Studies in French Cinema
Transcription
Studies in French Cinema
Studies in French Cinema StudiesinFrenchCinemaAnnualConferenceThursday30June2016 RoomK-1.56,King’sCollege,London(StrandCampus) Programme 9.00-10.00Women’sdocumentary1 -EmnaMrabet(Paris8),Lamémoiredansl’œuvredeYaminaBenguigui - Jenny Chamarette (QMUL), Seeing beyond: Raymonde Carasco’s transcendental ethnography 10.00-10.30Break 10.30-12.00Women’sdocumentary2(AgnèsVarda) -SarahCooper(KCL),AgnèsVardaandtheimagesofdocumentary - Nathalie Mauffrey (Paris 7), LesVeuvesdeNoirmoutier d'Agnès Varda : un dispositif documentairepourunimaginairecollectifauféminin -EmmaWilson(Cambridge),AgnèsVardaandladouleur 12.00-13.00Keynote:DominiqueCabrera 13.00-14.15Break 14.15-15.45Childhoodandadolescence1(Contemporary) -RomainChareyron(WashingtonState),Portrayinglivesintransition:CélineSciamma andthetranscriptionofexperience - Kaya Davies Hayon (Manchester), Embodying queer sexual subjectivity: Abdellah Taïa’sL’Arméedusalut(2014) - Nick Rees-Roberts (Bristol), Mommie dearest: sex, style and scandal in My Little Princess(EvaIonesco,2011) 15.45-16.15Break 16.15-17.15Childhoodandadolescence2(Pre-andpost-war) - Daniel Morgan (Paris 3), A negotiated image of delinquency: young offenders and reformschoolsinFrenchcinema,1949-1955 - Barry Nevin (NUI Galway), Framing forest/framing France: viewing child poverty in postwarParisthroughJacquesFeyder’sCrainquebille(1923)andGribiche(1926) 17.15-17.45RoundTable -Tocelebratethepublicationofthe40thvolumeofMUP’sFrenchDirectorsSeries 17.45-18.30Reception 18.30-19.00SFCAnnualGeneralMeetingoftheEditors SFC2016| 2 Practicalinformation Location TheconferencewilltakeplaceinLectureTheatreK-1.56,King’sCollege,London,Strand Campus(postcodeWC2R2LS).EnterbythemainentranceofftheStrand.Godownone floorusingthestaircaseonyourleftnearthelifts,thenstraightaheadthroughthefire doorsanddownaramp,whereyouwillseeacorridorofftotheleftwithseveralrooms offit.K-1.56isthelastroominthatcorridor.Theroomwillbeopenfrom8.30. SeehereforapagewithlinkstoaGooglemapandgeneraldirections: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/campuslife/campuses/strand/Strand.aspx SeehereforaPDFoftheBasementwherewewillbelocated: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/campuslife/campuses/download/KBBasement1forweb.pdf Fee The conference fee is £35 (£25 students, unwaged, retired). Please enroll in advance here: http://store.surrey.ac.uk/browse/product.asp?compid=1&modid=2&catid=62 Thefeecanalsobepaidonthedayincash(notchequeorcard). Refreshments Wedonotproviderefreshments.Thereisarestaurant/caféinthebuildingwewillbein, andtherearemanyrestaurantscloseby. Accommodation Wedonotsuggestanyparticularhotels,asyoucanfindmanyformsofaccommodation in London. If you have not yet used Airbnb, we can recommend this as the most economicalternative:https://www.airbnb.co.uk/. Papers Paperswillbe20minuteslong(withtheexceptionofthekeynote). Listofspeakers JennyChamarette(QMUL)[email protected] RomainChareyron(WashingtonState)[email protected] SarahCooper(KCL)[email protected] KayaDaviesHayon(Manchester)[email protected] NathalieMauffrey(Paris7)[email protected] DanielMorgan(Paris3)[email protected] EmnaMrabet(Paris8)[email protected] BarryNevin(NUIGalway)[email protected] NickRees-Roberts(Bristol)[email protected] EmmaWilson(Cambridge)[email protected] Acknowledgments WewouldliketothankRosalindGalt, HeadofFilmStudiesatKing’sCollege, London,forprovidinguswithavenue; andMatthewFrostofManchester UniversityPressforfinancialsupport. SFC2016| 3 Abstracts EmnaMrabet,Lamémoiredansl’œuvredeYaminaBenguigui Parmi les jeunes cinéastes issus de l’immigration maghrébine qui émergent dans les années 80, rares sont les femmes qui s’emparent de l’outil cinématographique. On assiste cependant, dans le tournant des années 90, à l’émergence de quelques figures féminines comme Yamina Benguigui, Zaïda Ghorab-Volta, Rachida Krim qui commencent à faire entendre leurs voies et à raconter de manière autre l’histoire de leur communauté. Les réalisations de Yamina Benguigui se démarquent ainsi par le choix de la forme documentaire et par une refocalisation du discours narratif sur la générationdesparents(alorsquesescompèresmasculins–àl’instardeMehdiCharefet Malik Chibane – mettaient principalement en scène des personnages de jeunes). De Mémoires d’immigré à 93. Mémoire d’un territoireen passant pas Inchallah Dimanche, sesfilmssontàobservercommedesœuvresemblématiquesdanslechampducinéma franco-maghrébin. Le présent exposé propose ainsi d’examiner la question de la mémoirequijalonnel’œuvredeYaminaBenguiguietd’observerdequellemanièreses réalisations documentaires, mais aussi fictionnelles, contribuent à la restitution d’une mémoire collective oubliée, la parole recueillie devenant à la fois le réceptacle et le révélateurdecettemémoire.Tracesindélébiles,instrumentsdeluttecontrel’absenceet l’amnésie,sesfilmssontégalementàconsidérercommeautantdedocumentshistoricosociologiques pouvant entrer en résonance avec le malaise que traverse la France contemporaine. Bio EmnaMrabetestaffiliéeàl’écoledoctoraleEsthétique,SciencesetTechnologiedesArts (EDESTA)del’universitéParis8oùelleenseignedepuis2010.Elleasoutenuunethèse de doctorat intitulée Contexte et développement du cinéma franco-maghrébin (19692013).L’exempled’AbdellatifKechiche.Elleestl’auteurd’articlesmettantenperspective et en questionnement les spécificités des œuvres des cinéastes issus de l’immigration maghrébine, notamment, Contestation et défense des droits humains chez les cinéastes Abdellatif Kechiche et Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche (Studies in French Cinema), La question identitairechezlescinéastesissusdel’immigrationmaghrébine (L’Harmattan), Sorin, C., Mrabet, E. De la citation à la performance : processus en œuvre(s) dans le cinéma d’AbdellatifKechiche(PressesUniversitairesdeRennes). [email protected] SFC2016| 4 JennyChamarette,Seeingbeyond:RaymondeCarasco’stranscendental ethnography The films of Raymonde Carasco are relatively unknown, but recently witnessed a resurgence of interest amongst French cinema scholars, such as Nicole Brenez, and in circles of documentary and ethnographic film in Europe and beyond. Carasco’s film work is deeply experimental, tinged with a sense of the transcendent, and follows repetitions of gesture and voice that trace both the life rituals of the Mexican ethnic group,theTarahumaras,andthewritingofAntoninArtaudonthissamepeople.Carasco was also a writer and academic: her writings too grasp at the poetics of language, writing,andlooking,inaformativephilosophyoffilm.Herconceptsoftheciné-fragment and auto-bio-ciné-graphie complement theorisations of cinema and writing from celebrated filmmakers such as Agnès Varda. This paper aims primarily to bring Carasco’sworkbackintothespotlight,particularlyinanAnglophonecontext.Herfilms in the 1970s offers a very different form of experimental, indeed transcendental ethnography,comparedtootherfilmmakersofthetime(Strand,Rouch),andoffersome insightintotheorisationsofcontemporaryartcinema(Rousseau,Rivers,Grandrieux). Bio Jenny Chamarette is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London.AuthorofPhenomenologyandtheFutureofFilm:RethinkingSubjectivitybeyond French Cinema (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), she has published widely in journals such as Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Paragraph, Studies in French Cinema, and Modern and Contemporary France. Her research examines intermediality, phenomenology, cultural politics and affect in contemporary visual and moving image cultures, in Europe, North America and the Middle East. She is particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, complex embodiment and transnational art cinema. She is currently working on a monograph entitled Cinemuseology:DigitalScreens,MuseumVitrinesandCulturalPolitics. [email protected] SFC2016| 5 SarahCooper,AgnèsVardaandtheimagesofdocumentary In this paper I focus on select short films by Agnès Varda, most notably Ulysse (1982) and Les Dites Cariatides (1984), exploring in close detail the permeable boundary between fiction and documentary in her work, with a view to demonstrating how her films stimulate the imagination. My interest lies specifically in the image-making capacityoftheimagination,whichliteraryratherthanfilmtheoristshaveaddressedto dateinordertoarticulatehowgreatwritersgetustocreatevividmentalimagesaswe read. From Gaston Bachelard to Elaine Scarry, cinema is understood in contrast to literature to perform the action of making images for us, rather than expecting us to visualize dynamically as we would when we read. Paying attention to the intricate relationbetweenspokenwordandvisualimageinVarda’swork,Icontestthisviewof theprivilegedstatusofthevividmentalimageinreadingliterature.Ishowhowfilmtoo can cause us to make and move images in our minds while we also view images on screen,formingacomplexsuperimpositionofthevisibleandtheinvisible,theperceived andtheimagined,asimagesofscreenandmindoverlayoneanother. Bio SarahCooperisProfessorofFilmStudiesatKing’sCollegeLondon.Sheistheauthorof several books, including Selfless Cinema? Ethics and French Documentary (Oxford: Legenda, 2006); Chris Marker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008); and TheSoulofFilmTheory(Basingstoke:PalgraveMacmillan,2013). [email protected] SFC2016| 6 Nathalie Mauffrey, Les Veuves de Noirmoutier d'Agnès Varda : un dispositif documentairepourunimaginairecollectifauféminin Malgré les nombreux courts et longs métrages documentaires depuis L’Opéra-Mouffe (1958) aux Plages d’Agnès (2007) qui constituent autant de portraits de femmes artistes,musesoucollectionneusesdanslesquelslacinéastesereconnaît,AgnèsVarda estavanttout«uneauteur(e)aufémininsingulier»quis’affranchitdetouteétiquettey compriscellesdedocumentaristeetdeféministemaisquienfilmantdesfemmes,parce qu’elle est une femme, se filme elle aussi. Ainsi le documentaire « Quelques veuves de Noirmoutier » réalisé en 2003 dans lequel la cinéaste interroge des veuves qui lui ressemblent doublement pour avoir perdu un mari et vivre dans la même île qu’elle n’est-il que l’une des pièces d’une utopie dont rend compte l’installation audiovisuelle Les Veuves de Noirmoutier (2004-2005) que nous nous proposons d’analyser. Ce dispositifdocumentairemetenscèneunepoétiquedel’espacehéritéedeBachelardet deJungquisenourritdutémoignagesingulierdecesveuvespourformerunimaginaire collectif rêvant l’union ambivalente du singulier et du collectif, du réel et du rêve, du féminin et du masculin. Notre propos est de montrer dans quelle mesure le geste documentaired’AgnèsVardas’inscritdanscettedialectiquematérialistedel’imaginaire. Bio NathalieMauffreyestagrégéedeLettresclassiques,doctoranteduCERILACetATER à l’Université de Paris Diderot-Paris 7 où elle prépare une thèse en études cinématographiquesintitulée«Utpoesispictura:lacinécritured’AgnèsVarda»sousladirection de Claude Murcia. Elle donne des cours sur l’analyse filmique, la poétique du récit, l’errance, le rythme et les liens entre cinéma et littérature. Elle a publié entre autres l’article « Pour un cinéma de poésie : la figure du chiasme chez Agnès Varda » dans « L’Écranpoétique»dirigéparMarionPoirson-DechonneinCinémAction,n°157,2015et uncompte-rendud’ouvrage«Exercicesdestyle»inActafabula,vol.14,n°6,Notesde lecture, Septembre 2013. L’article « Bricol’ et récup’ : de l’aut(r/o)portrait chez Agnès Varda » est à paraître sous peu dans Les Intermittences du sujet aux Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Lors du congrès « Narrative Matters : Récit et savoir » en 2014,elleestintervenueausujetdes«RécitskaléidoscopiquesdansJaneB.parAgnès V.d’AgnèsVarda»,disponibleenlignesurHAL. [email protected] SFC2016| 7 EmmaWilson,AgnèsVardaandladouleur In Les Plages d’Agnès (2008) Varda evokes briefly a rupture in her relationship with JacquesDemy.Thispaperwillfocusontherelationbetweenthismomentofreckoning with love, and with ladouleur, and the more protracted, semi-fictional and essayistic portrayal of heartache and lovesickness in Varda’s Documenteur (1980). Varda has describedLesPlagesd’Agnèsasan‘auto-documentaire’andDocumenteuras‘anemotion picture’. Through the work of Lauren Berlant on affect, through discussions of French life-writing,andcomparisonswiththephotographyofNanGoldin,inparticulartheslide show TheBalladofSexualDependency, I will examine the archive of images of painful loveinVarda’swork.Picasso’spaintingsofDoraMaarareakeypointofreferencehere, as well as self-portraits by Frida Kahlo, and a broader repertoire of images from the Westerncanonoftherecliningnude.IseeVardaindocumentary,likeGoldinintheslide show,makinguseofintimate,realmaterialinordertoofferanewvisualnarrativeofla douleur,ofloveandpain. Bio EmmaWilsonisProfessorofFrenchLiteratureandtheVisualArtsattheUniversityof Cambridge.HermostrecentbookisLove,MortalityandtheMovingImage(2012).Sheis currently working on a project, Lovers, Models and Muses, that explores the work of AgnèsVarda,CatherineBreillatandNanGoldin. [email protected] SFC2016| 8 Romain Chareyron, Portraying lives in transition: Céline Sciamma and the transcriptionofexperience With what could be called her ‘youth trilogy’ (Naissancedespieuvres (2007), Tomboy (2011), and Bande de filles (2014)), Céline Sciamma has displayed an acute eye for coming-of-age narratives, offering sensitive and complex portrayals of youth that intertwinethequestionsofgender,sexualityandethnicity.Thispresentationintendsto discuss Sciamma’s three feature films by commenting on the relationship between filmmakingandthequestionofidentity,basedonthesignificanceofthefilmedbodyand itsaffectivepowers.Iwillfocusonthedirector’suseofthesensoryqualitiesofthefilm imagetoconveythecharacters’inexpressiblefeelingsandinnerstruggles.Insodoing,I willbringoutthehapticqualityofSciamma’smise-en-scèneanditsabilitytocreatean empathic connection between the viewer and the characters. My analyses will pay specific attention to Sciamma’s affective use of movement, colors, music and clothing, puttingforwardtheideathatimagesinherfilmsoftenillustratethefleetingandeverchangingnatureofexperience.Iwillalsotiethesignificanceofamultisensoryapproach tofilmmakinginwithmorerecentresearchonthehealingpropertiesofthefilmimage toexposehowthelatterisusedtoalleviatethecomplexemotionalcircumstancesfaced bythecharactersinSciamma’sfilms. Bio Romain Chareyron defended his thesis in contemporary French cinema in 2010 at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada. He currently teaches French in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Washington State University. He his co-editing a volume on the representation of youth in contemporary French and Francophone cinema and his current research investigates how contemporary French and Francophone films are engaging with the concepts of loss, grief, trauma and the experienceofoutsiderdom. [email protected] SFC2016| 9 KayaDaviesHayon,Embodyingqueersexualsubjectivity:AbdellahTaïa’sL’Armée dusalut(2014) L’ArméedusalutisMoroccanwriterandfilmmakerAbdellahTaïa’sfirstfull-lengthfilm andtheonlyMoroccanfeaturetodatetotreatthethemeofhomosexualityopenly.Itisa coming-of-age narrative that details the day-to-day existence of a young teenage boy namedAbdellah(SaidMrini)whoisstrugglingtocometotermswithhishomosexuality in a small village in rural Morocco. Upon its release, the film faced criticism from the Moroccanpress,IslamicscholarsandMoroccanintellectualsbecauseofits“un-Islamic” content, but was also credited with inaugurating an open debate on homosexuality, individualismandgayrightsinMorocco.Readingthefilminthelightofthesedebates, andphenomenologicalapproachestosexuality(Ahmed2006)andspectatorship(Marks 2000;Sobchack2004),thispaperarguesthatL’Arméedusalutdrawsthespectatorinto asensoryrelationshipwiththeimagethatnotonlyenablesusto“feel”asthoughweare “feeling” Abdellah’s physical sensations, but also invokes a kind of mimetic empathy with his emotional and affective state of alienation within the heteronormative structuresofthefamilyandruralMoroccansociety.ThispaperconcludesthatL’Armée dusalutisalandmarkfilmthatmakesabraveandcrucialinterventionintocontentious debatesonsexualityintheMaghrebandtheMiddleEastmorebroadly. Bio Kaya Davies Hayon recently completed her PhD in French Studies at the University of Manchester. Her doctoral thesis, entitled ‘The Embodiment of Subjectivity in Contemporary Maghrebi and French Cinemas’, interweaves corporeal phenomenology with theological and philosophical thought on the body by scholars in and from the Maghreb and the Middle East to examine how Maghrebi(-French) people have been representedcorporeallyincontemporaryMaghrebiandFrenchcinemas. [email protected] SFC2016| 10 Nick Rees-Roberts, Mommie dearest: sex, style and scandal in My Little Princess (EvaIonesco,2011) In 1978, a year after Joan Crawford’s death, her daughter published a tell-all memoir, later adapted for the screen, a testimony of abuse at the hands of her exploitative celebrity mother. Actress Eva Ionesco’s debut film, My Little Princess (2011), tells a similartale:setinastylisedversionofthepast,thissemi-autobiographicalfilmrecounts the disturbed childhood of Violetta (Anamaria Vartolomei), a young girl coerced into nude modelling by her ambitious mother (Isabelle Huppert), a photographer, who artfullyexploitsperverseimagesofherdaughter’ssexuality.Deftlytacklingtheissueof femalepaedophilia,Ionescodrewonherownexperienceashermother’smuseandthe subsequent acrimonious legal battle to take back ownership of her image from Irina Ionesco. The film, originally carrying the punk-inspired title I’mNotaFuckingPrincess, transcends the autobiographical framing of the revenge narrative by shifting the focus to the deranged mother. This paper will focus on the film’s exploration of childhood trauma and memory; its framing of photography through cinema; and its stylised take onthefairy-talegenre.Iwillpayparticularattentiontoproductiondesign,notablythe contributionofthecostumedesigner,stylistCatherineBaba.Thepaperwillexplorethe film through the lens of fashion studies, contributing to a broader understanding of Huppert’s status as a style icon, and situating the use of costume within historical debatesaroundtheemergenceofchildren’sfashionimagery. Bio Nick Rees-Roberts is Senior Lecturer in French (Film Studies) at the University of Bristol. He is the author of French Queer Cinema (EUP, 2008), co-author of Homo exoticus:race,classeetcritiquequeer(ArmandColin,2010),andco-editorofAlainDelon: Style, Stardom and Masculinity (Bloomsbury, 2015). He is currently completing a monograph, Fashion Film: Art, Advertising, Documentary (Bloomsbury, 2016), before beginninganewprojectonFrenchfashionandfilm. [email protected] SFC2016| 11 Daniel Morgan, A negotiated image of delinquency: young offenders and reform schoolsinFrenchcinema,1949-1955 OnFebruary2,1945,theFrenchprovisionalgovernmentpassedasweepingreformof thecountry'sjuvenilejusticesystem,establishingtheprinciple,stillvalidtoday,thatthe education and protection of young offenders must take precedence over punishment. The ensuing changes in France's reform schools are reflected in three pre-New Wave dramas. Au Royaume des cieux (1949), made by left-leaning industry veteran Julien Duvivier,andLaCageauxfilles(1950),directedbyMauriceCloche,afilmmakerknown primarilyasamouthpiecefortheCatholicchurch,areactuallybasedonthesamereallife riot in a girls' reformatory and a series of rabble-rousing articles about it in the popularnewspaperFrance-soir.JeanDelannoy'sChiensperdussanscollier(1955),today remembered mostly for François Truffaut's attacks on it, is also interesting because it wasadaptedfromanovelwithheavilyCatholicinfluencesbytwofamouslyanticlerical screenwriters.Whileeachoftheseworksiscloselyidentifiedwithaspecificpositionon France's postwar ideological spectrum, all three films promote a remarkably similar attitude toward juvenile delinquency and the state's approach to delinquents. This uniformity, absent from print media but clearly visible on screen, is hardly a coincidence:archivaldocumentsrevealthatthethreefilmswerealltheresultofcareful negotiationsbetweentheirproducers,theCNC,andtheMinistryofJustice,whichuseda carrot-and-stickapproachtoencourageaspecificrepresentationofthejuvenilejustice system that could satisfy leftists and Gaullists, religious and secular alike. Taking a historical approach based on archival research (CNC censorship files, Crédit National archives), I examine the political implications of the representation of juvenile delinquencyduringacriticalbutoftenforgottenperiodofFrenchfilmhistory,fromthe endofWorldWarTwothroughtothebeginningoftheNewWave. Bio Daniel Morgan is a Ph.D. candidate in cinema and media studies, instructor in English information at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 (IRCAV). His PhD dissertation topicis‘RepresentationsofCriminalJusticeinPostwarFrenchCinema’. [email protected] SFC2016| 12 Barry Nevin, Framing forest/framing France: viewing child poverty in postwar ParisthroughJacquesFeyder’sCrainquebille(1923)andGribiche(1926) During the 1920s and 1930s, Jacques Feyder ranked as one of the most critically acclaimed figures in the French film industry. However, Feyder’s aesthetically diverse corpus and perceived lack of engagement with contemporary French society incurred the wrath of the influential nouvelle vague critics during the 1950s, and his work continuestolanguishinthefootnotesoffilmhistory.Remedyingthisneglect,thispaper examines two films directed by Feyder during the postwar period, each starring child actor Jean Forest, who was discovered by Feyder in the streets of Paris. Drawing on RichardDyer’sdescriptionofstarsasa“phenomenonofconsumption”(Dyer1998,1719),thispaperexaminesForest’sperformancesastextualconstructionsgroundedina historically and geographically precise context: through the suffering and isolation experienced by Forest’s characters in updated adaptations of Anatole France’s Crainquebille (1901) and Frédéric Boutet’s Gribiche (1925), Feyder criticises French society’s failure to address child poverty in postwar Paris. By locating Forest’s characters within surrogate families at the end of each narrative, these films simultaneously evoke an optimistic image of France, wounded by war and poor administration, but capable of rehabilitation through human collaboration amongst differentgenerations.ByreferringtoFeyder’semphasisontheimportanceofdescribing “thepsychologyofanindividual[...]inlight”(Feyder1925,70)andfulfilling“thesocial importance of cinema” (Feyder and Rosay 1947, 25), this paper ultimately aims to examinethecontemporaryresonanceofForest’scharacterisationofneglectedchildren andtorestoreFeyder’simportanceasasociallyengagedfilmmaker. Bio Barry Nevin completed his B.A. International and doctoral thesis at the National University of Ireland, Galway. This research examines the relationship between the mise-en-scène of temporality and the portrayal of class barriers in the films of Jean Renoir.ThisresearchwasfundedbyNUIGalway,l’AssociationdesÉtudesFrançaiseset Francophonesd’Irlande(ADEFFI)inassociationwiththeSwissembassyinIreland,and theIrishResearchCouncil. [email protected]