The French Cinema Book

This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a key textbook offers an innovative and accessible account of the richness and diversity of French film history and culture from the 1890s to the present day. The contributors, who include leading historians and film scholars, provide an indispensable introduction to key topics and debates in French film history. Each chronological section addresses seven key themes - people, business, technology, forms, representations, spectators and debates, providing an essential overview of the cinema industry, the people who worked in it, including technicians and actors as well as directors, and the culture of cinema going in France from the beginnings of cinema to the contemporary period.

Michael Temple is Reader in Film and Media at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK, and Director of Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Essay Film Festival. He is the author of Jean Vigo (2005), and has co-edited several books about Jean-Luc Godard, as well as Decades Never Start on Time: A Richard Roud Anthology (2014). Michael Witt is Professor of Cinema and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Film and Audiovisual Cultures at the University of Roehampton, London, UK. He has published widely on French film history in journals such as Screen, Trafic and New Left Review and co-curated seasons of French experimental cinema, documentary, and the work of Jean-Luc Godard for institutions such as Tate Modern and BFI Southbank. He is the co-editor of For Ever Godard (2004) and Jean-Luc Godard: Documents (2006), and the author of Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian (2013).

Acknowledgments.- Notes on Contributors.- Introduction.- .- PART ONE: 1890-1920.- 1. PEOPLE: The Men and Women Who Made French Cinema by Richard Abel.- 2. BUSINESS: The Birth of the Industry by Laurent Le Forestier.- 3. TECHNOLOGY: Innovation, Standardisation and Commercialisation in Early Film Technology by Laurent Mannoni.- 4. FORMS: The Shifting Boundaries of Art and Industry by Ian Christie.- 5. REPRESENTATIONS: Our Little Planet by Teresa Castro.- 6. SPECTATORS: The Cinemising Process: Film-Going in the Silent Era by Elizabeth Ezra.- 7. DEBATES: Early Developments in Film-Thinking by Monica Dall'Asta.- .- PART TWO: 1920-50.- 8. PEOPLE: Migration and Exile in the Classical Period by Alastair Phillips.- 9. BUSINESS: Anarchy and Order in the French Film Industry by Colin Crisp.- 10. TECHNOLOGY: Plant, Imported Technologies and Film Style by Charles O'Brien.- 11. FORMS: The Place and Desire of Avant-Garde and Experimental Forms by Jennifer Wild.- 12. FORMS: The Art of Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Classical French Cinema by Ginette Vincendeau.- 13. REPRESENTATIONS: The Geography and Topography of French Cinema by Keith Reader.- 14. REPRESENTATIONS: Gender Representations in French Fiction Films by Noël Burch and Geneviève Sellier.- 15. REPRESENTATIONS: Region, Colony, and Nation in French Documentary Films by Alison J. Murray Levine.- 16. SPECTATORS: In the Dark: Looking for the French Film Public by Michael Temple and Muriel Tinel-Temple.- 17. DEBATES: Trends and Developments in Film Criticism and Theory from the 1920s to the 1940s by Monica Dall'Asta.- .- PART THREE: 1950-80.- 18. PEOPLE: Film-Making as a Collaborative Activity: The Contribution of Cinematographers, Screenwriters and Actors by Alison Smith.- 19. BUSINESS: The End of a Golden Era for the Industry by Laurent Creton and Anne Jäckel.- 20. TECHNOLOGY: Technological Innovation and Change from the Mainstream to the Margins by Michael Witt.- 21. FORMS: The Diversity of Film-Making Forms and Practices during the Thirty Glorious Years by Michael Temple and Michael Witt.- 22. FORMS: Forms of Resistance and Revolt: 'We Are in Agreement with All that has Struggled, and is Struggling still, since the World Began' by Nicole Brenez.- 23. REPRESENTATIONS: A Camera of One's Own: Video in Feminist Hands by Hélène Fleckinger.- 24. REPRESENTATIONS: Material Turns: French Cinema and the Construction of Everyday Life by Sam Di Iorio.- 25. REPRESENTATIONS: A Greater France? French Cinema from the Colonial to the Postcolonial Period by Sébastien Denis.- 26. SPECTATORS: Going Back Home by Franck Le Gac.- 27. DEBATES: Bazin and His Legacies by Daniel Morgan.- .- Part Four: 1980-PRESENT.- 28. PEOPLE: The Human Factor: Producers, Directors, Actors by Jean-Michel Frodon.- 29. BUSINESS: A Business Model under Threat? by Laurent Creton and Anne Jäckel.- 30. TECHNOLOGY: 'Delay the Start to Hasten the Finish': French Exhibitors and the Digital Revolution by Kira Kitsopanidou.- 31. FORMS: The Documentary Renaissanceby Michael Witt.- 32. FORMS: From Cinema to Film Arts by Nicole Brenez.- 33. REPRESENTATIONS: Fiction, Documentary and the Political by Martin O'Shaughnessy.- 34. REPRESENTATIONS: Representations of Ethnic Minorities in French Cinema since 1980 by Will Higbee.- 35. REPRESENTATIONS: From Gay Visibility to Queer In/Visibilities by James S. Williams.- 36. SPECTATORS: The Spectator as Expert - French Cinephilia Today by Laurent Jullier and Jean-Marc Leveratto.- 37. DEBATES: Philosophy and Film: Re-Framing the Cinematic Century by Hunter Vaughan.- .- Further Reading.- Selected Online Resources.- Index