Introductory description

The module (to be taught mainly in final year) will extend the knowledge, interpretative skills, and cultural understanding of candidates who will have studied topics in French & Francophone Culture (in the second year) and who may also have followed film modules in the SMLC or elsewhere. It will also complement modules on French Cinema from the First to the Second Year, the French New Wave and Celebrity and Performance run in the French department, as well as various media and politics modules. There are, however, no prerequisites for this module.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

WEEK 1: STATES OF THE NATION/STATES OF THE INDUSTRY – Intouchables (Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano 2011)
Set reading:

• Alistair Fox et al. ‘Introduction,’ in Alistair Fox, Michel Marie, Raphaelle Moine & Hilary Radner, (eds), A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema, pp. 1-13. Chichester: John Wiley: 2014. Ebook in library (you can download individual chapters – N.B. Chapters 3, 10 and 25 are also potentially relevant if pursuing this topic further).
• David Pettersen, ‘Transnational blackface, neo-minstrelsy and the “French Eddie
  Murphy” in Intouchables,’ Modern & Contemporary France, 24 (1) (2916): 51-69.

Further viewing: Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Jeunet 2001), Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (Boon 2008), Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu? (Chauveron 2014)

Further reading:

• Allen J. Scott,.‘French Cinema: Economy, Policy and Place in the Making of a Cultural-Products Industry,’ Theory, Culture & Society, 17:1 (2000).
• Tim Palmer, ‘The Contemporary French Film Ecosystem,’ in Brutal Intimacy. Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), pp.1-13.
• Laurent Creton & Anne Jäckel. ‘A Certain Idea of the Film Industry,’ in M. Temple & M. Witt (eds), The French Cinema Book (2004), pp. 202-220. Available through course scans webpage.
• Charlie Michael, ‘Interpreting Intouchables: Competing Transnationalisms in Contemporary French Cinema,’ SubStance 43 (1): 123-137 (2015).
• Régis Dubois, Les Noirs dans le cinéma français : images et imaginaires d’hier et d’aujourd’hui (TheBookEdition, 2012).
• Raphaëlle Moine, ‘Stereotypes of class, ethnicity and gender in contemporary
  French popular comedy: from Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008) and Intouchables (2011)
  to Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu ? (2014),’Studies in French Cinema 18 (1) (2018): 35-

• Raphaëlle Moine, ‘Bienvenue chez les Cht’is: la région ou la classe?’ Poli-Politique de l'image, 2 (2010).
  There is a huge bibliography on Amelie, including a book by Isabelle Vanderschelden. E-mail me If you need more suggestions.

WEEK 2: HISTORY AND HERITAGE – Lucie Aubrac (Claude Berri 1997)
Set reading:

• Susan R. Suleiman, ‘History, Heroism, and Narrative Desire: The “Aubrac Affair” and National Memory of the French Resistance,’ South Central Review 21:1 (Spring 2004).
• Graeme Hayes, ‘Resistancialism revisited: masculinity and national identity in Claude Berri’s Lucie Aubrac (1997),’ Studies in French Cinema 1:2 (2002).

Further viewing: Bon Voyage (Rappeneau 2003), Les Femmes de l’ombre (Salomé 2008), La Rafle (Bosch 2010)
Further reading:

• Henry Rousso, Le Syndrome de Vichy: 1944 – 198…, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987. See especially the chapter Les Vecteurs du syndrome, on course scans webpage.
• Naomi Greene, ‘Battles for Memory: Vichy Revisited,’ in Landscapes of Loss, The National Past in Postwar French Cinema (1998), pp. 64-97. On course scans webpage.
• Mette Hjort, ‘Themes of Nation,’ in Hjort & S. Mackenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation (2000), pp. 103-117. On course scans webpage.
• Phil Powrie, ‘Heritage, History and “New Realism”,’ in French Cinema in the 1990s: Continuity and Difference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 1-21.
• Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, ‘La Rafle’, Cineaste (Fall 2011).

WEEK 3: QUEERING THE AUTEUR – Sitcom (François Ozon 1998) AND Une nouvelle amie (Ozon 2014)
Set reading :

• Thibaut Schilt, ‘Paternal Monsters: Sitcom, Les Amants criminels and 8 Femmes,’ in Schilt, François Ozon (Urbana, Chicago & Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2011), pp.38-78.
  -). On Moodle.

Further viewing: Gazon maudit (Balasko 1995), 8 femmes (Ozon 2002), Chouchou (Allouache 2003), La Vie d’Adèle (Kechiche, 2013)
Further reading:

• Maria San Filippo, ‘Female Trouble: Representing Transwomen in The Danish Girl and The New Girlfriend,’ Journal of Bisexuality 16:3 (2016) (short review article) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15299716.2016.1199843?journalCode=wjbi20.
• Raphaëlle Moine, ‘Reconfigurations génériques de la comédie dans le cinéma français contemporain,’ in Le Cinéma français face aux genres, Paris: Association française de recherche sur le cinéma, 2005, pp. 214-223. On course scans webpage.
• Alain Brassart, L’Homosexualité dans le cinéma français, Paris: Nouveau monde, 2007.
• Darren Waldron, Queering Contemporary French Popular Cinema. Images and Their Reception (2008).
• Andrew Asibong, François Ozon, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.
• Robert Sklar, ‘Sex, Violence and Power in the Family: An Interview with François Ozon,’ Cineaste 30:4 (2005): 48-50.
• Darren Waldron ‘“Une mine d’or inépuisable”: the queer pleasures of François Ozon’s 8 femmes/8 Women (2002),’ Studies in French Cinema, 10:1 (2010).
• Richard Dyer, ‘The Role of Stereotypes,’ in Paul Marris and Sue Thornham: Media Studies: A Reader, 2nd Edition, Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Available online http://thowe.pbworks.com/f/dyer.on.sterotypes.pdf
• Frédéric Bonnaud, ‘François Ozon, wannabe auteur makes good,’ Film Comment, 37:4 (2001).
• Nick Rees-Roberts, French Queer Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).
• Brigitte Rollet, ‘Queer or Not Queer Others: Gender Trouble and Postcolonial French Cinema,’ in F. Grandena and C. Johnston (eds), Cinematic Queerness: Gay and Lesbian Hypervisibility in Contemporary Francophone Feature Films (Oxford and New York: Peter Lang, 2011) (ON Chouchou).
• Mireille Rosello. ‘Dissident or conformist passing: Merzak Allouache's Chouchou.’ South Central Review, 28 (1) (2011): 2-17.

WEEK 4: WOMEN’S AUTEUR FILMMAKING – Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (Agnès Varda 2000)
Set reading:

• Sarah Cooper, ‘Auto-Allo-Portraits in Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse,’ in Selfless Cinema? Ethics and French Documentary, Cambridge: Legenda, 2006, pp. 84-90. Available through course scans page.
• Homay King, ‘Matter, Time and the Digital: Varda’s The Gleaners and I,’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video 24: 421-429 (2007).
• Mireille Rosello, ‘Agnès Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse; Portrait of the Artist as an Old Lady,’ Studies in French Cinema, 7:1 (2001).

Further viewing: Jacquot de Nantes (Varda, 1991), Les Plages d’Agnès (Varda 2008)
Further reading:

• Carrie Tarr, ‘Introduction: Women’s Filmmaking in France 2000-2010,’ Studies in French Cinema 12:3 (2012).
• Brigitte Rollet, ‘French Women Directors since the 1990s: Trends, New Developments, and Challenges,’ in Raphaelle Moine, Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox & Michel Marie (eds), A New Companion to Contemporary French Cinema (Chichester: John Wiley: 2014), pp. 399-418.
• Carrie Tarr with Brigitte Rollet, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion,’ in Cinema and the Second Sex, Women’s Filmmaking in France in the 1980s and 1990s, London and New York: Continuum, 2001. Introduction is on course scans webpage.
• Ginette Vincendeau, ‘Fifty Years of the French New Wave: from Hysteria to Nostalgia,’ in P. Graham & G. Vincendeau (eds) The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks, London: BFI (2009), pp. 1-31.
• Alison Smith, Agnès Varda (1998).
• Mireille Rosello, ‘Auto-portraits glanés et plaisirs partagés: Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse et Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain,’ L’Esprit Créateur 42, no.3 (Fall 2002).
• Alyxandra Vesey, ‘Waste not: Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse and the heterogeneous documentary film score,’ Studies in French Cinema 14: 3, pp.167-179 (2014).
• Kelly Conway, ‘Varda at work: Les Plages d’Agnès’, Studies in French Cinema, 10:2 (2010), pp. 125-138.

WEEK 5: MULTI-ETHNIC FRANCE - AND NEO-NOIR – Un prophète (Jacques Audiard 2009) [plus discussion of assessment]
Set reading:

• Mireille Rosello, ‘Stereotypes and Iterativity’, in Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Culture (1998), pp. 21-40. On Moodle.
• Ginette Vincendeau , ‘The New Lower Depths: Paris in French Neo-Noir Cinema’, in Mark Bould, Kathrina Glitre and Greg Tuck (eds), Neo-Noir, London and New York: Wallflower, 2009, pp. 103–17. Available through course scans page.
• Julia Dobson, ‘Jacques Audiard: contesting filiations,’ in Kate Ince (ed.), Five Directors: Auteurism From Assayas to Ozon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008) Available through course scans webpage.

Further viewing: 36 Quai des Orfèvres (Marchal 2004); De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté (Audiard 2005); La Graine et le mulet (Abdellatif Kechiche 2007); Dheepan (Audiard, 2015).

Further reading :

• Phil Powrie, ‘French Neo-Noir to hyper-noir,’ in A. Spicer (ed.), European Film Noir (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 55-83. Available through course scans webpage.
• Ginette Vincendeau, ‘French Film Noir’, in Andrew Spicer (ed), European Film Noir, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007, pp. 23–54.
• Gemma King, ‘The Power of the Treacherous Interpreter: Multilingualism in Jacques Audiard’s Un Prophète,’ (Linguistica Antverpiensa, New Series): Themes in Translation Studies 13 (2014), 78-92.
• Tim Palmer, ‘Modes of Masculinity in Contemporary French Cinema,’ in Raphaelle Moine, Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox & Michel Marie (eds), A New Companion to Contemporary French Cinema (Chichester: John Wiley: 2014),pp. 419-38 (references De battre and of general interest, also indirectly for week 10).
• Sylvie Durmelat and Vinay Swamy (eds), Screening Integration: Recasting Maghrebi Immigration in Contemporary France (University of Nebraska Press, 2011).

On beur cinema :

• Christian Bosséno, ‘The Case of Beur Cinema,’ in R. Dyer and G. Vincendeau (eds), Popular European Cinema (1992). Available through course scans page.
• Ginette Vincendeau, ‘The Frenchness of French Cinema: The Language of National Identity, from the Regional to the Trans-national,’ in Studies in French Cinema. UK Perspectives 1985-2010 (2011), pp. 337-52.
• Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and banlieue filmmaking in France (2005).
• Carrie Tarr, ‘Maghrebi-French (Beur) Filmmaking in Context,’ Cineaste, 33:1 (2007).
• Hamid Naficy, ‘Situating Accented Cinema,’ in An accented cinema: exilic and diasporic filmmaking, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 111-129.
  There are several articles on La Graine et le mulet – feel free to e-mail me for ideas.

WEEK 6: READING WEEK

WEEK 7: WOMEN’S POPULAR FILMMAKING - Regarde-moi (Audrey Estrougo 2007) [plus further discussion of assessment]
Set reading:

• Ginette Vincendeau, ‘The Parisian banlieue on screen: so close yet so far,’ in G. Vincendeau and A. Phillips (eds.), Paris: Beyond the Flâneur, BFI Palgrave, 2018. Requested digitisation to course scans page via library; if not done in time (though it should be) there are short loan copies of the book in the library.
• Instead of a second reading, please watch La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995) and compare it closely with this film. Similarities and differences can form a basis for some seminar discussion points. Vincendeau’s book on La Haine (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005) is also excellent for those wishing to flesh out thoughts on the ‘banlieue film’ genre.
• I also strongly recommend Julia Hallam and Margaret Marshment, ‘Space, place and identity: re-viewing social realism,’ in Hallam and Marshment, Realism and Popular Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.184-196, on the course scans page, especially as you should have plenty of time during reading week, although I will not insist.

Further viewing: Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma, 2014); Toi, moi, les autres (Estrougo, 2009); Comme une image (Jaoui 2004); LOL (Laughing Out Loud) (Azuelos 2008);
Further reading:

• Fanny Beuré, ‘Bilan 2004-13 de la production et du financement des films réalisés ou coréalisés par des femmes,’ Studies in French Cinema 16:2 (2016), pp. 134-151.
• Brigitte Rollet, ‘French Women Directors since the 1990s: Trends, New Developments, and Challenges,’ in Raphaelle Moine, Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox & Michel Marie (eds), A New Companion to Contemporary French Cinema (Chichester: John Wiley: 2014), pp. 399-418.
• Will Higbee, ‘The return of the political, or designer visions of exclusion? The case for Mathieu Kassovitz's ‘fracture sociale’ trilogy, Studies in French Cinema 5, 2 (2005).
• Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and banlieue filmmaking in France (2005), especially Chapter 3 on Métisse and La Haine.
  -------------, ‘French Cinema and the Integration of Young Women Actors of Maghrebi Heritage,’ Nottingham French Studies 54:3 (2015): 297-311.
  On Bande de filles:
• Carrie Tarr (ed.) Cineaste, special supplement on ‘Beur is Beautiful: Contemporary French-Maghrebi Cinema,’ Volume XXXIII, No. 1 (Winter 2007): 47-51.
  AND - Ginette Vincendeau, ‘Minority Report’, Sight & Sound: French Cinema Special, 25: 6 (2015): 22 – 27.
• Michael Gott, ‘Bouger pour voir les immeubles: Jeunesse dorée (2001), L’Année suivante (2006) and the Creative Mobility of Women’s Banlieue Cinema,’ Modern and Contemporary France 21:4 (2013): 453-472.
  If interested in a more general bibliography on (urban) space in film, e-mail me.
• Sarah Leahy, ‘“A la place de l’autre”: Otherness, gender and nation in two films by Agnès Jaoui,’ Studies in French Cinema 12,3 (2012).
• Mary Harrod, ‘Girlfriends, Postfeminism and the European Chick-Flick in France,’ in F. Handyside and K. Taylor (eds) International Cinema and the Girl: Local Issues, Transnational Contexts (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 35-49 (partly on LOL).

WEEK 8: FILMMAKING ACROSS BORDERS – Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas 2017)
Set reading:

• Martine Danan, ‘From a “Prenational” to a “postnational” French Cinema,’ in C. Fowler (ed.), The European Cinema Reader, London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Available through course scans page.
• Paul Sutton, ‘Olivier Assayas and the Cinema of Catastrophe,’ in Kate Ince (ed.), Five Directors: Auteurism From Assayas to Ozon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). On Moodle.
• Kent Jones, ‘Westway to the World,’ in Jones (ed.), Olivier Assayas, London: Wallflower Press, 2012. pp. 9-59. On Moodle.

Further viewing: Irma Vep (Assayas 1996), Copie conforme (Kiarostami 2010)

Further reading:

• Elizabeth Ezra & Terry Rowden, ‘What is Transnational Cinema?’ in Ezra and Rowden, Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 1-10. On course scans page.
• Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,’ in The Cybercultures Reader, ed. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (New York: Routledge, 2000), 294-312.
  On Copie conforme:
• Ginette Vincendeau, ‘Juliette Binoche: A Perfect European Star?’ in M. Harrod, M. Liz & A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015)

WEEK 9: MASCULINITY AND (TRANS)NATIONALISM – The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius 2012)
Set reading:

• Peter Baxter, ‘First sight: how love stories begin (and how some of them end) in today’s French cinema,’ Studies in French Cinema 14:2 (2014), pp. 132-155.
• Delphine Chedaleux, ‘Déclinaisons de la masculinité dans les comédies françaises : le cas Jean Dujardin,’ Mise au Point 6 (2014). Available online. http://map.revues.org/1741?lang=en#text

Further viewing: La Môme (Dahan 2007); Taken (Morel 2008)
Further reading:

• Robert Wosnitzer, ‘The Voice Spoken But Not Heard: Allegories of Labor and Finance in The Artist,’ Radical History Review 118 (2014): 182-96.
• Isabelle Vanderschelden, ‘Strategies for a “Transnational”/French Popular Cinema,’ Modern and Contemporary France 15/1 (2007): 61-72.
• Mary Harrod, ‘Cinephilia as Multilingualism in The Artist and Blancanieves,’ in T. Mamula and L. Patti (eds), Cinema and Multilingualism (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
• Eric Friesen, "Music: The Language of The Artist." Queen's Quarterly, vol. 119, no. 1, 2012, p. 19.
• Raphaëlle Moine, ‘The Contemporary French Biopic in National and International Contexts,’ in B. Vidal and T. Brown (eds), The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2014 (re La Môme).
• Raphaëlle Moine, Remakes: Les Films français à Hollywood (Paris: CNRS Editions 2007).
• Neil Archer, ‘Paris je t’aime (plus): Europhobia as European-ness in Pierre Morel and Luc Besson's Dystopia Trilogy,’ in M. Harrod, M. Liz & A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014, re Taken).

WEEK 10: THE EUROPEAN AUTEUR FILM – Happy End (Michael Haneke 2017)

• David Bordwell, 'The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,' Film Criticism 4, 1 (Fall 1979), pp. 716-24.
  -Thomas Elsaesser, ‘European Cinema into the Twenty-First Century: Enlarging the Context?’ in M. Harrod, M. Liz & A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), pp. 17-32. On Moodle.
  Please also seek out a range of journalistic articles about this film to inform discussion.

Further viewing: Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages (Haneke 2000), Caché (2005), Das weiße Band/The White Ribbon (Haneke 2009)

Further reading:
-Pam Cook, “Authorship and Cinema”, in P. Cook and M. Bernink (Eds), The Cinema Book (2nd. Edition, BFI, 1999), 235-41, 246, 250-8.
-Noël King and Toby Miller, “Auteurism in the 1990s”, in The Cinema Book (2nd edition), 311-14.
-James Tweedie, The Age of New Waves: Art Cinema and the Staging of Globalization (Oxford: OUP, 2013), see especially the Introduction.
-Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: AUP, 2004), see especially the Introduction and the essay ‘European Cinema, National Culture, the Auteur and Hollywood [first published 1994]’.

There is also a wide literature on other films by Michael Haneke which may be of use. For instance :

• Catherine Wheatley, Michael Haneke's Cinema: the Ethic of the Image, New York: Berghahn Books, 2009.
• Christopher Sharrett, ‘Michael Haneke and the Discontents of European Culture,’ Framework 47:2 (Fall 2006).
• Eric Dufour: Qu’est-ce-que le mal, Monsieur Haneke? (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2014).

On Caché:

• Max Silverman, ‘The Empire Looks Back,’ Screen, 48:2 (Summer 2007). Available online with institutional login http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/2/245.full.pdf+html?hwshib2=authn%3A1418827235%3A20141216%253A204b350c-6987-4672-81fc-7e5a4720e53d%3A0%3A0%3A0%3AFxPCLuP32Pq2C5HznbIF9Q%3D%3D/
• Libby Saxton, ‘Secrets and revelations: Off-screen space in Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005),’ Studies in French Cinema, 7:1 (2007).
• I. A. Celik, ‘“I Wanted You to be Present”: Guilt and the History of Violence in Michael Haneke’s Caché.’ Cinema Journal, 50:1 (Fall 2010).
• Catherine Wheatley, Caché (2012).
• Max Silverman, 'The Violence of the Cut: Michael Haneke’s Caché and Cultural - Memory', French Cultural Studies 21: 1, February 2010, 57-65.
• Elizabeth Ezra and Jane Sillars (eds), The Caché Dossier, Screen, 48, 2 (Summer 2007)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Ability to analyse, compare, contrast, and mediate between the two or more societies with which they are familiar
• Familiarity with the methodologies and approaches appropriate to the discipline
• Refined knowledge of language varieties, register, genre, nuances of meaning and language use
• An appreciation of internal diversity and transcultural connectedness in relation to target language culture
• Ability to access, read and critically analyse primary and secondary source materials in target language
• Intercultural awareness, understanding and competence
• Knowledge of key trends in French filmmaking and culture more generally over the period
• Knowledge of key socio-political developments in France over the period

Indicative reading list

See above or for further recommendations:
Guy Austin, Contemporary French Cinema: an Introduction, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996
Guy Austin, Stars in Modern French Cinema, London, Arnold, 200
Jonathan Buchsbaum, Exception Taken: How France Has Defied Hollywood’s New World Order, New York: Columbia University Press, 2017
Drake, Helen, Contemporary France, London: Macmillan Education, 2011.
Robert Elgie (ed), Electing the French President: the 1995 Presidential Election, Macmillan, 1996
Wendy Everett and Axel Goodbody (eds), Visiting Space: Space and Place in European Cinema, Bern, Peter Lang, 2005.
Wendy Everett (ed), European Identity in Cinema, Exeter: Intellect, 1996.
Alistair Fox, Michel Marie, Raphaelle Moine & Hilary Radner, (eds), A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema, Chichester:John Wiley: 2014.
Hugo Frey, Nationalism and The Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995, London: Berghahn, 2014.
Emmanuel Godin and Tony Chafer (eds), The French Exception, Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2005
Naomi Greene, Landscapes of Loss: The National Past in Post-War French Cinema, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1999
Alec Hargreaves, Immigration, 'Race' and Ethnicity in Contemporary France, London: Routledge, 1995.
Susan Hayward, French National Cinema, London, Routledge, 2005
Jim House and Neil MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory, Oxford, OUP, 2006 (historical background to Haneke's Caché)
Alex Hughes and James S. Williams (eds), Gender and French Cinema, Oxford, Berg, 2001
John T. S. Keeler and A. Martin Schain, Chirac’s Challenge, London, Macmillan, 1996
John David Rhodes and Elena Gorfinkel (eds), Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Tim Palmer, Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema, Middletown Connecticut, Wesleyan, 2011
Geraldine Pratt and Rose Marie San Juan, Film and Urban Space: Critical Possibilities, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
Phil Powrie (ed), French Cinema in the 1990s: Continuity and Difference, Oxford, OUP, 1999
Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: beur and banlieue filmmaking in France, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005
Michael Temple and Michael Witt (eds), The French Cinema Book, London, BFI, 2004 and new edition in 2018 (different content).
Ginette Vincendeau, Stars and Stardom in French Cinema, London Continuum, 2000
Darren Waldron and Isabelle Vanderschelden (eds), France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema, Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars, 2007
Lawrence Webb and Johann Andersson, Global Cinematic Cities: New Landscapes of Film and Media, New York: Columbia University Press, 2016 (especially chapters by Will Higbee and Thomas Elsaesser)

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of French culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of French cinema & society since 1990 will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.