Will Higbee

Concepts of transnational cinema: towards a critical transnationalism in film studies

ABSTRACT This article aims to map out the various concepts of transnational cinema that have appeared over the past ten to fifteen years, and its state of deployment, related issues and problematics. It argues for a critical form of transnationalism in film studies that might help us interpret more productively the interface between global and local, national and transnational. It also aims to move away from a Eurocentric approach towards the reading of such films. It will illustrate how the concept of transnational cinema has been at once useful and problematic, liberating and limiting, by focusing on two case studies—diasporic and postcolonial cinemas and Chinese and East Asian cinemas—that provide fertile ground for interrogating the concept of the transnational.

Beyond the (trans)national: towards a cinema of transvergence in postcolonial and diasporic francophone cinema(s)

Abstract The aim of this article is to explore the current state of theorizing around questions of national and transnational cinema and to propose an approach which I am calling a ‘cinema of transvergence’ as a means of better understanding the complex relationship between national, transnational and postcolonial/diasporic cinemas. The work and situation of Algerian film-makers Merzak Allouache and Mahmoud Zemmouri are referred to in the final section of this article as an example of how this idea of a cinema of transvergence might be applied to postcolonial émigré or diasporic film-makers working in France.

‘Elle est où, ta place?’ The Social-Realist Melodramas of Laurent Cantet: Ressources humaines (2000) and Emploi du temps (2001)

This article analyses the social-realist melodramas of director Laurent Cantet: Ressources humaines (2000) and Emploi du temps (2001). It considers the socio-political subject matter of the two films in relation to so-called New Realism and the ‘return of the political’ in French cinema since the mid-1990s. The article also examines Cantet’s use of melodrama – the function of mise-en-scène, emphasis on the family as the site of wider social crisis, and the director’s apparent pre-occupation with father–son relationships – as a means of articulating the affects/effects of broader social and political forces on the individual. Finally, the article considers how Cantet’s social melodramas are intricately bound to the theme of masculinity in crisis, through the relationship of the white, middle-class, male bodies of the central protagonists to the various spaces – physical, social, economic – that they occupy during the film.

Locating the Postcolonial in Transnational Cinema: The Place of Algerian Émigré Directors in Contemporary French Film

This article focuses on the work of four Algerian émigré directors working in France since the early 1980s: Merzak Allouache, Abdelkrim Bahloul, Okacha Touita and Mahmoud Zemmouri, in order to address questions of transnational cinema(s) in a specifically postcolonial context. It considers how selected films by these directors borrow from the traditions of French (European) cinema and combine them with the specificities (and difference) of the Algerian diaspora in France. In the process, it explores how such transnational representations bring into question the validity of both national cinema and cultural identity as rigid and fixed concepts in contemporary (postcolonial) France.

The return of the political, or designer visions of exclusion? The case for Mathieu Kassovitz's ‘fracture sociale’ trilogy

Abstract The article examines Kassovitzs first three feature films—Métisse (1993), La Haine (1995) and Assassin(s) (1997)—which, it is argued, form a ‘fracture sociale’ trilogy. It considers Kassovitzs often controversial portrayal of contemporary social realities (racism, exclusion, delinquency and violence) and the ways in which these issues are mediated through the experiences of marginalized youth. The article also attempts to locate Kassovitzs own brand of visually seductive, youth-orientated social cinema in the context of new realism and the ‘return of the political’ found in 1990s French cinema, as well as in relation to the established tradition of the French auteur as social commentator.

Re-presenting diasporas in cinema and new (digital) media: Introduction

Diaspora Digital Cinema New media Diaspora Criticism Representation The interdisciplinary field of research called ‘Diaspora Studies’ has been in place in the academy since at least the 1980s. During this time, as with any field of academic study, it has undergone various incarnations, transformations and revisions, its object of focus, theoretical impulses, methodological approaches (indeed, its very ontology) placed in intellectual and creative dialogue with a variety of theorists and artists along the way. Interest in the term has persisted and co-existed in the fields of Film and Media Studies alongside various approaches (postcolonial, transnational, intercultural, accented) that have gained an increasing prominence over the past twenty years or so as means of discussing the shifting configurations of diaspora through a matrix of identity positionings in relation to nation, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality and class that arise as a result of waves of migration, displacement (uprooting) and emplacement (re-grounding) in an increasingly interconnected world. Nonetheless, for all this scholarly attention, ‘diaspora’ remains, as AntebyYemini and Berthomière (2005) remind us, a contested term: simultaneously overloaded and emptied out of meaning. Precisely for this reason, then, work on diaspora (and related notions of migration, globalization, transnational, transcultural and postcolonial studies) in both research and creative practice continues to offer a dynamic and critical area of enquiry/debate.

Hope and Indignation in Fortress Europe: Immigration and Neoliberal Globalization in Contemporary French Cinema

Over the past twenty years, in France, as elsewhere in Europe, cinema has produced an increasing number of films that engage with the thematics of immigration (both legal and illegal) and represent the living and working conditions of first-generation immigrants. In France, such films have also tended to focus on questions of citizenship and nationality as they pertain to the French-born descendants of immigrants, whose presence within the nation demands a reconsideration of previously fixed notions of community, origins and national identity. Though certainly not limited to the perspective of one ethnic minority, the majority of these French films, from militant immigrant cinema in the 1970s, to so-called beur and banlieue cinema in the 1980s and 1990s, have nonetheless tended to focus on protagonists, politics and narratives of immigrants from France’s former colonies in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Maghrebi characters are still quite visible on the screen. However, since 2000, French film professionals of North African descent have nonetheless begun adopting a broader range of modes of production and genres and now assume a greater variety of roles on both sides of the camera. Moreover, the last ten years have seen an increasing range of ethnically diverse immigrant protagonists appearing in French-language films, and not solely those from France’s long-established postcolonial diasporas. In many respects, this cinematic shift is representative of the broader social, economic and cultural transformation that has taken place in the way that immigration has been understood in relation to neoliberal globalization and to its belief in the inevitable primacy of market forces, whereby “the once ‘de-bedded’ economy now claims to ‘im-bed’ everything, including political power” (Mentan 215). This has occurred not only in France, but also across Europe. One area in which the consequences of such market fundamentalism have had a direct impact is on attitudes and policies pertaining to immigration of non-European nationals to the European Union. Here, the desire to exploit an ever cheaper, poorly pro

Displaced audio: Exploring soundscapes in Maghrebi-French film-making

Abstract The article examines the use of sound in Maghrebi-French film-making since the early 1980s, arguing for a greater need to explore the role of the soundtrack and music in this area of contemporary French/Francophone cinema, as well as in diasporic and postcolonial cinema more generally. The article analyses a range of films by Maghrebi-French directors, characterized by what might be termed ‘displaced audio’. Particular attention will be paid to the concepts of accented voice and heteroglossia, the layering and displacement of sound, and the subversion of more Eurocentric associations of music in film as an ethnic marker.

Yves Boisset's Dupont Lajoie (1974): racism, civic cinema and the ‘immigrant question’

Abstract The article proposes a rereading of Yves Boissets Dupont Lajoie (1974), a film which although enjoying considerable commercial success, was largely rejected by critics as failing to fully explore the issues of French anti-Arab racism that lie at the heart of the narrative. The film will be analysed in the context of 1970s civic cinema (of which it forms a part) but also in relation to the emerging militant immigrant cinema of the same period. It will be argued that Boissets treatment of racism is, in fact, more complex than has previously been acknowledged, particularly in relation to the function of stereotypes within the film.