Space and being in contemporary French cinema / James S. Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, James S., 1963- author.

Series:

Manchester Film Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--France--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--France--History--21st century.

Motion pictures, French--History and criticism.

Motion pictures, French.

Space in motion pictures.

Subjectivity in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 333 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The great American film critic Manny Farber memorably declared space to be the most dramatic stylistic entity in the visual arts. He posited three primary types of space in fiction cinema: the field of the screen, the psychological space of the actor, and the area of experience and geography that the film covers. This book brings together five French directors who have established themselves as among the most exciting and significant working today: Bruno Dumont, Robert Guediguian, Laurent Cantet, Abdellatif Kechiche, and Claire Denis. It proposes that people think about cinematographic space in its many different forms simultaneously (screenspace, landscape, narrative space, soundscape, spectatorial space). Through a series of close and original readings of selected films, it posits a new 'space of the cinematic subject'. Dumont's attraction to real settings and locality suggests a commitment to realism. New forms and surfaces of spectatorship provoke new sensations and engender new kinds of perception, as well as new ways of understanding and feeling space. The book interrogates Guediguian's obsessive portrayal of one particular city, Marseilles. Entering into the spaces of work and non-work in Cantet's films, it asks what constitutes space and place within the contemporary field of social relations. The book also engages with cultural space as the site of social integration and metissage in the work of Kechiche, his dialogues with diasporic communities and highly contested urban locales. Denis's film work contains continually shifting points of passage between inside and outside, objective and subjective, in the restless flux.

Contents:

Part 1. Space, cinema, being

Part 2. Topographies of being : space, sensation, and spectatorship in the films of Bruno Dumont

Part 3. Requiem for a city : the symbolics of space in the cinema of Robert Guédiguian

Part 4. Heading nowhere: framing space and social exclusion in the films of Laurent Cantet

Part 5. Re-sitting the Republic : Abdellatif Kechiche and the politics of reappropriation and renewal

Part 6. Beyond the Other : grafting space and human relations in the trans-cinema of Claire Denis

part 7. In lieu of a conclusion.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 10 Jul 2026).

Includes bibliographical references, filmography and index.

ISBN:

9781526102225

1526102226

9781526102218

1526102218

OCLC:

981638539