De-essentializing the Banlieues, reframing the nation: documentary cinema in France in the late 1990s

Abstract

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.

Nations as brands: Cinema's place in the branding role

“…The authors have adopted a pragmatic approach for ensuring conceptual precision to introduce the concept of cinema as a builder of a nation brand (Cullity, 2002) and to describe the different aspects of cinema that would drive the perceptions of spectators (Tudor, 2008). In a similar vein, different constructs about which cinema can communicate about a nation have been identified (Levasseur, 2008).…”

Traverser les banlieues littéraires : entre sensationnalisme et banalité quotidienne

“…29 Pour ce faire, nous nous appuyons sur un article de Bruno Levasseur (2008) dans lequel, tout en entamant une comparaison entre les productions cinématographiques et documentaires des années 1990 ayant comme cadre la banlieue, il explique comment ces dernières proposent des représentations plus proches de la banalité et de la vie quotidienne, contrairement à l'imaginaire commun et médiatique renvoyant souvent à une nation française désintégrée, dont le problème et le péril des banlieues seraient le coeur. En partant de cela, nous vérifierons la présence dans les romans en question d'autres exemples qui s'inscrivent le plus possible dans la représentation de l'authenticité du contexte des cités françaises.…”

Open-sourcing French culture: The politics of métissage and collective reappropriation in the films of Abdellatif Kechiche

“…It is as if he needed first to establish a solid cultural, historical and symbolic frame in order then to perform the real business of cultural de-symbolization and de-essentialization. We could liken this process to the recent political move in French cinema to de-essentialize the banlieue myth, as in the documentary films of Dominique Cabrera, Patrick Laroche and Lara Rastelli during the 1990s (see Levasseur [2008] and Dobson [2008]). Yet in Kechiche's case the results are far more complex because the canvas is constantly changing and focused on a textually derived practice of juxtaposition and disjunction.…”