The Transnational Regional In Francophone Belgian Cinema

Francophone Belgian Cinema offers an original critical analysis of filmmaking in an oft-neglected 'national' and regional cinema. The book draws key distinctions between the local, national, small national, regional and transnational frameworks in both representational and industrial terms. Alongside the Dardenne brothers, this book considers four promising Francophone Belgian filmmakers who have received limited critical attention in academic publications on contemporary European cinema: Joachim Lafosse, Olivier Masset-Depasse, Lucas Belvaux and Bouli Lanners. Exploring these filmmakers' themes of post-industrialism, paternalism, the fractured nuclear family and spatial dynamics, as well as their work in the more commercial road movie and polar genres, Jamie Steele analyses their stylistic continuities and filiation. This is complemented by an analysis of how the industrial aspects of film production, distribution and exhibition contribute to the creation of both a regional and transnational cinema.

This volume explores and interrogates the shifts and changes in both government and industry-based screen policies over the past 30 years. It covers a diverse range of film industries from different parts of the world, along with the interrelationship between different localities, policy regimes and technologies/media. Featuring in-depth case studies and interviews with practitioners and policy-makers, this book provides a timely overview of government and industry’s responses to the changing landscape of the production, distribution, and consumption of screen media.

Moroccan film production has increased rapidly since the late 2000s, and Morocco is a thriving service production hub for international film and television. Taking a transnational approach to Moroccan cinema, this book examines diversity in its production models, its barriers to international distribution and success, its key markets and audiences, as well as the consequences of digital disruption upon it.

An authoritative study of this postsecular film movement from the French-Belgian border region that rose to prominence at the turn of the twenty-first century. At the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, two movies from northern-Francophone Europe swept almost all the main awards. Rosetta by the Walloon directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won the Golden Palm, and L’humanité by the French director Bruno Dumont won the Grand Prize; both won acting awards as well. Taking this “miracle” of Cannes as the point of departure, Niels Niessenidentifies a transregional film movement in the French-Belgian border region—the Cinéma du Nord or “cinema of the North.” He examines this movement within the contexts of French and Belgian national cinemas from the silent era to the digital age, as well as that of the new realist tendency in world cinema of the last three decades. In addition, he traces, from a northern perspective, a secular-religious tradition in Francophone-European film and philosophy from Bresson and Pialat, via Bazin, Deleuze, and Godard, to the Dardennes and Dumont, while critiquing this tradition for its frequent use of a humanist vocabulary of grace for a secular world. Once a cradle of the Industrial Revolution, the Franco-Belgian Nord faced economic crisis for most of the twentieth century. Miraculous Realism demonstrates that the Cinéma du Nord’s rise to prominence resulted from the region’s endeavor to reinvent itself economically and culturally at the crossroads of Europe after decades of recession. “This book not only makes a major contribution to the field but also creates a new area in this field: the opening up of discussion of the Cinéma du Nord in geopolitical, historical, and theoretical terms, through a blend of fine close reading and broader commentary.” — Sarah Cooper, author of The Soul of Film Theory

Explores the historical evolution of Belgian cinema as well as its contemporary situation within the evolving contexts of global media and European unity.

This book investigates screen representations of 21st century nationalism—arguably the most urgent and apparent phenomenon in the Western world today. The chapters explore recurrent thematic and stylistic features of 21st century western European cinema, and analyse the ways in which film responds to contemporary developments of mounting tensions and increasing hostilities to difference. The collection blends incisive sociological and historical engagement with close textual analysis of many types of screen media, including popular cinema, art-house productions, low-budget independent work, documentary and video installation. Identifying motifs of nationhood and indigeneity throughout, the contributors of this volume present important perspectives and a timely cultural response to the contemporary moment of nationalism.

"On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the French Nouvelle Vague, this volume of Yale French studies aims to take the pulse of French and Francophone cinema today by exploring the national, transnational, and post-colonial spaces of twenty-first-century France."--From publisher description.