This article considers the part played by recent documentary cinema in France in constructing an integrated rather than a fragmented image of the French nation. Suggesting that this may be part of an international trend in documentary-making, it starts from the observation that dominant media discourse in France, along with the critically acclaimed fiction film movement of the cinma de banlieue, has perpetuated an image of these cits peripheral to many French cities as threatening spaces adrift of the national community and emblematic of France's postmodern crisis of identity. Focusing on three documentaries about La Courneuve, a typically pilloried cit to the northeast of Paris, it argues that the ordinariness of the lives they convey, along with the documentarists' emphasis on the continuing penetration of cit space by State institutions and processes, and their insertion of supposedly alien spaces into a continuous narrative of memory and culture, effectively treats geography, history and culture in a way that calls into question the externalizing dominant discourse. Although limited by their lack of appeal to a mass audience that prefers the violence and spectacle of narrative cinema complicit with dominant representations of the banlieues as violent, dangerous spaces, these documentaries and French documentary cinema of the late 1990s in general offer images that de-essentialize the banlieue myth and challenge the image of a French nation in continuous crisis.

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This article considers how recent French documentary filmmaking has engaged with the representation of masculinities in some of Paris's most emblematic banlieues. Focusing on Alice Diop's sixth film Vers la tendresse (2016), which brings to the screen testimonies of straight and gay men from La Courneuve, Aulnay-sous-Bois, and Montreuil, this article examines how the documentary form offers new ways to interrogate men's experiences of love and relationships in the French peripheries. Drawing on an interview with the filmmaker, this article argues that Diop's conversation-based performative documentary filmmaking, with its detaching of image from sound, destabilizes viewer assumptions and challenges cultural clichés about men and emotion. By emphasizing the universal characteristics of the men's personal accounts, this article suggests that Diop's film reclaims the banlieues from the stereotype of a marginal space of “otherness” and offers instead singular narratives, voicing poignant portraits of masculinities that resonate widely in twenty-first century France.

This article examines the role played in France by the culture du quotidien (everyday culture) in establishing a more integrated image of the nation and identity. It suggests that since the 1960s, dominant media discourse in France, and artistic representations of the urban periphery, have often perpetuated an image of the cités as menacing spaces detached from the national community and emblematic of France's postmodern crisis. Focusing on everyday cultural creations about the Grand Ensemble in La Courneuve, it argues that the 'ordinariness' of the lives these creations convey, along with the residents' cultural practices and their continuing sense of belonging, effectively treats geography, culture and history in a way that questions the standard externalising discourse about the cités. Despite their limits in terms of circulation, these cultural artefacts of a 'third kind' offer images that contribute to challenging the 'banlieues myth' and help re-construct a French identity perceived under threat. 1The last few decades, which have seen the relentless expansion of globalisation, have been marked by a significant change in representations of national communities that has been widely apparent in popular culture. Within the 'global turn', popular culture has proposed a complex vision of nations and identities, which has mainly been reflected through dominant depictions of national fragmentation and erosion (Ignatieff 1993). A feature of this general outlook on the dynamics of national communities is that it has more often than not relied on a dramatic and sensational

This article considers how French theatre has contributed to debates on the condition of women living in the banlieues in a post-2015 context of terrorist attacks and a nationwide state of emergency. Focussing on the play F(l)ammes (2017) by Ahmed Madani, which interrogates women's lived experiences, this article examines how theatre, drawing upon psychotherapeutic practices, engages with the complex interweaving of race, class and gender in marginalized French urban spaces. Using Nacira Guénif-Souilamas's analysis of women from the banlieues and Stuart Hall's work on the negotiation of multiple identities, this article suggests that F(l)ammes and the acting workshops from which it emerged eschew mass media representations of the French banlieues as violent, dangerous territories and offer an unusual, women-centred counter-discourse on the French nation.