Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France

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Manchester University Press, Sep 17, 2005 - Performing Arts - 230 pages
Reframing difference is the first major study of two overlapping strands of contemporary French cinema, cinema beur (films by young directors of Maghrebi immigrant origin) and cinema de banlieue (films set in France's disadvantaged outer-city estates). Carrie Tarr's insightful account draws on a wide range of films, from directors such as Mehdi Charef, Mathieu Kassovitz and Djamel Bensalah. Her analyses compare the work of male and female, majority and minority film-makers, and emphasise the significance of authorship in the representation of gender and ethnicity. Foregrounding such issues as the quest for identity, the negotiation of space and the recourse to memory and history, she argues that these films challenge and reframe the symbolic spaces of French culture, addressing issues of ethnicity and difference which are central to today's debates about what it means to be French. This timely book is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between cinema and citizenship in a multicultural society.
 

Contents

Questions of identity in beur cinema from Le Thé au harem dArchimède to Cheb
26
Beurz in the hood Le Thé au harem dArchimède and Hexagone
48
Ethnicity and identity in Mathieu Kassovitzs Métisse and La Haine
62
Beur and banlieue cinema in 1995
73
Beur women in the banlieue Les Histoires damour finissent mal en général and Souvienstoi de moi
86
Masculinity and exclusion in post1995 beur and banlieue films
98
Grrrls in the banlieue Samia and La Squale
111
Memories of immigration Sous les pieds des femmes and Vivre au paradis
124
Heroines of crosscultural social protest MarieLine and Chaos
153
Beur filmmaking in the new millennium from Le Raïd to Jeunesse dorée
167
Voices from the Maghreb from Le Thé à la menthe to La Fille de Keltoum
187
Conclusion
210
Filmography
214
Bibliography
219
Index
226
Copyright

Beurs in the provinces from LHonneur de ma famille to Drôle de Félix
136

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Page 10 - ... practices and representations even after the formal end of colonialism. Although colonialist discourse and Eurocentric discourse are intimately intertwined, the terms have a distinct emphasis. While the former explicitly justifies colonialist practices, the latter embeds, takes for granted, and "normalizes" the hierarchical power relations generated by colonialism and imperialism, without necessarily even thematizing those issues directly.
Page 20 - ... it is the city which provides the space in which emergent identifications and new social movements of the people are played out.

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About the author (2005)

Carrie Tarr is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University

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