference was thus diminished. 90 It was Jacques Chirac who in 1995 became France’s President, someone who in the late 1970s had exclaimed against a ‘Europe which is dominated by Germano-American interests’. 91 Later, he was willing to pay lip-service to pro-EU orthodoxy – but only up to a point. Prospects for a new Europe shaped by
. Surprisingly, 22 per cent said that they viewed globalisation less favourably as a result of the demonstrations.8 Unable to ignore this shift in public opinion, politicians responded. In France, the left called for ‘mondialisation maîtrisée’ (managed globalisation), while the right favoured ‘mondialisation humaine’ (globalisation with a human face).9 One of the most unexpected converts was President Jacques Chirac, who had introduced neoliberal reforms into France during the late 1990s. After protesters attacked the G-8 meeting in Genoa, which he had just attended, Chirac
this ‘diversity’ led to its absence from the second round. Moreover, to criticise Jacques Chirac for only winning 19 per cent of the vote and yet still win rather misses the point: Jacques Chirac has remained remarkably stable in his vote between 1981 and 2002, always winning between 18.0 per cent and 20.7 per cent of the vote (albeit this time as the incumbent). It is the other candidates who have collapsed. So the parties have learned that it does make sense to follow the system’s dynamics and cohere even when personalities, organisations and ideologies are not
8 From the Gaullist movement to the president’s party Andrew Knapp The right From the Gaullist movement to the president’s party Introduction Most major European countries are content with just one major party of the centre-right: Britain’s Conservatives, Spain’s PPE, Germany’s CDU–CSU. France has always had at least two. The electoral cycle of April–June 2002, however, held out the prospect of change by transforming the fortunes of France’s centre-right in two ways. A double victory at the presidential and parliamentary elections kept Jacques Chirac in the