FFS 366 - Francophone Literature and Cultures

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2023/24a: Screening Integration. French films have a reputation in the US for being too intellectual or “artsy” for the masses and steeped in so-called avant-garde aesthetics. This seminar aims to debunk that stereotype by exploring how the astonishing diversity and accessibility of French cinematic production actually reflects France’s historical move towards a multiculturalist society. In particular, since the early 1980s, French citizens of North African immigrant descent have engaged in making a cinema that foregrounds their experiences. Likewise, as protagonists, they now play central roles on the French screen. By accessing the means of production, Maghrebi-French filmmakers have moved from the activist, marginal cinema of the 1980s to the mainstream French film industry in the 1990s. Their films not only gained mainstream recognition at the national and international level, but have now also reached a critical mass, which permits us to evaluate them in relation to one another. The breadth of this new cinematic corpus gives us the opportunity to consider how the French Republic has dealt with questions of migration and integration – both clearly anchored within France’s colonial and postcolonial history – while foregrounding human stories, an approach in which the cinematic medium excels. We focus on films of various genres, from comedy (Djamel Bensalah) and heritage films (Rachid Bouchareb) to dramas (Abdellatif Kechiche) and crime fiction (Roschdy Zem) of the 1990s and 2000s. Our study of these topical films offers us a way to understand how cultural products such as cinema also participate in the social and political debate, and thus contribute to the construction of the idea that is the nation. Vinay Swamy.

Prerequisite(s): Two units of 200-level work above FFS 212, or the equivalent, or by permission of the department. Open to first-year students and sophomores only by permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS