French and Francophone Cinema

Undergraduate / Graduate

This class is a survey of French and Francophone Cinema from the first years of cinema to the contemporary moment. In it, we will focus on three distinct moments: the idea of a "poetic" cinema in the 1920s that saw a heightened emphasis experiences unique to cinema; the rise of the "nouvelle vague" (New Wave) in the 1960s and the growth of cinephilia and art cinema; and the emergence of a "banlieue" or "beur" cinema of the 1990s and 2000s that focused on immigrant communities surrounding Paris. Our discussions will engage the formal developments of French and Francophone cinema, the history of film culture, and the historical discourse of national cinema that negotiates the politics of immigration, urbanization, and globalization.