Cinema and the Republic : Filming on the Margins in Contemporary France [1 ed.] 9780708325971, 9780708325964

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French and Francophone Studies

Cinema and the Republic

Filming on the Margins in Contemporary France

Jonathan Ervine

University of Wales Press

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french and francophone studies

Cinema and the Republic

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Series Editors Hanna Diamond (University of Bath) Claire Gorrara (Cardiff University) Editorial Board Ronan le Coadic (Université Rennes 2) Nicola Cooper (Swansea University) Didier Francfort (Université Nancy 2) Sharif Gemie (University of Glamorgan) H. R. Kedward (Sussex University) Margaret Majumdar (University of Portsmouth) Nicholas Parsons (Cardiff University) Max Silverman (University of Leeds)

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french and francophone studies

Cinema and the Republic Filming on the Margins in Contemporary France Jonathan Ervine

cardiff university of wales press 2013

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© Jonathan Ervine, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the copyright, designs and patents act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus walk, Brigantine place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP. www.uwp.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN e-ISBN

978-0-7083-2596-4 978-0-7083-2597-1

The right of Jonathan Ervine to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset by Mark Heslington Ltd, Scarborough, North Yorkshire Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

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Contents

Series Editors’ Preface

vii

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

1

Chapter One: Cinema and the Republic

15

Chapter Two: The Sans-papiers on Screen – Contextualising Immigrant Experiences in Film

31

Chapter Three: Double peine: The Challenges of Mobilising Support for Foreign Criminals via Cinema

58

Chapter Four: Challenging or Perpetuating Clichés? Young People and the Police in France’s Banlieues

85

Chapter Five: Challenging Stereotypes about France’s Banlieues by Shifting the Focus?

111

Conclusion

140

Notes

152

Filmography and Bibliography

173

Index

191

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Series Editors’ Preface

This series showcases the work of new and established scholars working within the fields of French and francophone studies. It publishes introductory texts aimed at a student readership, as well as ­research-­orientated monographs at the cutting edge of their discipline area. The series aims to highlight shifting patterns of research in French and francophone studies, to ­re-­evaluate trad­ itional representations of French and francophone identities and to encourage the exchange of ideas and perspectives across a wide range of discipline areas. The emphasis throughout the series will be on the ways in which French and francophone communities across the world are evolving into the ­twenty-­first century. Hanna Diamond and Claire Gorrara

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Acknowledgements

Writing a book can, as with shooting a film, involve a long journey. The journey that has ultimately produced this book is one that began thanks to the inspiring French classes of Mr Grove and Mr Jessop whilst I was a school pupil at Madras College in St Andrews. It was then that I was introduced to French cinema and politics before deciding to study French at the University of Leeds. I would like to express my gratitude to several former colleagues at Leeds, and especially Diana Holmes and Jim House for supervising my doctoral studies. Many others provided support and advice along the way, including Margaret Atack, David Looseley, Kamal Salhi and Max Silverman. For their answers to questions, feedback on conference papers, help in finding difficult-to-obtain films, insight, knowledge, advice and providing accommodation on research trips to France, thanks are also due to many colleagues, friends and people whose work I studied: Mogniss Abdallah, Sylvie Agard, Maggie Allison, Moustapha Amokrane, Saër Maty Bâ, Patrice Bouche, Olivier Esteves, Aline Goudenhooft, Owen Heathcote, Will Higbee, Cristina Johnston, Geoff Medland, Martin O’Shaughnessy, Joel Saurin, Carole Sionnet, Carrie Tarr, Jean-Pierre Thorn, Carol Tully and Isabelle Vanderschelden. There are innumerable others who also provided help and advice, not least at several conferences organised by the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France. The School of Modern Languages at Bangor University has provided a highly convivial environment in which to work over the last six years and I am extremely grateful to my numerous colleagues whose presence creates such a positive atmosphere. I would very much like to express my gratitude towards University of Wales Press for its encouragement and support, especially to the anonymous reader for their constructive feedback and suggestions, and also to Sarah Lewis and Siân Chapman for coordinating everything in such an efficient and helpful manner.

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My parents have also been a source of limitless support and encouragement over the years in ways that are far too numerous to list here, and this is something for which I will forever be grateful. Finally, I would like to thank Viv for her support, encouragement and good humour while I have been finalising this work. Jonathan Ervine March 2013

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Introduction

The year 1995 was highly significant for both political protest and political cinema in France. Whilst the mass demonstrations that took place in this year initially focused primarily on opposing pension reforms, the movement swiftly sought to provide a more generalised criticism of Alain Juppé’s government. Martin O’Shaughnessy argues that ‘it was the mass mobilisations of 1995 which signalled a change of the socio-political climate in France, and which created the conditions for the rebirth of a committed cinema and for subsequent mobilisations such as that around the sans-papiers’.1 This newly re-engaged model of film-making lacked a unifying political discourse. This constituted a significant difference from earlier political cinema in France, but its lack of homogeneity did not obscure the fact that it was nevertheless characterised by an identifiable spirit of ‘revolt’.2 This revolt has often involved directors filming people who live, or are perceived to live, on the margins of French society due to factors such as their status as immigrants or the fact that they have grown up on suburban housing estates known as banlieues. In order to trace the processes that explain how and why immigrants and banlieue residents are often seen as living on the margins in contemporary France, I will focus on the period since 1995. This time has been punctuated by major socio-political events to which both protesters and film-makers have sought to respond. In addition to the mass public-sector strikes already mentioned, 1995 also saw Jacques Chirac become French president after fighting a campaign in which he often evoked the theme of la fracture sociale (social disintegration). Ten years later, the deaths of two young men in a police chase in Clichy-sous-Bois provoked widespread protests in France’s banlieues. A year and a half later, Nicolas Sarkozy became France’s head of state and his presidency saw the ruling centre-right UMP (Union pour un mouvement populaire, Union for a Popular Movement) party take an increasingly tough approach to

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controlling immigration and policing France’s banlieues. This occurred against the backdrop of the far-right Front National remaining a significant and powerful force in French politics following both Jean-Marie Le Pen’s coming second in the 2002 presidential elections and his daughter Marine Le Pen’s subsequent inauguration as its new leader in 2009. Marine Le Pen’s leadership of the Front National, and particularly her campaign for the 2012 presidential elections, have seen the party present itself as being more modern and mainstream. Following Sarkozy’s defeat in the presidential elections and the potential for splits within his centre-right UMP following its poor showing in the 2012 legislative elections, the Front National may well continue to play an ever more important role in shaping right-wing politics in France. As the years following 1995 have seen both left- and right-wing governments in power, this period permits comparison of how filmmakers have sought to represent socio-political issues in France in differing political contexts. In this book, I will study works that involve directors filming people who are perceived to be living on the margins of contemporary French society. This will entail focusing on how and why certain immigrants are unable to access the full range of rights that are granted to French citizens and also the pro­cesses of exclusion that often stigmatise residents of the banlieues. I will provide close analysis of films that address four specific politically resonant issues that concern how these often marginalised groups interact with the state and the media in France: 1. The status of sans-papiers (undocumented migrants) in France. 2. Attempts to defend foreign nationals subjected to the double peine (double penalty) law. 3. Relations between young people and the police in France’s banlieues. 4. Representations of communal activities and daily life in France’s banlieues. The films that are grouped together within these chapters have been selected on a primarily thematic basis that brings several significant yet under-studied works to the fore. Using the themes listed above to define the corpus helps to shape what could have been a potentially vast corpus by paying particular attention to films that focus on power relations. The first two themes listed above

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provide a means of selecting films that are particularly relevant to specific immigrant rights campaigns and the second two make it possible to assess how the evolution of power relations issues in suburban France has been represented. These themes also provide a means of comparing works by a wide range of directors. There are those with a long history of politically engaged work (Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Pierre Thorn) and also younger directors who are drawn towards specific issues (Carole Sionnet, Alain Gomis). There are directors who explore issues of identity relevant to their own community (Abdellatif Kechiche in L’Esquive, Alain Gomis in L’Afrance, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche in Wesh Wesh and Bled Number One), and directors who seek to gain the trust of others whose situations they film (Bertrand Tavernier in De l’autre côté du périph’ and Histoires de vies brisées, Jean-Pierre Thorn in On n’est pas des marques de vélo, Christopher Nick in Les Mauvais Garçons). Some have produced films that constitute a crucial part of specific campaigns (Samir Abdallah and Raphäel Ventura’s La Ballade des sans-papiers, Bertrand Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées) whilst others have explicitly sought to make films that were not overly militant (Carole Sionnet’s Parmi Nous, Jean-Pierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo). Several provide a deliberately provocative vision of contemporary French society (Jean-François Richet in Ma 6-T va crack-er, Michael Haneke in Code inconnu) although the extent to which these films confirm or challenge negative stereotypes varies. What unites these works is a common focus on dominant power relations, their attempts to empower the excluded by constructing counter-hegemonic discourses and their appeal to Republican values in evoking problems or proposing solutions. The four key themes mentioned above provide a means of negotiating a way through the broader topic of post-1995 political cinema in France. Whilst O’Shaughnessy acknowledges that ‘a key part of the return of the social in French film has been the renaissance of the documentary’, it is noticeable that most works about contemporary politically engaged cinema in France devote relatively little attention to the analysis of documentaries.3 It is precisely for this reason that just over half of the films with which we will concern ourselves here are documentaries. Although documentaries and fictions often utilise different strategies in order to advance the narrative and adopt differing cinematic techniques that define their approach to political subject matter, the inclusion of both

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sorts of films in this book creates exciting opportunities. These include the potential to analyse interactions and differences between the two genres, their connection to real events and also the wider question of relations between cinematic form and political message or content. This facilitates the evaluation of theories about the relationship between fictional and documentary cinema in France. These include Guy Austin’s argument that technological developments have created ‘a blurring of boundaries between the documentary, the first person narrative and fiction’, and O’Shaughnessy’s claim that fictions face greater challenges if they are to create counter-discourses.4 As well as focusing on both fictions and documentaries, this book analyses several films that have been made specifically for television in addition to those produced with cinematic distribution in mind. This has been done so as to avoid excluding films that are of great relevance to the issues used to define the corpus and helps to demonstrate the diversity of ways in which films reach the general public. It would be wrong to overly dissociate works made for cinematic distribution and those produced for the small screen, especially as directors such as Bertrand Tavernier have made featurelength documentaries of similar styles for both mediums. Within the context of the films studied here, deciding what does or does not count as a téléfilm is rendered problematic by the fact that JeanPierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo was released in French cinemas several months after it had been shown on French television by Arte. Television channels play a major role in supporting film production in France and have helped to fund several of the works studied here. French television culture is very important when it comes to how immigrants and banlieue residents are represented in the media. Certain films analysed here criticise television for its failings (for example, Christophe-Emmanuel Del Debbio’s Banlieues: sous le feu des médias) whilst others demonstrate that it is also a medium by which it is possible to correct or challenge stereotypical discourses (for example, Philippe Triboit’s L’Embrasement and Hugues Demeude’s 93: l’Effervescence). Recent studies of contemporary French political cinema provide a variety of ways to trace the evolution of this genre. O’Shaughnessy assesses how political changes in France (such as the structure and ideological basis of the French left) have influenced how filmmakers have approached political issues, and locates this within the

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context of the increasingly pervasive nature of neo-liberalism and global capitalism. Several of his recent works on this theme elucidate strategies that film-makers have adopted in order to make sense of this socio-political climate.5 Tarr has a more specific focus and devotes less attention to working conditions and responses to neo-liberalism, although it is apparent that these phenomena shape the lives of the protagonists of the beur and banlieue films that she analyses.6 Tarr persuasively challenges Naficy’s notion that works by diasporic directors are ‘accented’ by their journey(s) from one land to another and also explores the importance of authorship within films about beurs and banlieue residents.7 A key element of this exploration is her argument that banlieue films by white French directors concentrate more on violence and confrontation, whereas those by Maghrebi directors ‘are more interested in exploring individual problems of identity and integration’.8 The veracity of this notion can be valuably gauged by examining documentary films as well as fictions and also by comparing the films of directors who are from the banlieues and those of others who are not. As Will Higbee observes, France’s colonial history means that ‘an appreciation of postcolonial theoretical discourses and their historical context is vital if we are to gain a full understanding of what is at stake in French films that deal with issues of migration, displacement and the imbalance of power involved in transcultural exchange’.9 Postcolonial theory provides a means of situating the marginalisation experienced by immigrants (and their descendants) who are not from France’s former colonies and also the marginalisation of banlieue residents. The way in which banlieue has become a term loaded with negative connotations provides a key example of how the French media and politicians have a tendency to portray certain members of France’s population as being on the margins of the nation’s supposedly egalitarian Republican society. Although it would be wrong to conflate the two admittedly overlapping groups constituted by immigrants and banlieue residents, it is important to acknowledge that similar power dynamics influence how these groups interact with the French state. The realities of social and racial exclusion faced by banlieue residents have been highlighted by Hargreaves, who notes that in 2005 ‘among equally qualified job candidates, those from the most disadvantaged banlieues were only half as likely as other candidates to be offered an interview’.10 In relation to immigrants, he observes that ‘today, while

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far more settled in France than was the case thirty years ago, many foreigners face a much higher risk of social exclusion as a consequence of unemployment’ and cites figures illustrating that this is a particular problem for Maghrebis.11 These observations strongly suggest that significant inequalities exist within the theoretically single and indivisible French Republic. Whilst the distinction between nationals and non-nationals provides a legitimate basis for differential treatment within the Republic, groups such as immigrants and banlieue residents cut across this distinction and membership of them is consequently not a legitimate basis for discrimination. Before engaging more closely with postcolonial theory in the manner that Higbee suggests, it is first worth considering Gramsci’s notion of hegemony due to its influence on the work of postcolonial theorists such as Gayatri Spivak. This provides a means of unpicking many power relations issues that have been raised in recent French films, and understanding how groups such as banlieue residents and immigrants can become or remain marginalised. Gramsci saw hegemony as ‘the spontaneous “consent” given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group’.12 In other words, it is a concept that involves both the exercising of power and the acceptance (tacit or otherwise) of principles that define power relations in a given society. In his writings on hegemony, Gramsci argued that the dom­inance of one group over another has been an important element of struggles aimed at bringing about social change such as the French Revolution of 1789. He further suggested that the acceptance of certain hegemonies (especially that of Paris) was a consequence of the French Revolution and the desire to ‘destroy the old régime’, and also that the Revolution effectively established a sort of bourgeois hegemony that was ‘cunningly withheld from the proletariat’.13 Where hegemony exists, it is possible to challenge its very foundations by establishing a counter-hegemony. This concept provides a means by which marginalised groups can challenge and subvert dominant ideas. Rather than seeing counter-hegemony as involving a frontal attack on pre-existing norms, and via their critique of the term ‘resistance’, Chalcraft and Noorani characterise it as ‘a gradual process of disarticulation and rearticulation’ that is similar to the Gramscian notion of a ‘war of attrition’.14

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When seeking to relate Gramscian principles of hegemony to contemporary France, the work of Gayatri Spivak constitutes an important reference point as it analyses the degree to which it is possible for marginalised people to respond to hegemonic discourses and structures. Spivak’s writings, which are widely seen as being influenced by Gramsci, provide a means of contextualising the predicaments faced by many different marginalised groups. They provide an illuminating explanation of the sort of process that explains how banlieue residents and immigrants can become the subjects of discourses of otherness emanating from the French media or the French state. It is important to realise that the French state has been unafraid to use measures associated with the colonial era to deal with domestic issues in a postcolonial context. This was demonstrated in autumn 2005 when the government responded to suburban unrest by utilising a curfew order that had been initially implemented during the Algerian War.15 Analysis of Gramscian theory has demonstrated that state discourse can lead to minority groups becoming particularly marginalised due to the normalisation of processes of exclusion or the reproduction of pre-existing stereotypes.16 The risk that the internalisation of dominant discourses can lead to greater oppression of minority groups is a key theme in the work of Spivak, who utilises Gramscian principles when discussing subalterns. Whilst these writings are primarily based on India’s colonial experiences and specifically the immolation of widows, Loomba argues that the term subaltern is ‘a shorthand for any oppressed person’.17 A key tenet of Spivak’s arguments in her seminal text ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ is the notion that pre-existing hegemonies and stereotypes create an environment in which subalterns unavoidably express themselves in a way that is conditioned by such an ideological climate. Spivak consequently appears to endorse Gramsci’s notion that members of subjugated groups risk increasing their isolation as a result of internalising dominant power relations and modes of thinking. Spivak has been critical of intellectuals who attempt to speak on behalf of subalterns and criticised ‘white men [who] are saving brown women from brown men’.18 Consequently, it will be important to analyse the methods of representation and engagement employed by film-makers who seek to make films about marginalised groups of which they are not members.

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Despite widespread acceptance of the significance of Spivak’s writings, some have nevertheless accused her of being overly defeatist and failing to acknowledge situations where subalterns have been able to resist and express their dissent. Spivak also stands accused of attributing excessive weight to hegemonic discourses and some critics also argue that major parts of her arguments are contradictory. Moore-Gilbert, for example, states that, ‘in so far as Spivak asserts that the subaltern cannot speak, she is, of course, herself continuing and speaking for, or in the place of the subaltern – the very manoeuvre for which she criticises so much Western discourse’.19 Spivak has sought to respond to these criticisms by insisting that her question ‘can the subaltern speak?’ is relevant to both being heard and the process of speaking. As Landry and MacLean state, ‘when she claims that the subaltern “cannot speak”, she means that the subaltern as such cannot be heard by the priv­ ileged of the First or Third Worlds’.20 Whilst this qualification introduces an important nuance that hints at the existence of a more complicated interaction of factors than her critics suggest, it does not resolve the issue of whether Spivak is being too defeatist. Nevertheless, Spivak’s theories provide the basis for posing a series of important questions about the issues faced by banlieue residents and immigrants as well as how such subjects are represented on the big screen. To what extent do France’s Republican political trad­ itions create a situation whereby banlieue residents and immigrants can or cannot speak in the sense that Spivak means? When banlieue residents and immigrants do speak, to what extent are their words shaped by dominant power relations whose existence they acknow­ ledge implicitly or explicitly? How do film directors seek to speak for and represent groups such as banlieue residents and immigrants? In responding to these questions, it is necessary to examine the issue of giving voice to those who can be silenced due to social and racial exclusion. In his famous book Sur la télévision (On Television), Pierre Bourdieu argues that ‘when you want someone who is not well versed in public speaking to manage to get their message across . . . you have to work to help them to do so’.21 Although this may initially sound somewhat paternalistic, it is important to understand that people unused to the workings of mass media are more likely to fail to express themselves in the way that they intended or inadvertently reproduce stereotypes. Chalcraft and Noorani argue that the battleground upon which debates take place and the precise

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words used are of great importance as ‘the contestation and manipulation of dominant terms by subalterns can be seen as consolidating the legitimacy of these terms’.22 Furthermore, Amin Maalouf believes that ‘people often see themselves in terms of whichever one of their allegiances is under attack’.23 Consequently, self-­ representation can be influenced by a perceived need to respond directly to negative portrayals or the existence of stereotypes. This provides good reason to analyse the responses of people who are the subject of negative media or political discourses and also how their reactions are situated within French films. To what extent do banlieue residents seek to define themselves as primarily banlieue residents and to what degree do immigrants primarily represent themselves as such? Do they examine these identities at the expense of other issues? Are such labels largely imposed from the outside, and if so by whom? Do such terms artificially homogenise and divert attention away from other issues such as social class, gender and the articulation of complicated spatial and ethnic identities? When devoting attention to the socio-political issues that are evident in contemporary French films, it is important to examine the interaction between political content and cinematic aesthetics. The question of whether radical politics necessitate radical aesthetics is a debate that has preoccupied film-makers for decades, as has the quest to determine what it is that makes a film political. François Bégaudeau’s analysis of what constitutes the ‘political’ in political cinema is particularly pertinent to how films seek to create counterhegemonic discourses. For Bégaudeau, ‘political is less about content, opinions and watchwords than designating a means of stitching together and unstitching what is real, monitoring what could be in that which is and anticipating movement in that which is static’.24 This places the importance of the process of making a film above that of its content, and the notions of the ‘stitching’ and ‘unstitching’ of realities provides a means of analysing how filmmakers seek to challenge stereotypes. Mike Wayne also analyses what makes films political and, importantly, identifies a series of problems and challenges for political cinema. He insists on the importance of creating an effective interaction between political and aesthetic issues, stating that ‘cinema, like poetry, must immerse itself in and generate a cultural energy if it is to act as a model and conductor of the kinds of energies required to change the world beyond the screening of the film’.25 This

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demonstrates the need for political films to go beyond merely recounting or depicting political issues by crucially doing so in a manner that fully exploits the potential of cinema as an artistic medium that can engage spectators. In spite of this, Wayne is also critical of overly formalistic approaches that he accuses of diverting attention away from important political issues. He argues that ‘the celebration of form for its own sake . . . eclipses the substantive content of a cultural artefact, while aesthetic matters are generally severed from the political, social and economic circumstances in which the cultural artefact circulates’.26 Wayne’s arguments provide a highly useful means of gauging whether or not a political film is effective, and do so within the context of redefining Third Cinema. Third Cinema is a term that describes a form of counter-cinema that is very different from both mainstream commercial cinema (First Cinema) as well as art house and auteur cinema (Second Cinema). By establishing Third Cinema as a non-geographical concept, his approach is subtly different from that of earlier works, such as Shohat and Stam’s Unthinking Eurocentrism, that associate ‘Third Cinema’ with the ‘Third World’.27 Wayne refuses to conceive of Third Cinema in this way and defines it rather as ‘a cinema of social and cultural emancipations’ that ‘challenges the way cinema is conventionally made . . . refusing to be mere entertainment’.28 Third Cinema can thus provide a means of challenging dominant power relations by offering ‘counter-­ hegemonic’ possibilities that help to situate First and Second Cinema.29 Whilst Wayne’s non-geographic conception of Third Cinema is more progressive than the version outlined by Shohat and Stam, the very terminology of ‘Third’ cinema, coming as it does numerically after ‘First’ and Second’, seems to establish a hierarchy. Consequently, even Wayne’s characterisation of Third Cinema appears implicitly both to challenge and to accept hegemonies. When assessing the ways in which contemporary film-makers in France have sought to represent the marginalisation of banlieue residents and immigrants, it is important to study how general debates about political cinema relate to a specifically French context. For this reason, chapter one addresses how power relations operate in French political and cinematic contexts, and notably the importance of France’s Republican ideals. Whilst the Republican nation-state is supposedly the guarantor of equality, this chapter analyses why critics such as Balibar, Noiriel and Silverman also see it

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11

as a source of inequality.30 In cinematic terms, hierarchies concerning distribution, funding and the categorisation of films are also considered and their impact on films about banlieue residents and immigrants is examined in depth through consideration of the work of researchers such as Martin O’Shaughnessy and Carrie Tarr. This chapter exposes tensions between Republican principles and what happens in practice, especially where banlieue residents and immigrants are concerned. Such tensions provide the motivation for many of the films analysed in the remaining chapters. Chapter two is the first of four that explore how a key issue has been represented in four films that have been chosen so as to permit comparison between fictions and documentaries. It is the first of two chapters that analyse immigrant rights campaigns, and it assesses cinematic representations of the sans-papiers. Such campaigns raise crucial questions about access to citizenship rights and the legacies of colonialism in contemporary France. Through its exploration of questions of agency and giving voice that feature in the works of Spivak, Bourdieu and Maalouf, this chapter examines to what extent film-makers speak for the sans-papiers and to what extent they allow them to speak for themselves.31 It also analyses if (and how) the directors seek to situate themselves in relation to the sans-papiers movement. On the one hand, Samir Abdallah and Raphäel Ventura’s La Ballade des sans-papiers (The Ballad of the sans-papiers, 1997) is effectively a video diary of the high-profile protests and church occupations of the mid-1990s. However, on the other hand, Carole Sionnet’s documentary Parmi Nous (Among Us, 2004) does not evoke such iconic demonstrations as explicitly and instead concentrates on two individuals within a more experimental cinematic format that raises questions about the relationship between form and content. Such questions are also highly relevant to fictional films about the sans-papiers, and there are notable differences between the structure and content of Alain Gomis’s L’Afrance (2001) and Michael Haneke’s Code inconnu (Code Unknown, 2000). The former focuses on an individual story of a Senegalese student living in Paris whilst the latter features a multi-stranded narrative in which we see a Romanian sans-papiers begging in the French capital. Chapter three pursues the analysis of agency and giving voice of chapter two by exploring how film-makers have challenged the legitimacy of how the double peine law facilitates the deportation of

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foreign nationals from France after they have committed crimes. It analyses films that raise important questions about who can or cannot call France home and exposes further tensions and contradictions within France’s theoretically egalitarian Republic. Furthermore, these films provide insight into what aspects of the law directors saw as the most unjust, how they situated themselves in relation to the 2001 to 2003 national campaign against the double peine (la Campagne nationale contre la double peine) and also the variety of aesthetic approaches to representing the subject. The varied strategies of directors are clear from the first two films examined, both of which are documentaries. Bertrand Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées (Stories of Broken Lives, 2001) predominantly addresses the social consequences of the law within a video-diary format. This contrasts with the way that Jean-Pierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo (We’re Not Brands of Bicycle, 2003) uses hip-hop aesthetics to challenge political and media discourses within a more radical format. The differing perspectives from which it is possible to approach the double peine are made clear by two fictional films by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche that illustrate how the lives of immigrants can form part of an often ignored long trajectory. Wesh Wesh qu’est-ce qui se passe? (Hey, What’s Up?, 2002) locates the double peine within the context of policing of the banlieues when its main character returns to a suburban housing estate. Bled Number One (2006) contrastingly follows the same figure during a period of enforced exile in Algeria and evokes important questions about notions of home and belonging. The final two chapters shift the focus from specific campaigns to more general issues, and from immigrants to young banlieue residents. Chapter four is devoted to films that explore relations between young people and the police on French housing estates. Whilst films such as La Haine (Hate, 1995) provide an iconic vision of the potentially inflammatory nature of police interventions in France’s banlieues, they also partially confirm negative stereotypes about the extent of crime and violence in these areas. Analysis of media representations of France’s banlieues by scholars such as Hargreaves and Mucchielli inform exploration of this issue, and the work of Rosello and Bourdieu provides a means of discussing responses to stereotypes and their efficacy.32 Furthermore, comparing radically different films can render the true complexity of these issues much more visible. This is evidenced by the extent to which

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13

Jean-François Richet’s attempt to place banlieue policing within a revolutionary challenge to the French Republic in his 1997 fiction Ma 6-T va crack-er (My Estate’s Gonna Explode) contrasts with Éric Pittard’s Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles (The Noise, the Odour and a Few Stars, 2002). Pittard’s film is a documentary about the aftermath of the death of a teenager shot by police on a Toulouse housing estate in which his friends invoke important Republican principles in their quest for justice. This comparative approach is pursued further by examining two highly significant films about the autumn 2005 banlieue unrest. First, Philippe Triboit’s fiction L’Embrasement (The Burst of Flames, 2006) represents the police chase in Clichy-sous-Bois that constituted the initial flashpoint. The way in which he focuses on a specific incident differs from the approach of Christophe-Emmanuel Del Debbio’s documentary Banlieues: sous le feu des médias (Banlieues: Under the Glare of the Media, 2006). Del Debbio’s film both depicts and questions the way that French television reported on events that followed the deaths in Clichy, and thus constitutes a different way of responding to the same incident. Uniting this diverse quartet of films helps to assess whether there are specific cinematic techniques that help to create positive and negative images of life in the banlieues. Chapter five advances the study of representations of France’s banlieues by asking to what extent concentrating on communal activities and daily life provides a better means of challenging stereotypes than the films examined in chapter four. In so doing, it is important to consider the careful path to be negotiated between reinforcing negative stereotypes about France’s banlieues and providing an overly rose-tinted perspective on life in these areas. The works about representations of the banlieues introduced in chapter four help to ground the study of the wider question of responding to stereotypes in two pairs of contrasting films. For example, Bertrand Tavernier’s somewhat vitriolic documentary De l’autre côté du périph’ (The Other Side of the Tracks, 1997) differs from Christopher Nick’s more measured and more recent documentary Les Mauvais Garçons (The Bad Boys, 2005). After considering how these two films seek to respond directly and indirectly to political opponents, the second half of this chapter concentrates on two films that portray cultural activities in the highly mediatised Seine-Saint-Denis area to the north of Paris. Despite significant differences in terms of genre and approach, Hugues Demeude’s documentary 93: l’Effervesence

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(Effervescence, 2008) and Abdellatif Kechiche’s fiction L’Esquive (Games of Love and Chance, 2004) both demonstrate that focusing on community-based cultural activities can provide a way of re-presenting the banlieues in a manner that does not necessitate as much reference to existing stereotypes or as explicit evocations of Republicanism as were evident in the previous chapter. Comparing and contrasting these four films facilitates analysis of the ideological basis upon which government policies are criticised and the cinematic techniques that are utilised in so doing. It also exposes challenges faced by the French Republic following the suburban unrest of autumn 2005, and provides a means of gauging the extent to which Republican ideologies can provide effective solutions to socio-political problems. In summary, this analysis of themes outlined above will establish the existence of a significant set of contemporary political films in France that are united by their desire to represent, explore and contest dominant power relations, and empower the excluded by creating counter-hegemonic discourses. Detailed analysis of these films’ socio-political implications and cinematic techniques raises many important questions about relationships between the margins and the mainstream in French society, Republican principles and practices and also cinema and politics in contemporary France.

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Chapter One

Cinema and the Republic

Any exploration of contemporary political cinema in France needs to address the specificity of the political and cinematic context in which French films are produced. France’s Republican ideals play a major role in determining how groups such as immigrants and banlieue residents are perceived and treated, and there are contrasting ways in which the Republic itself is represented as either a source of inclusion or exclusion. It is also important to ask to what extent the structure of the French film industry influences films about immigrants and banlieue residents. These two categories of often marginalised figures have increasingly been given a voice via contemporary political films in France although this can sometimes be a complicated and challenging process. However, how they are conceptualised is gradually shifting as it is increasingly acknow­ ledged that it is becoming ever more difficult to define the specificity of French cinema in an age of globalisation.

The French Republic: inclusion and exclusion There are many ways in which republicanism shapes how immigrants and banlieue residents interact with the French state and, indeed, several different articulations of republicanism. Although a largely unquestioning adherence to republican values traverses the mainstream political left and right in France, their differing political standpoints mean that they do not necessarily cherish the same elements.1 Due to the left’s being associated with defending the least well-off groups in society, they would traditionally be expected to see the egalitarian thrust of French republicanism as a means of establishing a basis for ensuring that vulnerable groups are not disadvantaged. From a more right-wing and non-­ interventionist perspective, republican egalitarianism could be seen as creating a framework that precludes the according of any perceived privileges to less well-off groups and, therefore,

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theoretically rules out the introduction of any meaningful antidiscrimination measures. In addition to the differences between left- and right-wing conceptions of republicanism, other divisions also exist within these currents. Régis Debray’s famous article ‘Êtes-vous démocrate ou républicain?’ (Are you a democrat or a republican?) demonstrates that those on the French left do not hold a universally shared vision about the importance of constitutionally based republicanism.2 Debray’s landmark work charts how the 1980s saw some on the French left start to favour a more pragmatic approach that drew on elements of the more British or American multicultural approach as a means of identifying difference and resolving inequalities.3 In other words, people who shared Debray’s broadly left-wing political standpoint did not necessarily see strict adherence to ideological foundations of republicanism as the correct way to deal with issues such as racial difference and racial inequality. Despite such divisions, republicanism largely remains a shared language used by state institutions in France that minority groups, and indeed all citizens, need to adopt when framing demands for rights.4 As Loomba argues in her discussion of Spivak, those who feel oppressed are often required to speak ‘in voices borrowed from their masters’.5 One of the benefits of this approach is that it provides marginalised people with a means of making their case in a manner that means that it is more likely to be listened to by those in power. In assessing the extent to which contemporary political films in France have succeeded in articulating a counter-hegemonic discourse on social and racial exclusion, it is thus important to compare the ways in which directors have sought to engage with republican principles and how they represent France’s republican ideals. A key issue is the extent to which the directors’ focus on republicanism is mirrored by an awareness of republicanism that is displayed by the protagonists of their films. One of the most important elements of republicanism that influences the status of minority groups is the notion of the single and indivisible nation. This concept can be traced back as far as the French Revolution, which ‘established the nation as the guarantor of the common good’.6 However, several analysts argue that the notion of a single and indivisible nation is an artificial construct that masks the diversity that exists within French society and, therefore, creates a false sense of unity.7 Even if the image of a single and

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indivisible nation may be somewhat illusory, it nevertheless forms a crucial ideological basis for framing concepts of rights based on a notion of cultural homogeneity. It means that rights are theoretically granted to individuals as citizens rather than as members of groups or communities within a nation, whether these groups are constituted on the basis of nationality, race, religion, gender, sexuality or other criteria. In principle, there are no subalterns but merely individual citizens and non-citizens.8 The concept of a multicultural society where diverse groups coexist is incompatible with French republicanism’s insistence that new arrivals in France must adapt to the norms and traditions established by the Republic. Debray characterises multiculturalism largely as a form of pragmatism that he associates with les Anglosaxons (that is, the Americans and the British) and that lacks the ideological and intellectual gravitas of French republicanism.9 However, if the French state does not seek to recognise differences between citizens (at least in theory), an insistence on the key distinction between being a national and being a foreigner is crucial when it comes to determining what rights people have in terms of polit­ ical participation and access to employment.10 Jennings’s discussion of Schnapper does, however, suggest that determining citizenship on the basis of nationality is arguably tokenistic or, worse still, a means of creating a hegemonic and exclusionary structure within a theoretically egalitarian society.11 Recent decades have seen several other significant challenges to conventional republican notions of citizenship based on nationality (as opposed to residency or participation), notably due to the emergence of the mouvement beur in the early to mid-1980s. They also resurfaced in the 1990s due to the rise in profile of the sans-papiers movement, and have remained per­tinent due to the focus on the renewal of the French left (and especially social movements) following the public sector strikes of 1995.12 As the discussion above demonstrates, debates about republican conceptions of citizenship provide examples of how the supposedly single and indivisible nation has been seen by some as exclusionary rather than inclusionary. Whilst Jennings accepts that multiculturalism is ‘un-French’ because ‘it sanctions unequal rights’ and ‘places . . . groups before individuals’, he acknowledges that it provides a means of challenging the way republicanism constructs a hegemonic system that alienates or excludes those who do not easily fit

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into its universalist framework.13 Within this theoretically egalitarian paradigm, republican universalism can also obscure racial issues, or make them hard to assess. In an illuminating study of the history of the French nation and French national identity, Silverman argues that the way in which republican universalism eliminates difference results in many people in France seeing racism as external to – rather than part of – society.14 In her study of racism in a variety of different European contexts, Lentin goes further by stating that a consequence of the way French republicanism deals with difference is that ‘racialisation is . . . stripped of its continual power to exclude and violate’.15 Despite Lentin’s criticisms of republicanism, it should be noted that Rosello and Silverman argue that expressing one’s dissent within a republican context provides more than merely a strategic means of framing demands; it also facilitates attempts to expose the failings of this very system.16 Failings and contradictions often become apparent when republican principles are examined in the light of recent practices by several French governments. Kiwan shows that several have embraced aspects of equal opportunities in a way that contradicts the principles of republican egalitarianism and also suggests that the Republic is not achieving its desired unifying effect.17 Significantly, she identifies numerous government measures introduced in the period 2002–5 (that is, during the term of a right-wing government) that set out to facilitate the integration of minority groups. Nevertheless, she also observes that this has coincided with increasingly strict policies on the wearing of religious symbols in schools. This has led to a paradoxical situation whereby ‘on one hand, the French government has been working towards giving greater public visibility to France’s “minorities” through equal opportunities and anti-discrimination initiatives, yet on the other hand, it has been working towards ensuring the “invisibility” of minorities in schools and public life’.18 Whilst Kiwan’s research shows a recent example of elected representatives of France’s republican nation-state adopting a surprisingly pragmatic approach, Knapp and Wright observe that thinkers such as Tocqueville were able to observe as early as the mid-1800s that ‘the rules in France are rigid, but their implementation is often flexible’.19 Assessing the efficacy of the aforementioned measures aimed at tackling discrimination remains problematic due to the fact that the universalist ethos of French republicanism makes the collection

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of racial and ethnic data by researchers an arduous and potentially illegal task. Despite this, ‘testing’ is a method that has often provided anecdotal evidence of discrimination. ‘Testing’ has long been used by anti-racist groups such as SOS-Racisme and involves, for example, comparing what happens when groups of white and non-white young people try to get into bars or nightclubs. Similarly, experiments have been conducted involving job applications where almost identical CVs have been submitted as part of applications for the same job except with names changed so as to suggest French or non-French descent, or the address changed from one in a city centre location to one on a suburban housing estate. In analysing cases of alleged police violence to see if there is a potential racial element, Mucchielli has employed another technique: establishing figures based on cases reported in the French media in which the origins of the victims of the alleged police misconduct were known.20 This demonstrates that whilst republican universalism can make discrimination hard to identify due to its focus on individual citizens rather than groups, the ingenuity of researchers and campaigning groups can nevertheless uncover evidence of potential discrimination.

Cinematic frameworks: cultural hierarchies? Just as republicanism establishes a political framework that influences how groups such as banlieue residents and immigrants have to ground their rights claims in order to be heard, there is also a largely state-defined framework that influences the possibilities open to film-makers in France. This means that there are potential cultural hierarchies that need to be considered alongside those of a sociopolitical nature, notably due to how the structure of the French film industry shapes the commercial and economic context in which films are produced. Despite being primarily interested in films from an artistic rather than a commercial perspective, I will also analyse the ways in which the content, distribution and reception of certain films has been influenced by commercial and economic issues. France has a long tradition of state support for film production that can be traced back to events such as the creation of the Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC, National Centre for Cinematography) in 1946. This led to the introduction of a tax on cinema tickets that is reinvested in the French film industry. The

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appointment of André Malraux to lead the newly created Ministry of Culture in 1959 resulted in further forms of state support, such as the avance sur recettes (funding for films provided as an advance on box office receipts). In order to counter the rise of television, taxes on television companies’ revenues have helped to fund France’s cinema industry since 1984.21 Despite the existence of these support mechanisms, many films in France are produced on small budgets and struggle to achieve widespread commercial distribution. On occasion, this can be a consequence of the issues that these films set out to address. On the one hand, films can be used to construct and promote positive images of a nation and effectively reinforce hegemonies. Higson states that films can play an almost commercial role in presenting a country to the outside world (and its own residents) by creating ‘a distinctive brand name’.22 On the other hand, films can also challenge received ideas and create counter-hegemonic discourse by depicting images that a country might not want the rest of the world to see. Tarr argues that films about people such as banlieue residents and immigrants ‘constitute a challenging intervention to narratives of the nation in contemporary French cinema [and] construct very different images of France from those which have conventionally dominated France’s cinematic exports’.23 O’Shaughnessy’s discussion of Serge Le Péron’s definitions of reality and the real makes a similar point concerning the much talked about retour au réel (return to the real) associated with post-1995 political film-making in France. Whilst ‘reality is that which we already know, a stabilised, normative and totalising social order’, O’Shaughnessy goes on to state that ‘the real is that which is normally unseen but hurts’ and that ‘cinema’s role is to bring this uncomfortable and disruptive real to visibility’.24 This means that it is important to go beyond ‘distinctive brand names’ and delve deeper to uncover more unsettling visions. This is precisely what happens in many films about immigrants and banlieue residents in France. When situating contemporary political cinema in France within the wider field of French cinema as a whole, it is noticeable that the renewal of social and political film-making of the mid-1990s occurred after a period associated with considerably less contestatory films. During the 1980s, Jack Lang (minister for culture) decided that the way to compete with big-budget American films was to make big-budget French films. The most popular of these

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included several heritage films that demonstrated nostalgia for a past way of life and were based on the work of a renowned French author, and these continued to be popular in the early 1990s. Susan Hayward argues that the lack of cinematic innovation during the 1980s and early 1990s stemmed from the political climate that accompanied the left’s electoral victories in 1981, and notably the decline of ideology and lack of projects aimed at changing society.25 Despite announcing plans for ambitious social and economic reforms, the left reneged on certain promises (for example, voting rights for immigrants) and found it difficult to implement others to the hoped-for extent. Although politically engaged films made in France since 1995 are often quite different from the generally less politicised films of the 1980s, the way in which they engage with politics is in part a consequence of political developments in 1980s France. Just as the French left has progressively distanced itself from a more radical past in which its vision of society was based on ideologies connected with notions of social class, political cinema in France since 1995 has increasingly ‘lack[ed] an overarching, longterm utopian project’ and instead often had a narrower focus more clearly rooted in the present and the local.26 This concentration on the local is in stark contrast to the way that a small number of large groups (such as UGC, Pathé and Gaumont) play a major role in dictating what sorts of films are shown all across France due to their involvement in film production, distribution and marketing. These three groups own large chains of cinemas that account for a high proportion of France’s cinema screens and this creates significant difficulties for smaller productions by establishing a commercial hegemony. Jeancolas provides particularly perceptive analysis of how mainstream commercial cinema operates and Darré examines in detail the possibilities that exist for more marginal forms of cinema, especially in art-house cinemas and via alternative distribution networks.27 In his discussion of the mainstream commercial market, Darré notes that ‘access to these circuits [UGC, Pathé, Gaumont] is de facto denied to small films . . . whilst independent cinema owners do not receive the most commercially important films’.28 Even though mainstream commercial networks can be relatively inaccessible for low-budget independent films, art-house cinemas and alternative distribution networks provide other possibilities. Art-house cinemas generally differ from those run by large chains

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due to their programming of more small-budget, foreign or experimental films. Thus, they cater for cinéphiles who seek an alternative to the commercial blockbusters that occupy the vast majority of screens at multiplexes. Directors of contemporary political films in France often travel to attend screenings of their works in art-house cinemas and participate in post-screening discussions. Many also attend showings organised in collaboration with campaigning groups who are keen to use the films as a means of making audiences aware of political issues such as the lives of immigrants and banlieue residents in France. Although such an approach is understandable, it risks drawing attention to the political subject matter of films rather than their intrinsic value as films (that is, as artistic creations). Thus it has the potential to create a situation whereby the directors preach to the converted and one that restricts the political impact of their films.29 Many critics have evoked the need to retain a focus on the aesthetic elements of political films. Wayne has provided a prime example in his analysis of how a film must engage spectators in order to have a political impact and this helpfully establishes a series of objectives for political films, reinforcing the need to exploit the full creative and aesthetic possibilities of cinema as an art form.30 The precise implications as to how political films should aim to do so has provoked intense debate for many decades, especially when it comes to the question of whether a film with radical politics also needs to adopt radical aesthetics. From one perspective, conventional narratives (for example, linear narratives in films where there is an identifiable chain of cause and effect, single diegesis, characters and situations spectators can identify with) stand accused of subordinating any political message to mere spectatorial pleasure. However, others argue that these conventional elements can make a film more accessible and watchable for spectators, and thus potentially more politically effective.31 Almost half a century after the emergence of the form of countercinema that is associated with directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, the interaction between politics and aesthetics remains a significant issue in debates about methods of film production in France. Several French critics, such as Jean-Michel Frodon, argue that political cinema must be more than a mere vehicle for political arguments. This is precisely why Jean-Luc Godard criticised Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) for using images in a

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mechanical manner that failed to take account of their intrinsic value.32 Godard has long argued that cinema must not lose sight of artistic as well as political values in order to maintain its merit as an art form and commented in 2005 that ‘everyone can think they’re making cinema, or say “I make cinema”. But if you give someone a pencil, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to draw like Raphael or Rembrandt.’33 In addition to concentrating on the aesthetic aspects of films, it is worth analysing the importance of sociological ways in which films engage audiences. The distinction between spectators and audiences is of particular importance since many of the films studied here aim to create a groundswell of opinion about issues such as the treatment of immigrants in France or the state of French banlieues. As Abrams, Bell and Udris argue, ‘where the spectator is an individual, the audience is a collection of individuals transformed by a shared experience; where the spectator is constituted by psychological and textual relations, the audience is organised around categories of ethnicity, class, gender, age, education and so on’.34 Shohat and Stam endorse this by detailing ways in which spectators are conditioned not only by factors such as those listed by Abrams et al., but also by where and how they watch films (for example, in cinemas or on video).35 The importance of this distinction is that when a large group of people watching the same film connect with it collectively (as opposed to a series of isolated individuals), the potential for action and creating a desire for change is greater. This is particularly relevant to films that seek to challenge conventional representations of marginalised groups such as immigrants or banlieue residents by creating narrative and thematic structures that contradict the dominant view.

Immigrants, the Republic and the big screen Immigrants have in recent decades, like banlieue residents, been victims of the mainstream political left’s shift towards the centre (or even the right) on certain issues. During the period being studied here, the far right in France has experienced tensions and divisions on several occasions but remained a significant electoral force even after Jean-Marie Le Pen’s retirement as leader of the Front National. When assessing how republicanism shapes political discourse on immigration, it is important to note that theoretically unrepublican

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pragmatism can be traced back over a long period. In discussing the term immigrant, it should be recalled that France’s republican universalism means that someone’s citizenship status, and not their status as an immigrant, should be the basis upon which they are accorded or denied rights. In principle, this precludes distinctions between immigrants from different countries and the existence of racial hierarchies. However, EU legislation such as the Schengen Agreement means that some immigrants are accorded greater rights than others by the French state on the basis of their nationality. Although this is theoretically incompatible with republican universalism, France appears to have judged this to be a price worth paying for greater European integration.36 When closely studying the history of immigration in France, it quickly becomes apparent that several French heads of state have characterised some immigrants as being more desirable than others. Gérard Noiriel cites a 1945 letter from Charles de Gaulle to his justice minister in which the then president talked of the need to limit ‘the flood of Mediterranneans and Orientals who have for a half a century profoundly modified the composition of the French population’.37 This stance appears highly colonialist as it portrays those from France’s colonies as being somewhat unwelcome in metropolitan France. Jacques Chirac’s 1991 ‘le bruit et l’odeur’ (‘the noise and the smell’) speech provides another example of how French politicians have sought to differentiate between groups of immigrants on the basis of factors other than citizenship status. Addressing a Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) Party meeting in Orléans, Chirac stated that ‘it is certain that having Spaniards, Polish and Portuguese working in our country poses fewer problems than having Muslims and blacks’.38 Such a statement represents a further example of a tendency to stigmatise and differentiate that has been demonstrated by politicians on the left as well as the right for many decades. The divisive thrust of Chirac’s comments was reminiscent of François Mitterrand’s more general description of immigrants as ‘those who live among us and who are different’.39 The declarations of de Gaulle, Chirac and Mitterrand demonstrate that leading politicians in France have contributed to the stigmatisation and scapegoating of immigrant groups via declarations that blatantly contradict the notion of republican universalism. Indeed, the term ‘immigrant’ can itself be used to stigmatise in a

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similar way to the term banlieue. Just as banlieue is often used to refer only to certain sorts of banlieues (that is, those with high levels of social problems such as crime and unemployment), there are those who argue that usage of the term ‘immigrant’ is affected by a similar process. Silverman contends that within ‘popular, political and even occasionally official discourse [in France]’ the term ‘immigrant’ is often used to designate ‘those of non-European origin (or appearance)’.40 Similarly, Tévanian asserts that ‘immigrant’ more or less constitutes a racial category due to the way it is used to refer to children of African or Maghrebi origin born in France.41 In turn, Noiriel argues that talking about groups such as jeunes d’origine immigrée (young people of immigrant origin) can stigmatise them by reinforcing suggestions that there are social groups that can be defined by their immigrant origins, and that designating a group that needs to integrate thereby creates an obstacle to its integration.42 This type of argument can also be made about the term jeune de banlieue (young person from the banlieues) as it is often used by politicians and the media to associate young people with a series of social problems rather than merely the sort of area in which they live. Without wishing to conflate the overlapping terms ‘banlieue residents’ and ‘immigrants’, it is clear that popular media and political discourses often stigmatise these groups in a similar manner. Susan Hayward argues that staple genres of 1980s and early 1990s French cinema such as the thriller helped to perpetuate hegemonies and confirm stereotypes associated with immigrants and their descendants. She argues that ‘under the guise of giving “true” transparency on society (aka the Arab drug underworld, the violence of young loubards, etc.), they . . . in fact reinforc[ed] sacred cows normally associated with rightist discourses and the bien pensants class’.43 In addition, Tarr asserts that ‘mainstream French cinema has been notoriously reluctant to perform a critique of France’s role as an exploitative colonial or neo-colonial power’ and that ‘its treatment of decolonisation and immigration has tended to contribute to the stigmatisation and othering of first-generation immigrants from the Maghreb and their descendants’. She also argues that placing films by immigrant directors within cinéma de banlieue can be problematic as it ‘risks effacing the specificity of ethnic minority experiences’.44 Thus, both characterisations within films and categorisation of films can contribute to the perpetuation of discourses that at best ignore the significance of immigrant experiences and at worst play

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a role in the continued stigmatisation of immigrants within French society.

Banlieues, the Republic and the big screen There are clear reasons why many banlieue residents criticise how their areas are often represented within the media and by politicians and feel themselves to be victims of a similar sort of stigmatisation to that felt by immigrants in France. As mentioned in the introduction to this book, popular usage of the term banlieues often evokes a series of negative issues (for example, crime, poverty and unemployment) rather than merely a geographical location. Works by several experts help to deconstruct the term banlieue and elucidate the ways that it is often used within media and political discourses. Hargreaves states that ‘the banlieues are an ideological rather than a spatially defined location’ and expands on this by noting that the media use the term banlieues as a news category made up of an ‘amalgamation of urban deprivation, immigration and social disorder’.45 Banlieue thus becomes shorthand for a set of socio-economic problems through its frequent association with violent incidents such as rioting and the burning of cars. Champagne argues that dominant media approaches to the banlieues create a situation whereby as well as the real problems that objectively exist in these neighbourhoods, the residents have to defend themselves against the very negative public image of themselves which is produced by the media and which can be very different from the reality.46

In other words, the media stigmatisation of banlieues is something of which residents are aware and that influences how they seek to represent themselves. Consequently, these media discourses reinforce dominant power relations and in a similar way to those that exist in the socio-political realm. As Mucchielli demonstrates, the mainstream media often overplays the level of crime in urban and suburban areas.47 This masks the fact that many banlieues in France are relatively quiet, calm and monotonous. Since such areas fail to provide spectacular images (for example, of rioting and burning cars), they do not receive as much media coverage as banlieues that experience higher levels of unrest. Rigouste argues that similarities between popular political

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and media discourses about France’s banlieues allow the media and politicians to utilise each other’s standpoints to support their own, and consequently reinforce dominant power relations between the heart of the French state and its banlieues.48 Given that some analysts see the heavily centralising and universalistic ethos of republicanism as being akin to ‘internal colonialism’ due to the way in which such policies serve to ‘eradicate linguistic and cultural particularisms’, it is worth asking if a similar process is also othering the banlieues.49 Rigouste demonstrates that the French media and politicians are often eager to portray the banlieues as deviating from norms associated with the rest of French society. He cites as an example Chirac’s comments in 1994 that the banlieues were areas characterised by ‘these high-rise estates where the Republic is coming undone bit by bit’.50 In other words, Chirac appeared to suggest that the single and indivisible nation – a crucial republican concept – was imploding as socio-economic problems and racial tensions were emerging in certain banlieues. Chirac’s comments, and his focus on the theme of la fracture sociale (social disintegration) in his successful presidential election campaign of 1995, can be explained by Rigouste’s observation that ‘the representation of the banlieues as a world of disorder and lawlessness serves a specific discourse, that of the need to take control’.51 In other words, evoking perceived problems in France’s banlieues can be used to justify policy objectives. The ideological space that has enabled such a discourse to emerge is in part the product of a policy shift by the French left. Especially during the 1990s, they progressively moved away from their traditional view that crime often stems from social inequalities towards one that characterised delinquency as a consequence of actions by criminals whose behaviour could not be explained by a specific sociological context.52 As Jennings argues, this has been mirrored by a somewhat fatalistic focus on exclusion rather than equality within political and academic spheres.53 Although being tough on crime is traditionally associated with the right, it has become an increasingly consensual issue in French politics since the late 1980s. This has simultaneously been mirrored by the increasing degree of consensus concerning the perceived need for tougher immigration controls in France, which also traverses trad­ itional left–right divisions.54

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The political ascension and presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy provided a prime example of how French politicians have sought to exploit topics such as France’s banlieues and immigration for their own gain. Sarkozy was unafraid of courting controversy whilst establishing a reputation as a tough-talking man of action and, during a visit to La Cité des 4000 in La Courneuve in June 2005, he stated that ‘it is necessary to clean out certain estates, and when I say that they need to be cleaned using Kärcher, that means that deep cleansing is necessary’.55 On a state visit to Argenteuil in October 2005 he provoked further anger, this time by describing young unruly residents of housing estates as racaille (scum) who needed to be eradicated. This description of supposedly undesirable elements that needed to be dealt with swiftly and uncompromisingly reinforced hegemonic discourse about the breakdown of law and order in France’s banlieues. The rhetoric of Sarkozy and others illustrates that campaigners and political film-makers have much to react against when it comes to representing France’s banlieues. If French film-makers are to succeed in creating counter-discourses about France’s banlieues then they need to avoid replicating the negative stereotypes associated with mainstream media coverage, especially when evoking themes such as crime and violence. Here, the extent to which violent scenes are contextualised is of great importance. For example, is the violence shown on screen gratuitous or is it represented as a consequence of (or response to) socio-political issues and injustices? The banlieues’ status as the typical backdrop for filming immigrants since the 1980s is itself a trend that could help to facilitate the formation of stereotypical discourses that conflate the (admittedly overlapping) issues of banlieues and immigration.56 However, several recent films about immigrants (or their descendants) have been set in less familiar locations in provincial France, opening up an opportunity for such people to ‘occupy space in more constructive and imaginative ways’.57 When responding to stereotypical notions that conflate immigration and the banlieues, it is important to point out that racial exclusion can affect people who are born in France and are French citizens. Similarly, social exclusion can be an issue for banlieue residents independent of their racial or ethnic origins. In other words, the suburban subaltern is not always non-white and non-French. However, Jennings’s point that ‘high levels of unemployment touch the unskilled and therefore the immigrant

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disproportionately’ suggests that the subaltern is often of foreign descent.58 When films set in France’s banlieues challenge negative stereotypes about these areas they can create a sense of empowerment and contribute to the formation of a collective identity as well as the establishment of counter-hegemonic discourse. However, this is a far from easy task. O’Shaughnessy contends that many banlieue films ‘struggle to frame the revolt of outer-city youth in class-based terms’ and that evoking class issues, and especially the situation of the working class, is now seen as somewhat outdated.59 Although these films are often ‘stripped of the kind of universal claims and totalising vision that once allowed [them] to face capital or imperialism’, many of them still attempt to engage with key principles of France’s republican political traditions.60 Indeed, republicanism has become one of several ‘discours alternatifs d’universalisation’ (alternative universalising discourses) in a context where traditional left-wing politics constitutes a less frequent reference point.61

Moving towards a transnational French cinema in an era of globalisation The context within which cinematic representations of immigrant experiences in France is discussed is changing, notably due to the increasingly transnational nature of French cinema. Several scholars have questioned the contemporary pertinence of national cinemas and French national cinema, and Susan Hayward has argued that in France ‘there is no single cinema that is the national cinema, but several’.62 Migration flows and the influence of foreign cinemas on films produced in France also mean that it is important to acknowledge the diversity and breadth of what is often termed French cinema. Concentrating on transnational elements of French cinema helps more adequately to contextualise groups of people who themselves possess hybrid identities. As Tarr observes, ‘French people of Maghrebi descent are (still, at times) in a position of “inbetweenness”, displaced in relation to both French and Maghrebi culture’.63 Elsewhere, Tarr argues that one of the reasons for the increasing focus on the transnational is ‘the intensification of the movement across borders of capital, goods, information and labour, exacerbated in Europe by the break-up of the Soviet Union and the

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enlargement of the European Union’.64 This process, and especially the liberalisation of international trade laws, may reduce the extent to which the French state remains able to provide support for French films that is not available to non-French films. A proportion of the price of every cinema ticket sold in France is reinvested in the French cinema industry even if the film for which it is sold is not French, and some foreign companies claim that this is unjust. This form of state support may well come under renewed attack due to calls for economic deregulation by groups such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as the number and size of protected marketplaces becomes even smaller. The constant evolution of an increasingly transnational world may alter the extent to which French republican structures continue to constitute a political and cultural reference point. Over a decade and a half ago, Farhad Khosrokhavar had already noted that young banlieue residents in France were increasingly identifying the experiences of Black Americans as an important means of contextualising their own lives.65 The significance of transnational contexts is further demonstrated by the argument that films by immigrant directors can benefit from contextualisation in relation to both French cinema and the cinema(s) of their director’s country of origin. However, it is still important to ask what such films – and those by French-born banlieue directors – have to say about the French nation and the way in which its republican political culture functions. This will be my prime focus since republicanism continues to shape the specificity of the French nation, the way in which political dissent is often voiced, and the manner in which principles such as nationhood, nationality and citizenship are conceptualised and debated.

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Chapter Two

The Sans-papiers on Screen – Contextualising Immigrant Experiences in Film Introduction The participation of film-makers in campaigns in favour of the sanspapiers in the mid-1990s is closely associated with the renewal of social and political film-making in France that emerged around this time, although it often involved their taking action as politically engaged intellectuals rather than as film-makers per se.1 Their use of public appeals and open letters replicated forms of protest that have been used in France in response to other major political issues such as the Algerian War in 1960 and abortion laws in 1971. The involvement of intellectuals in such campaigns raises important issues about agency similar to those that emerge from Spivak’s work on subaltern voices. For example, to what extent were the filmmakers seeking to speak for the sans-papiers rather than allowing them to speak for themselves? How did they seek to situate themselves in relation to the mouvement des sans-papiers? Questions concerning power relations are crucial to many of the sans-papiers’ struggles. Indeed, Rosello identifies the emergence of the term sans-papiers as a significant counter-hegemonic event in itself as it challenged state discourse in the late 1980s and early 1990s that scapegoated many immigrants by referring to them as clandestins.2 This delegitimising process was doubtlessly made easier due to the way that key republican principles – such as the strict distinction between nationals and non-nationals – dictate that sanspapiers’ residency status excludes them from political participation.

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Brief chronology of the sans-papiers movement and the involvement of film-makers in the sans-papiers movement Although the hunger strikes and protests of sans-papiers between 1996 and 1998 received considerable media attention, they represented the continuation of an often less publicised struggle that can be traced back over several decades. Johanna Siméant has listed 172 hunger strikes by immigrants in France between March 1971 and November 1997, demonstrating how radical forms of protest have frequently been adopted by immigrants in France.3 These demonstrations occurred whilst both the right and the left were in power. Although the left have sometimes promised to reverse legislation introduced by right-wing governments that has made it more difficult for immigrants to arrive and remain in France, they have also failed to honour promises about how many people they would regularise. This occurred after their victories in legislative elections in both 1981 and 1997, and legislation introduced by the left-wing governments (for example, the 1989 Joxe Law) has at times argu­ ably reinforced tough laws introduced by right-wing governments. Faced with challenging economic conditions and rising unemployment after the oil crisis of the mid-1970s and the rise of the Front National, the presence of immigrants became an increasingly emotive issue across the political spectrum and this remains the case today. What distinguishes the sans-papiers movement from many other protest groups is its sporadic and spontaneous nature. It has been a largely autonomous movement that has chosen its own direction and methods of action, albeit supported by well-known anti-racist and immigrant-support organisations. The sans-papiers movement has, however, shied away from the methods of campaigning groups who have hierarchical structures and formalised national committees, and is instead composed of many local collectives. In other words, the sans-papiers movement has not only attempted to counter the hegemonic discourse of the French state when it comes to immigration, but also adopted a modus operandi that differentiates it from dominant power relations that exist within other protest movements. The consequences of this are not necessarily entirely positive; Siméant has questioned to what extent a collective memory of struggles exists within the sans-papiers movement precisely due to the way that it is structured.4 This lack of a centralised structure arguably

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makes it harder for sans-papiers collectives across France to establish a common focus and sense of purpose. Since the mid-1990s, French film-makers have participated in several high-profile demonstrations in favour of the sans-papiers. The Appel des 66 cinéastes (Appeal of the 66 film directors) was published on 11 February 1997 and protested against the Debré law, and especially the way the law criminalised the provision of accommodation for foreigners whose residency papers were not in order. For Rosello, this constituted a significant counter-hegemonic act as it ‘invent[ed] the figure of an illegitimate, illegal host, corresponding to that of the illegal immigrant, the illegal guest’.5 Demonstrations and declarations by film-makers during the ensuing year and a half often sought to reinforce the notion that leading French politicians were guilty of mistreating sans-papiers. These included protests at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival that coincided with the visit of Jacques Chirac. The following year saw film-makers criticise a left-wing government, and especially the interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement, for breaking pre-election promises about the regularisation of sans-papiers. On 13 May 1998, two weeks before a deadline for sans-papiers to apply to be regularised, one appeal by film-makers received particular attention as it was issued during the Cannes Film Festival, and exactly thirty years after the festival that was blocked by film-makers such as Godard and Truffaut as part of the events of May 1968. This shows that film-makers have exploited memory of past engagements as politically conscious intellectuals in order to serve the cause of the sans-papiers. In addition to signing petitions and open letters, the production of a three-minute short film entitled Nous, sans-papiers de France (We, sans-papiers of France, 1997) demonstrated French film-makers’ desire to use their art as well as their notoriety to serve a political cause. This film was produced shortly after the initial Appel des 66 cinéastes of February 1997 and was coordinated by Nicolas Philibert. It featured Madjiguène Cissé (one of the main spokespeople of the sans-papiers) speaking the text of le manifeste des sans-papiers (the manifesto of the sans-papiers) that was published in Libération on 25 February 1997, demonstrating an intertextual link between different modes of action. Cissé was filmed in close-up explaining how most sans-papiers arrive in France via legal means and arbitrarily become illegal as a result of repressive legislation. The short film was shown before feature films in many French cinemas.

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The four sans-papiers films to be studied in this chapter are far from the only works on this theme that have been made since 1995; indeed, in 2010 the film magazine Première described ‘the sanspapiers film’ as ‘a swiftly expanding genre’.6 However, some of the films that it cited as key examples of this trend are fairly commercial mainstream fictions in which the prime focus is on how a character played by a well-known French actor is affected by a meeting with a sans-papiers (for example, the swimming trainer played by Vincent Lindon in Philippe Loiret’s 2009 film Welcome). Anne Le Ny’s Les Invités de mon père (The Guests of my Father, 2010) is based on a similar premise as Fabrice Luchini and Karin Viard take on the roles of children of a widowed doctor who marries a sans-papiers from Moldova. These two films, like Brigitte Roüan’s Travaux (Housewarming, 2005), make sans-papiers part of the central narrative to varying degrees without always seeking to provide a detailed contextualisation of their relations with the French state or how they are affected by discourses of exclusion. It is for this reason that they will not be examined in depth here. There are, however, other films about sans-papiers that do make issues faced by undocumented migrants a more central part of their narrative. These include fictions such as Romain Goupil’s Les mains en l’air (Hands Up, 2010) and Nicolas Klotz’s La Blessure (The Wound, 2004) as well as Jacques Kébadian’s documentary D’une Brousse à l’autre (From One Wasteland to Another, 1998). This trio of films explores similar issues surrounding exile and exclusion to the four analysed in this chapter. They have not been excluded from due to lack of relevance but, rather, due to the fact that the four main works chosen here better facilitate comparison of the diverse ways in which French cinema has sought to represent the sans-papiers and the issues with which they are confronted.

La Ballade des sans-papiers (The Ballad of the sans-papiers, 1997) Samir Abdallah and Rafaele Ventura’s La Ballade des sans-papiers was released in the same year as Nous, sans-papiers de France and provides more detailed focus on important protests. It locates itself within the movement and acts as a video diary that chronicles several high profile actions. These include occupations of churches such as l’Église Saint-Ambroise in March 1996 and l’Église Saint-Bernard in

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July and August 1996, both of which ended after the intervention of riot police. The film was produced by IM’média, an alternative media group with a particular interest in immigration. It was shown at various festivals and events organised by campaigning groups, and achieving mainstream cinematic distribution does not appear to have been one its makers’ main priorities. Compared with other films about the sans-papiers, Sylvie Agard argues that La Ballade des sans-papiers was made ‘to serve a more explicitly militant objective’.7 Understanding the events that led to the formation of IM’média in the early 1980s and the organisation’s principles helps to contextualise the objectives of La Ballade des sans-papiers. Mogniss Abdallah, one of the founders of IM’média, has described its creation as part of the aftermath of events in 1980 such as Rock Against Police (RAP) and the death of a youth called Kader in Vitry (shot by the janitor of his block of flats) in the same year.8 His description of the reaction to the shooting of Kader demonstrates IM’média’s counter-­ hegemonic desire to challenge the methods of representation of mainstream television channels: ‘there was a large demonstration and when the television crews descended it was decided to refuse to allow them to film and offer that, if they wanted images, they could show ours’.9 This illustrates how IM’média saw promoting selfrepresentation as a means of empowering communities and creating counter-hegemonic discourse as a response to the imbalances created by the coverage of mainstream media groups exterior to such communities. In order to further this aim, IM’média has been reluctant to collaborate with large production companies. Mogniss Abdallah has justified this by arguing that ‘the majority of companies reproduce the constraints of television production and of the CNC, notably in terms of format (duration often determined by television commercial breaks, personal angles of attack to draw in the television viewer by using emotion)’.10 This explains why Abdallah prioritised selling copies of La Ballade des sans-papiers to various campaigning and community groups over attempting to encourage a French television channel to broadcast it. The collective methods of production employed by the makers of La Ballade des sans-papiers also set it apart from most television documentaries, and this was done in order to serve the cause of the sans-papiers. Mogniss Abdallah has described the process that this involved:

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During the occupation of Saint-Bernard, we asked the people who were rushing about camera in hand to put their images into a common pot; we had the means to do the montage and immediately produce documents which were of use to sans-papiers collectives in order to explain the struggle . . . For me, it is an account, a video-diary; there is nothing amazing in terms of the production, it is primarily a document which has been useful for the extension and explanation of the struggle of the sans-papiers.11

This illustrates that the uncomplicated nature of the film stemmed from a desire to produce it swiftly, and primarily as a record of events that would serve the purpose of explaining the struggle of the sans-papiers. Whilst editing down hundreds of hours of rushes was certainly a considerable task, time was undoubtedly saved due to the lack of a narrator in the film whose words connect all the footage. This strategy also helps to focus the attention of the viewer on sequences where sans-papiers describe their predicament. In La Ballade des sans-papiers, captions that provide the date and location of sequences filmed are used to create a visual chronology instead of a more intrusive superimposed narrative voice. The disadvantage of omitting any narrative commentary is a reduction in contextualisation. However, the film utilises clips of interventions by politicians on news programmes and interviews of members of groups defending the sans-papiers in order to make the spectator aware of discourses about immigration that existed at the time of its production. The interviews with the sans-papiers help to explain why the sans-papiers were demonstrating and this contextualises the various mobilisations of the sans-papiers shown in the film. The fact that the sans-papiers movement chose to locate many of their major demonstrations in central Paris was, as Rosello argues, of great strategic and symbolic importance: When television cameras and newspapers covered their struggle, the sanspapiers created a space of sociological, legal and philosophical debate in the very heart of the French capital: they asked questions about the relationship between the city and the nation, between the refugee and the law, between rights and equity.12

As Rosello suggests, occupying space in Paris called into question the actions of those at the heart of France’s government and, indeed, the role of the republican nation state. Nevertheless, La

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Ballade des sans-papiers also shows demonstrations that took place at other locations in the Paris area such as Versailles, Nanterre and Colombes, and in major provincial cities such as Toulouse and Lille. It is in Lille that we see footage of a group of sans-papiers attending a ceremony known in French as a baptême républicain, demonstrating the desire of immigrants arriving in France to integrate into French society and adopt its republican values rather than representing the French state purely as a source of alienation and exclusion.13 These immigrants clearly wish to establish themselves as French and consequently reduce the extent to which they are considered to be foreign. The numerous interviews of sans-papiers in La Ballade des sanspapiers humanise them both collectively and individually and, therefore, help the film to go beyond merely showing images of iconic moments in their struggle. Whereas media coverage often refers to les sans-papiers in general, La Ballade des sans-papiers gives names to these people and allows them to describe their experiences in France. They evoke subjects such as their attempts to regularise their immigration status and how they organised themselves. Near the start, a sans-papiers named Moussa Sissoko explains that it was the failure of many individual efforts that led the sanspapiers to group together so as to seek a common solution. The ordering of interviews within the film helps to create an explicit counter-narrative regarding the actions of the sans-papiers. A prime example occurs just after an excerpt from a television news programme where Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger angrily suggests that sans-papiers are being manipulated by campaigning groups pursuing political agendas. It is immediately followed by Moussa Sissoko talking of how the sans-papiers organised themselves, and took decisions independently of the campaigning groups supporting them. In a similar vein, other interviewees (such as Ababacar Diop and Camara Hamady) explain that many sans-papiers arrived in France legally and worked before losing their right to residency documents, sometimes as a consequence of repressive legislation such as the Pasqua law. To twist a well-known phrase uttered by Simone de Beauvoir, this shows that it is often the case that on ne naît pas sans-papiers, on le devient, and that it is the laws (and arguably inhospitability) of republican France that creates this situation rather than simply the arrival of immigrants in France.14 The fact that many of the sans-papiers have worked in France demonstrates

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their desire to avoid having to rely on state benefits and instead actively participate in French society, even if their residency status marginalises them in political terms. La Ballade des sans-papiers illustrates that women as well as men played a key role in challenging the way in which their marginalisation emanated from the French state. There are several interviews with Madjiguène Cissé and also another sans-papiers named Valérie. Valérie describes how her life in France became especially difficult after giving birth to a child. Although her child possessed French nationality this did not make it easier for Valérie to gain French nationality, which demonstrates the potential paradoxes of republican principles regarding access to national status. The arguments of Valérie, and other female sans-papiers, reinforce the fact that the sans-papiers in the film see themselves as part of a collective struggle that involves fighting for everyone to be regularised. This spirit of solidarity is also evident when a male sans-papiers describes being hospitalised after participating in a hunger strike: They took four tubes of blood from me and told me that I was obliged to eat. I said ‘no, I am not eating – if you want me to eat, tell the government to regularise the 300 people at Saint-Bernard and to give them papers. Then, we will stop the hunger strike. But we’re not going to stop just like that.’ 15

The hunger strike and the forced admission to hospital meant that some sans-papiers went from being denied hospitality by the French state to having an unwanted form of hospitality imposed on them. Interviews such as the one cited above help to trace the motivations and solidarity of the sans-papiers movement and go beyond concentrating on a few iconic events that received significant press coverage. Nevertheless, we do see images of several key high-profile events, albeit filmed from inside the sans-papiers movement. Near the end of the film, during the occupation of the Église SaintBernard, we see the media arrive at the church to report on a potentially dramatic event as rumours circulate that an evacuation is imminent. Footage filmed inside the church by amateur cameramen illustrates the forcefulness of the evacuation as the riot police break down doors and use tear gas to expedite the process. Despite these scenes being shown near the end of the film, their status as one stage of a wider struggle is alluded to by the closing phrase of the film: ‘the story of the sans-papiers is only just beginning’.16

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The fact that La Ballade des sans-papiers closely follows the sanspapiers movement during an important period featuring several high-profile demonstrations, and mainly uses images filmed from within the movement, helps to create a deeper understanding of issues facing the sans-papiers. The lack of pace at which the story sometimes progresses fits in with the use of the term ballade in the title (a type of song that is often slow and gentle).17 However, some might find it too slow and expect a greater level of explanation from a narrator (or greater contextualisation created by the editing of sequences) to provide more guidance within the film. In addition, although the footage filmed by amateur cameramen brings many interesting insights, its inconsistent level of quality may make the film hard to watch for some people. This illustrates how politically determined aesthetic choices can work against a film’s accessibility and hence its power to persuade audiences who have not already been converted to the cause.

Parmi Nous: sans-papiers, sans visages et sans paroles (Among Us: without Papers, without Faces and without Voices, 2004) Carole Sionnet’s Parmi Nous: sans-papiers, sans visages et sans paroles was shot in Angoulême during 2004, eight years after the events that feature in La Ballade des sans-papiers. Whilst the French media’s interest in the sans-papiers waned after the evacuation of the Église Saint-Bernard, Sionnet’s film shows that the issues that provoked earlier mobilisations remained important in the years that followed.18 Her initial interest in the sans-papiers stemmed from learning sign language and becoming an interpreter for a deaf Algerian sans-papiers named Ahmed who communicated uniquely via sign language. Accompanying him in his attempts to obtain valid residency documents after his demand for asylum was rejected made her aware of the complexities of the French administrative system, and ultimately led her to make a film. Although Parmi Nous shares with La Ballade des sans-papiers the fact that it was a low-budget independent documentary, Sionnet paid greater attention to production values in order to make sure her film was easily watchable: To begin with, I did not have any funding to make this film, so I thought that I was going to make something much more rushed. But actually, I realised that

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there are a certain number of rules to follow as well. For example, if the sound is not good and you cannot hear people well, then the reception will not be the same. The public cannot listen to someone if the sound is not adequately looked after. So, all the care I took, I think that it also reinforces all the ideas that you can put across.19

This shows that Sionnet did not believe that a small budget necessitated sacrificing the quality of the footage shot for Parmi Nous. In terms of subject matter, the most important difference between Parmi Nous and La Ballade des sans-papiers is that the former shows considerably less footage of protests than the latter and focuses more on the daily life of sans-papiers. Sionnet adopted this strategy as she wanted to reach audiences that were not already sympathetic to the sans-papiers cause.20 In other words, she deliberately locates her film outside the mouvement des sans-papiers in order to appeal to a broader and less politicised audience. Both its full title (Parmi Nous: sans-papiers, sans visages, sans paroles) and the opening scenes make clear Sionnet’s desire to show audiences that sans-papiers are present in France but often are confined to a life in which their residency status forces them to become invisible and denies them a voice that would allow them to participate in political decision making. Parmi Nous begins with shots of people walking in a pedestrianised area of Angoulême with their faces out of shot, and they do not say anything. The fact that papiers, visages and paroles are not the only things undocumented residents lack is made clear by an intertitle in white text that appears on a black background and explains: ‘Being a sanspapiers means not having a residency permit, not being entitled to work, not being entitled to accommodation, not being entitled to social security and being eligible for deportation at any time’.21 The pertinence of this description is illustrated via the film’s focus on an Algerian sans-papiers and a Guinean family of sans-papiers, both of whom live in Angoulême. Just before the final credits, an intertitle explains that the claim for territorial asylum of the Algerian sans-papiers was rejected and that the Guinean family hastily left Angoulême after the authorities tried to begin the process of expelling them. Sionnet’s depiction of two different types of sans-papiers (a single North African and a married West African who has children) was motivated by her desire to show the different sorts of problems that

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they faced.22 By basing her film around two differing interviewees, she challenged a form of hegemonic discourse described by Shohat and Stam whereby ‘dominant cinema is fond of turning “dark” or Third World peoples into unsuitable others, interchangeable others who can “stand in” for another’.23 Agard argues that such a process is evident in much of the media coverage of the sans-papiers in France and that they are often portrayed ‘as a group and not as people capable of expressing ideas’.24 In her film, Sionnet explores a series of important issues – such as nationality, disability and family situation – that affect sans-papiers in a variety of different ways, and thus emphasises the diversity within the broad category of sanspapiers. Whilst interviews with Ahmed (the Algerian sans-papiers) and the family of Aboubacar (a Guinean sans-papiers) about their day-to-day life form the main part of Parmi Nous, Sionnet also makes wider points about the range of situations that sans-papiers experience. She does this by punctuating the film with shots of other sans-papiers who appear with their backs to the camera as they describe their lives. This provides a reminder of the enforced anonymity of many sans-papiers who live in fear of identity checks and subsequent deportation. Sionnet also uses her interest in sign language to make another general point about the interaction between differing forms of exclusion that Ahmed faces due to his disability and residency status. Parmi Nous is subtitled throughout in order to make it accessible to deaf spectators. Sionnet has argued that showing someone who is deaf speaking about something other than deafness is potentially empowering for those affected by hearing impairments.25 The importance of communication issues should not be underestimated when it comes to accessing information and support or dealing with administrative procedures. As Rosello states, ‘criminalizing an individual is easier when he or she is not conversant with the legal jargon, and the problem is compounded when the foreigner’s limited mastery of the national language disempowers him or her at the symbolic level’.26 Rosello’s analysis helps to reinforce the point that the feelings of exclusion that Ahmed experiences as a sanspapiers are doubtlessly accentuated by the fact that he is restricted to communicating entirely via sign language. By concentrating on Ahmed, the family of Aboubacar and briefly on other sans-papiers, Sionnet seeks to empower these people in more general terms by giving them time and space to allow them to describe their lives

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without the intervention of experts whose presence could create greater distance between the film’s spectators and the sans-papiers. She did so due to her dislike of television coverage where ‘it is always theorists or people speaking off-screen who explain to us how sanspapiers live’.27 In other words, Sionnet sought to challenge dominant power relations by creating a format that would let the subaltern speak without the need to reference independent ‘experts’ who had not lived the same experiences. In addition to creating proximity between spectators and the sans-papiers, Sionnet’s methods of filming indicate her desire to avoid being intrusive or make the sans-papiers feel ill at ease. Extreme close-ups were used with restraint so as to avoid overly exploiting moments when the interviewees became upset or emotional. Sionnet has talked of ‘stay[ing] far enough away so as not to reinforce the pain’ and described how ‘it was always difficult to maintain the distinction between voyeurism and respecting what people want to show’.28 Sionnet thus sought to balance engagement with the protagonists and respectful discretion when necessary. When Ahmed and Aboubacar express emotion in Parmi Nous, it is clear that they feel attached to France and do so in a way that demonstrates an awareness of republican political culture and French history. Ahmed emotionally describes how his Algerian father fought for France in the Second World War and, indeed, died in France. The French state’s lack of gratitude towards North African soldiers who fought for France in the Second World War has been highlighted in Rachid Bouchareb’s 2006 fictional film Indigènes (Days of Glory) whose conclusion suggests that the theoretically egalitarian French Republic has not equally recognised all groups of soldiers. In Parmi Nous, we learn that, although Ahmed’s father fought for France and gained French residency papers, Ahmed was refused political asylum despite having left Algeria following threats from the radical Islamist FIS (le Front islamique du salut/Islamic Salvation Front) that led him to believe that his life was in danger. Ahmed most clearly evokes republican ideology when expressing his desire to be ‘a real citizen who has rights’, demonstrating his awareness of republican political culture and vocabulary.29 This is perhaps an example of what Rosello terms ‘tactical universalism’, a procedure whereby republican values are evoked in order to further one’s own case.30 It could also be interpreted as a further appeal for citizenship in France to be less closely tied to nationality and more

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closely linked to residency and participation. Ahmed’s desire to be ‘a real citizen’ also demonstrates that he is an immigrant in France who wishes to cease being a foreigner. Near the middle of the film, Aboubacar also argues that France should have a moral responsibility towards people like himself and Ahmed due to its actions as a colonial power. We also learn that Aboubacar has been in France for twelve years and retains little contact with his native Guinea, which is reminiscent of Ahmed’s account of having few relatives in Algeria as both of his parents are no longer alive. Parmi Nous thus demonstrates how immigrants can form ties with their adopted country that outweigh links they maintain with their country of origin, challenging the view that immigrants in France pose a threat to French identity and have no desire to adhere to French customs and political culture. Aboubacar’s attachment to France and respect for its political leaders is clear when he recalls that the first time he saw Angoulême was when he visited Charente in order to witness the funeral of François Mitterrand. Despite their attachment to France, Ahmed’s and Aboubacar’s residency status prohibits them from fulfilling their desire to work and lead a normal life. Ahmed describes the stark reality of this situation: Having papers means being able to work, being able to live, work, have a flat, travel. Without papers you do not live; you are forbidden from working, forbidden from having a flat. I do not receive any benefits, I do not eat whenever I am hungry.31

The close-up of Ahmed when he is speaking highlights his emotion and frustration. Aboubacar expresses similar sentiments by comparing being sans-papiers to being like the ‘living dead’ due to his constant state of fear that emanates from not possessing residency documents.32 He says that these feelings stem from worrying about being asked to produce identity papers by the police, and not being able to provide for his family. Indeed, he mentions early in the film that being sans-papiers has often prevented him from living in the same place as his wife and two children as it can be hard to find somewhere where all four of them can stay. He explains that they have rarely been able to stay in the same place for more than a month and that they have also had to sleep rough.

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Despite the way that Parmi Nous primarily depicts the daily life of Ahmed and Aboubacar, it also creates enough distance in order to show their predicament to be a consequence of government policies. Intertitles help to explain the lengthy procedures that have to be followed in order to become regularised, and a shot of a complicated diagram produced by the French state entitled l’organigramme du parcours administratif d’un étranger (flow chart of the administrative procedures of a foreigner) makes this even more explicit. This demonstrates the pertinence of Rosello’s comments that ‘being grateful to the so-called host nation is a baffling proposition if the only contact between the immigrant and that abstract entity is a bureaucratic labyrinth of impersonal and alienating procedures’.33 Consequently, the number and nature of challenges that immigrants have to overcome in order to become French can lead them to question the appeal of Frenchness and the values upon which it is based. An intertitle near the end of the film places the challenges faced by people like Ahmed and Aboubacar within the context of a wider struggle, explaining that ‘in order to try to resist, all across France collectives that are part of the national umbrella organisation of the sans-papiers have been battling since 1996’.34 Thus, Parmi Nous refers back to the iconic mobilisations of the sans-papiers in Paris that can be seen in La Ballade des sans-papiers even though Sionnet does not foreground these protests to the same extent. The continuation of this struggle is re-emphasised by the last phrase of the intertitle that closes the film after it is mentioned that Ahmed’s demand for territorial asylum has been refused and that the police have commenced attempts to deport Aboubacar and his family: ‘fearing being arrested, Aboubacar and his family are in hiding. They and many others are waiting and hoping for papers.’35 Whilst Parmi Nous portrays both the daily life of sans-papiers and the reasons for their plight in a manner that belies its low budget, it was ultimately not seen by a large number of spectators. Sionnet failed to find a distributor for her film, which she thought was partially due to the lack of media coverage of the daily life of sanspapiers.36 She largely promoted her film via screenings at which she was present, and these events were often organised in collaboration with cultural or humanitarian groups. Although this appeared to contradict her desire for the film to reach a wide audience not necessarily already sympathetic to the cause of the sans-papiers, it did help to generate publicity. Parmi Nous received a positive critical

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response that did more than merely acknowledge its political per­tinence. It was shown at the Marseille International Documentary Film Festival and an international documentary film festival in Tokyo. The film also led to a reinvigoration of the sans-papiers movements in certain areas, and to the creation or reformation of support groups after several screenings. In addition, both Aboubacar’s family and Ahmed were regularised barely a month after the first projection of Parmi Nous in Angoulême, demonstrating that a film’s limited distribution need not prevent it from having a political impact.

L’Afrance (2001) Alain Gomis’s 2001 fiction L’Afrance is based around a central character, El Hadji, who is from Senegal and studying history in France. It uses his situation as a means of exploring issues such as the leg­acies of colonialism and problems associated with hybrid identities without seeking to ground his situation in relation to the mouvement des sans-papiers. The opening of the film demonstrates that, as a postgraduate research student, El Hadji is in a radically different situation to friends of North African and West African descent who sell souvenirs to tourists at the Eiffel Tower. His status challenges hegemonic discourse that would seek to portray all sanspapiers as people who come to France to escape poverty and demonstrates that it is possible to become a sans-papiers after legally arriving in France. Discussions between El Hadji and his friends at a wedding show that, whilst he is able to intellectualise his own situation, his friends feel that he is isolated from the reality of daily life in his native Senegal and that he overly idealises his African homeland. This is one of the aspects of his hybrid identity with which he struggles to come to terms throughout the film and his problems intensify after a crucial turning point. When El Hadji tries to renew his student visa a few days after it expires, his life changes dramatically as he is arrested and taken to a detention centre: he becomes a sans-papiers. Although he is released from the detention centre without being deported, the incident changes his relationship with France and attitude towards staying there. This passage of events demonstrates how the category ‘foreigner’ includes some people who are more or less welcome than others, and whose desirability in the eyes of the French state can change swiftly.

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L’Afrance differs from La Ballade des sans-papiers and Parmi Nous for reasons other than being a fiction rather than a documentary. Its distribution provides a key example as it was shown in considerably more cinemas despite only gaining a distributor after winning two prizes at the 2001 Locarno Film Festival. L’Afrance also situates the subject of immigration in a different way to the two sans-papiers documentaries previously analysed. Gomis has been eager to assert that his film deals with existential as well as political issues, stating that: The film does not just deal with problems of identity or exile. It is above all the story of a man faced by his convictions and who turns out to be a bit less strong than he appeared. It is a journey of maturity and that is something that everyone can understand.37

However, Alain Gomis did want to depict certain aspects of immigration and show an often unseen side of France, namely ‘that of cellars and detention centres’.38 Furthermore, the title of Gomis’s film demonstrates his desire to explore identity issues faced by immigrants who arrive in France. L’Afrance is a mixture of l’Afrique and la France, ‘a territory that does not exist, a mixture of memories and unrealised hopes, a world where “one never constructs, one never settles”, which is synonymous with decline and desperation’.39 Alain Gomis grew up in France as the son of a Senegalese father and a French mother, and these words encapsulate the contrasts and contradictions associated with the interaction of these influences. Even though Gomis’s film is a fiction, he has argued that it provides a representation of events that are very real. Indeed, the major turning point in the film is based on an event experienced by Alain Gomis’s brother.40 El Hadji arrives at a council building to renew his visa, and there is no initial hint that a significant event is about to occur as he explains the purpose of his visit to a member of staff of North African descent. Within a few seconds of the member of staff consulting a colleague, El Hadji is on the floor of the council building being handcuffed by three policemen (one of whom is black), before being bundled into a police van. Via the presence of a North African staff member and several ethnic minority policemen in the council building the film avoids portraying a straightforward case of white-against-black racism, and signals Gomis’s desire to examine more complicated issues. He has said

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that L’Afrance was a film in which he wanted to go beyond merely denouncing racism by showing how ‘those who suffer from it can themselves get consumed, play the game without being careful’.41 Gomis avoids portraying El Hadji purely as a law-abiding victim of the system by showing him falling into certain traps, such as turning to crime after he feels that he has been mistreated by the French state following his arrest. After being released from a detention centre, El Hadji approaches an Algerian friend who sells forged identity papers and tells him that he too wants to sell forged papers in order to raise the 4,000 francs necessary for him to be able to fly back to Senegal of his own accord. The nostalgic images that El Hadji maintains of his native Senegal are also potentially at odds with his desire to avoid stereotyped positive representations of black people that he evokes in criticising French attitudes: Fifty years ago, people said ‘negroes are savages who only know how to play tamtams’. Today, people say ‘blacks are fantastic, they have rhythm in their blood’. I am fed up of being black, I am Senegalese.42

These sentiments demonstrate that the ‘othering’ of black people in France, whether stemming from repulsion or fascination, traverses both colonial and postcolonial periods. This confusing situation highlights contradictions that emerge after El Hadji’s arrest and detention. Whilst in the detention centre, he initially seems to want to be deported due to his loss of self-confidence and a desire to prevent his French girlfriend Miriam from seeing him in such a state. His release from the centre appears to make him more determined to return to Senegal, where his fiancée Awa is awaiting his return, yet he immediately goes to stay with Miriam. El Hadji sees deportation as an undignified way to return to Senegal, although raising the money for a plane ticket by selling forged residency papers appears a contradictory way out of the moral maze in which he finds himself. Gomis has described how the anger and confusion that accompanies El Hadji’s transition from assured student to sans-papiers threatened with deportation is conveyed by a progressive change in filming techniques: The film’s mise en scène corresponds to the movements of the character. It begins with controlled movements and images in which the colours are a bit saturated, a sort of mixture of the past and the present. It is very fictional. As the film

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advances, the mise en scène becomes more and more uneven, with the camera being hand-held.43

The Paris visible prior to El Hadji’s arrest is so bright that it almost shimmers, a glittering Eldorado encouraging El Hadji to reconsider his plans to return to Senegal on completion of his studies. However, Paris’s historic monuments and tourist attractions are rarely visible in the film other than through the police van window during El Hadji’s bumpy ride to the detention centre.44 Fleeting glimpses of iconic landmarks symbolise how El Hadji’s residency status and origins distinguish him from other visitors to France such as foreign tourists. Although El Hadji has been regularly present in France for several years, his residency permit has not allowed him long-term security to remain. His vision of France is in many ways idealised, but it is also insecure. As Jays argues, the question of whether El Hadji will stay or leave is represented visually through repeated images of ‘doors and exits [that] often stand at the centre of the image’.45 Regular flashbacks to El Hadji’s childhood in Senegal raise the issue of whether staying in France will be worthwhile through the repetition of the question ‘Is what they are going to learn worth what they are going to forget?’46 This is a key phrase in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s 1962 novel L’Aventure ambiguë (The Ambiguous Adventure) and raises the possibility that El Hadji’s stay in France may mean that he adopts a colonialist model of thought that will result in him losing what he gained during his childhood in Senegal. The legacy of colonialism is foregrounded by El Hadji regularly reciting anti-colonialist speeches of the former Guinean leader Sékou Touré whilst showering. As Jays points out, this is somewhat paradoxical as the scenes of El Hadji in the shower appear to symbolise cleansing and renewal yet quoting Sékou Touré shifts the focus back towards the past.47 In addition, El Hadji has left a former colony (Senegal) to study the impact of colonialism in a country that was once a colonial power (France). Gomis has hinted at the potential consequences of this in an interview where he recalls that during his childhood in France he often heard Sékou Touré being referred to as a dictator, and argues that this masks Touré’s status as a defiant and intelligent figure who resisted France’s imperialist rule.48 The ability to identify such a discrepancy demonstrates the validity of Rosello’s argument that people from former colonies are often able to identify ‘the

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mixed messages and contradictory lessons that the motherland wants to teach them’.49 Like the Martiniquan writer Frantz Fanon before him, this is precisely what both Alain Gomis and El Hadji appear to be doing. As L’Afrance ends with El Hadji pensively gazing into space back in Senegal, it is not clear whether he is at one with himself or still struggling to make sense of the convictions that he began to doubt following his arrest and subsequent departure from France. His childhood in Senegal is never far from his mind when in France, and it is unclear how his experiences in France will affect him on his return to Senegal. References to speeches by Sékou Touré and Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s L’Avenutre ambiguë demonstrate the intertextuality involved in L’Afrance’s portrayals of colonial and postcolonial African migrants. They show how migrant experiences in Paris can engender narratives of disappointment, which demonstrate the difference between images of France presented to Africans prior to departure and realities they encounter on arrival. By regularly cutting between El Hadji’s upbringing in Senegal and his student life in Paris, L’Afrance shows how the latter was shaped by the former. Its conclusion, with El Hadji back in Senegal, appears to show him still trying to decipher the link between the two. Thus, the film portrays his status as an immigrant, and subsequently sans-papiers, as part of a trajectory. Indeed, the scene in the administrative building illustrates how someone who has legally arrived in France and obtained valid residency documents can become sans-papiers on the basis of a swiftly taken and arbitrary administrative decision. L’Afrance thus demonstrates that the French state plays a role in creating sans-papiers and also dramatises the emotional pain of a split and precarious postcolonial identity.

Code inconnu (Code Unknown, 2002) Code inconnu was directed by the German-born film-maker Michael Haneke and, like Alain Gomis’s L’Afrance, grounds issues faced by sans-papiers within a wider context than the two documentaries analysed at the start of this chapter. Haneke’s film does not feature the sans-papiers movement but still raises important questions about perceptions of sans-papiers and their interactions with French citizens. A story about a Romanian sans-papiers is one of the central

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elements of its exploration of dysfunctional aspects of modern society, and this serves several purposes. Haneke takes a step back from analysing issues faced by the sans-papiers in general but his film nevertheless illustrates how their situation is embedded within a range of social and political processes. As with L’Afrance, the defining event in Code inconnu highlights how the possession or non-possession of residency documents can have a major impact on the treatment of foreigners in France. Jean, a teenager who has left his father’s farm to visit his brother in Paris, throws a paper bag into the lap of a Romanian beggar (Maria) who is sitting in a shopping arcade. He is then confronted by Amadou, a young man of Malian origin, who orders him to apologise to the woman. When Jean refuses, a scuffle ensues and police intervene to break it up. Jean, who is white and French, is allowed to go free whilst Amadou is arrested. Maria is also taken away by the police as she fails to produce valid residency papers. From this point on, the film examines the contrasting lives led by the people who have been brought together due to the scuffle, reflecting its full title of Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages (Code Unknown: Incomplete Story of Various Journeys). In addition to Jean, Amadou and Maria, Code inconnu also explores the problems faced by other characters such as Anne, who is the girlfriend of Jean’s older brother Georges. In addition to its focus on immigration, the film also evokes broader social issues including discrimination, communication difficulties and the breakdown of family relations. Despite the prominence of these themes, Haneke wanted to avoid describing Code inconnu primarily by referring to these subjects and argued that ‘reducing it to its most obvious ideas (the Babylonian confusion of languages, the incapacity to communicate, the coldness of the consumer society, xenophobia, etc.) [means that] we cannot avoid a mere string of clichés’.50 Haneke structures his films in a way that encourages spectators to ask questions about links between the lives of the different characters, and how their contrasting experiences shape their lives. Seeing most of the main characters together near the start of the film and then in separate strands accentuates their individuality. Interactions between people who feature in different strands of the film encourage the spectator to piece together the various fragments of the film and analyse how they interrelate. This is in keeping Haneke’s notion that a film director needs to include the spectator in their film, which he

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describes in an interview that forms part of the bonus features on the DVD of Code inconnu: I think you must always give the spectator the possibility of participating in the film. He is no longer a mere consumer authorised to ingest spoon-fed images but rather the very person who completes the film. Its [the film’s] framework is born not on the screen but in the spectator’s mind.

Haneke connects this to what he sees as cinema’s dangerous capacity to manipulate reality, a feature that he believes directors are duty-bound to address. In Code inconnu, he uses sequence shots (whereby scenes of several minutes in duration are filmed from beginning to end in one take) to minimise the cinematic manipulation involved in editing. The careful and self-reflexive use of techniques that shape reality is highly relevant to a film about immigration, especially given that politicians and the media often seek to exploit facts and figures to do with immigration for political ends. The way in which some political and media discourses reduce a wide range of immigrant experiences to simplistic negative stereotypes is challenged by Code inconnu’s multi-stranded narrative structure. This helps to situate the lives of the characters within complex trajectories influenced by factors such as colonialism, consumerism and globalisation. After Maria (the Romanian beggar) is taken away by police in Paris, we see her being deported back to Romania and the region she left behind. Isabelle Potel has described how it is clear that Maria’s life in France as ‘the illegal immigrant lacking status, lacking rights, engulfed by anonymity’ contrasts with her status in Romania as ‘the mother of a family recognised in her village’.51 When she returns to Romania, Maria nevertheless seems somewhat bewildered when she arrives back in her home village and sees the house in which her family now lives. Consequently, Code inconnu raises questions about where an immigrant’s true home is and whether they are more attached to their country of origin or adopted country. Like L’Afrance, Code inconnu depicts the lives sans-papiers lead in their home countries before coming to France rather than merely showing their situation in France in isolation from a longer trajectory. It also suggests that immigrants in France can feel at home in their adopted country and foreign when they subsequently return to the country that they left.

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While Maria is treated with suspicion due to her status as a beggar, Amadou seems to be treated with suspicion by the police due to the visibility of his West African origins. His roots mean that his treatment by the French state can be interpreted as a sign of France still coming to terms with its colonial past and continuing to treat postcolonial migrants and their descendants as unruly or unwelcome others. This is made clear in a scene where a female relative of Amadou describes how police turned her house upside down when looking for her son, leaving her visibly upset. We are also shown that the person on the other side in the scuffle, Jean, lacks the family support structure that Amadou possesses. Jean appears to come from a single-parent family and has a difficult relationship with his father, with whom he lives. Although this does not excuse the fact that he threw a piece of litter at Maria, it shows Haneke’s desire to examine the confrontation that occurs at the start of the film from several perspectives. This includes exploring problems faced by members of the majority ethnic population. It is precisely within this context of dysfunctional family structures and communication problems that Code inconnu portrays the couple formed by Anne and Georges. Tension between the pair often stems from Georges’s work as a war photographer meaning that he is often abroad, and his time in conflict zones appears to affect him when he returns to France. The communication problems that are part of the lives of many of the central characters of Code inconnu are also demonstrated by the way that they are often seen struggling with decisions about whether or not to intervene in various situations. After Jean throws his paper bag at Maria, Amadou is the only person in the vicinity who appears moved and when a scuffle ensues passers-by watch but again do not get involved. Although Anne attempts to encourage someone to intervene when she sees that Jean is involved, she is herself not always keen to intervene in situations where someone else may be in danger. When ironing one evening, she hears what sounds like a young child screaming and crying. She is visibly perturbed by the sound, and asks an elderly neighbour if she also heard the noise. The neighbour responds that she had not, a potential sign that she does not want to get involved in the situation either. Seeing Anne at the funeral of a small child named Françoise later on in the film begs the question as to whether the screams Anne heard were the sound of an ultimately tragic event.

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This incident has colonial overtones as it recalls how Alain Resnais’s 1956 concentration camp documentary Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog) evokes French people’s lack of awareness of the use of torture in Algeria via the phrase ‘people do not hear the endless cries’.52 As if to add a degree of balance, later on in the film we see Anne become a victim in a situation where others are slow to intervene. When travelling home on the underground she is verbally harassed and spat at by two young men of North African origin. The unease in the carriage is tangible as Anne moves to another seat, and tension is heightened by the camera remaining static. Eventually, an older Algerian man intervenes and tells the adolescent who spat at Anne that he should be ashamed of himself, which he does in Arabic as if to highlight that their shared roots do not mean that he condones their behaviour. Nicolas Renaud argues that such scenes are likely to lead spectators to ask themselves what they would do in such a situation, and that this resultant interrogation is a consequence of Haneke’s attempt to involve spectators in his film.53 The questions of intervention and non-intervention discussed above illustrate Haneke’s interest in morality and the processes by which people form moral judgements, and these themes that are evident in many of his films. There are several scenes in Code inconnu during which one may feel uncertain as to what is said or be unsure about exactly what is going on. For example, Anne is an actress and there are times when it is initially unclear whether she is speaking in role or as herself. When Maria returns to Romania and tells her family that she worked in a school when in France, one may well wonder whether this is true as she is only ever shown as a beggar whilst in France. We do not, however, know that she has always been a beggar during her time in France and it is possible that she may have worked in a school, possibly before becoming sans-papiers. This provides a challenge to simplistic representations of immigrants that portray them as characters who seemingly come into existence when they reach France. In cinematic terms, Haneke argues that the presence of many different fragments in Code inconnu provides an ideal format within which to reflect on how people form judgements: For me, fragmentation represents our limited daily perception. We perceive next to nothing of reality. When I meet someone, I see very few aspects of them, just a

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glint. The fragment is a stylistic equivalent of our real situation. It also serves to prevent interpretations: one can suspect, but one does not know.54

O’Shaughnessy sees the fragment as an important concept within post-1995 political cinema in France due to its ‘absence of an explicit politics and social connectivity’.55 It also allows Haneke to portray a vision of the cyclical nature of social interactions in the final minutes of the film. Maria returns to Paris after being smuggled back from Romania in a lorry, and she looks for a new place to beg. Anne comes out of the metro and walks past a cinema queue towards her flat. Her boyfriend Georges then gets out of a car and walks past the same cinema. Signs at the cinema that designate separate queues for those with and without tickets re-emphasise the important role that possessing the right documents plays in dictating entitlements and differential treatment. The fact that a code is necessary in order to enter the block of flats in which Georges and Anne live further demonstrates how devices are put in place within society to regulate conditions of access. Just as not having valid residency papers means that Maria is unable to stay in France, forgetting the code means that Georges is not able to gain entry to their flat and goes back into the rain to call Anne from a telephone box. The presence of communication barriers in society is reinforced by the ending of Code inconnu, which involves a scene where a deaf child communicates via sign language. The lack of subtitles makes it difficult for spectators unfamiliar with sign language to comprehend what is happening. This closing scene creates a degree of symmetry as it features the children who are seen communicating in sign language at the start. Haneke’s film thus provides both literal and metaphorical representations of what the French call un dialogue de sourds (literally, ‘a dialogue of the deaf’), a situation in which people do not understand, or seek to understand, each other. This adds another layer to Haneke’s representation of communication problems in modern society. Like Carole Sionnet’s Parmi Nous, Code inconnu raises the issue of how disability can impact on communication and social integration. Haneke’s films feature many examples of people who are quick to react to situations without having fully comprehended them and remind the spectator that it often takes more than a single glance if one is to gain greater understanding.

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However, there are those who have criticised formal aspects of Haneke’s film. Olivier Seguret argued that the number of different fragments was off-putting and that the consequence of this was ‘to produce nothing other than a discourse on cinema, deduction and to leave the spectator no longer believing in anything’.56 Didier Peron made similar points in an article whose tone was alluded to by its title: ‘Haneke asks pertinent questions, but Code inconnu ends up resembling a philosophy oral. Spectator, go to the blackboard . . .’57 In other words, Haneke stands accused of having adopted a somewhat self-indulgent formalist approach that diverts attention away from its content and the issues it evokes. A more favourable interpretation of Haneke’s use of fragments in Code inconnu is provided by Horton’s argument that the structuring of the film creates a connection between its content and its form, and indeed one that challenges the way that the media covers certain issues: Immigration is largely seen as a subject for political debate and a topic that dominates newspaper headlines. Rarely do we stop to consider the stories of the people behind the statistics, who they are and how the single word ‘immigrant’ describes a multitude of experiences.58

As already discussed, it is someone’s status as a non-national or a national in France that is supposed to dictate whether they are allowed to access residency rights rather than whether or not they are an immigrant. Emotive debates about immigration often ignore the fact that immigrants can be either nationals or non-nationals. Haneke’s film encourages spectators to consider the complexities of immigration and characterises the situation of the sans-papiers as one part of a wider phenomenon. However, Haneke’s vision was not seen by a large audience despite his status as an internationally known director and the presence of a similarly famous actress (Juliette Binoche) in one of the lead roles. Its challenging of cinematic conventions and raising of questions about images and reality appear to have made some critics see it as somewhat inaccessible. Although there are many ways in which Code inconnu is radically different from La Ballade des sans-papiers, its lack of commercial success nevertheless reinforces the point that politically determined aesthetic choices can work against a film’s accessibility and hence its power to intervene in the political sphere.

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Conclusion Horton’s notion that the term immigrant ‘describes a multitude of experiences’ can be applied to all four of the films analysed in this chapter. They illustrate the range of different experiences that sanspapiers encounter in France, and also those that motivate their decision to leave their home country. This helps to deconstruct stereotypical representations of immigrants by creating counterhegemonic representations that highlight the many factors that may lead to someone becoming sans-papiers as well as the range of ways they may react to such a process. These reactions represent the French state and its republican ideals in several different ways. On the one hand, there are occasions when it is primarily portrayed as a model of democracy in which sans-papiers wish to be able actively to participate. On the other hand, there are times when the French state is shown to be a powerful source of exclusion due to the way residency documents constitute a crucial marker of legitimacy and rights within an idea of citizenship that is based on nationality more than residency or participation. Whilst the protagonists of the films analysed in this chapter could be seen as metonyms for wider social and political issues, they also symbolise the diversity that exists among those referred to as sanspapiers. La Ballade des sans-papiers focuses on sans-papiers who are eager to protest visibly and publicly about their treatment, and highlights why they are protesting. Parmi Nous contrastingly shows that not all sans-papiers are willing to do so in such a public manner. Potential and actual deportations in L’Afrance and Code inconnu illustrate why such people live in fear, and provide further examples of the complicated predicaments in which sans-papiers can find themselves and also how they got into them. Taken together, the four films demonstrate that although many of the spokespeople for the sans-papiers movement are West African immigrants, the sans-papiers are a multinational and multicultural group who include people from North Africa, eastern Europe and Asia. The space occupied by these people in all four films is also of considerable importance. In the three films that are shot in Paris (La Ballade des sans-papiers, L’Afrance and Code inconnu), we see sans-papiers present in the centre of Paris and this challenges the way in which France’s banlieues are often the areas most associated with immigration in the media and in films.59 However, the fact that the sans-papiers we see in central Paris in the two fictional films are threatened with deportation due

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to issues concerning residency documents suggests that the heart of the French capital is a particularly well-regulated space. Aboubacar and Ahmed’s evocation of their fears of deportation in Parmi Nous demonstrates that close observance of people of foreign appearance occurs in provincial cities as well as in Paris. Despite similarities that unite the two documentaries and the two fictions, it is clear that the two fictional films (L’Afrance and Code inconnu) contextualise the situation of the sans-papiers in a different manner to the two documentary films. Whilst La Ballade des sans-papiers and Parmi Nous situate many of the issues faced by sanspapiers in France in relation to government policies and political decisions, L’Afrance and Code inconnu do so in relation to more general themes. This may well indicate a desire on the part of Gomis and Haneke to maintain a focus on creating and telling a story of their own invention without merely using the fictional genre as a transparent vehicle for a political cause. Their films demonstrate how fiction shares with documentary the ability to construct narrative empathy and place individual stories within a wider context that, especially in the case of Haneke, challenges the spectator to ask how they would act or react. They differ from documentaries, however, when it comes to the way in which contextualising devices or elements in a fictional film need to be subtly incorporated into the narrative, whereas the documentary genre can use straightforward approaches such as the addition of words spoken by narrators and interviewees. Although three of the four films discussed in this chapter do not set out to examine le mouvement des sans-papiers per se, they all demonstrate a preoccupation with the lives of sanspapiers. The way in which they show a range of different types of people and experiences encourages spectators to delve deeper and not to simply rely on homogenising mainstream media representations of sans-papiers. The fact that three of the four films were made over a period of almost a decade following the high-profile demonstrations of the mid-1990s helps to illustrate the continued pertinence of issues evoked by the mouvement des sans-papiers, and also French film-makers’ continued interest in this issue.

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Chapter Three

Double peine: The Challenges of Mobilising Support for Foreign Criminals via Cinema Introduction The double peine (double penalty) law, like the subject of the sanspapiers, raises important questions about how France treats foreign residents. Film-makers played a big part in campaigns to defend sans-papiers from the mid-1990s onwards, and the same is true of their involvement in the national campaign against the double peine from 2001 to 2003. The double peine law makes it possible for people who are not French citizens to be deported ‘back’ to their so-called country of origin if they have served a prison sentence of at least one year. It can be applied even when someone has committed a fairly minor crime and is more attached to France than any other country. This means that it punishes people whose legal identity may not reflect their lived identity and provides a means of enforcing a policy that stems from the strict dichotomy between nationals and non-nationals inherent in French republicanism. This situation leaves little room for more fluid notions of identity, such as those advocated in Amin Maalouf’s In the Name of Identity. Maalouf contends that identity cards often hide the complexities of people’s true identity, and it is precisely the possession or lack of such an item that dictates whether or not someone is potentially liable to be subjected to the double peine.1 However, Rosello makes an important point about the element of discretion that exists when it comes to the application of laws such as the double peine: One of the most vexing and invisible problems raised by immigration laws is the existence of an unacknowledged level of human interpretation between the legislation and the administrator who applies it and makes judgement calls. If the

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philosophy of the law is supposed to be self-evident, it is clear that it is mediated by culture, that is, today, by a generalized atmosphere of suspicion and xenophobia.2

Whilst the double peine is theoretically a law that concerns all foreign citizens, its critics argue that it is used to target specific groups of immigrants in France.3 It is important to take into account the fact that the prejudices or political agendas of judges and politicians can play an important role in the implementation of the double peine law. This clearly contradicts key elements of republicanism such as the concept of unmarked individual citizens. However, it remains a difficult issue for film-makers to challenge due to the increasing consensus between the left and the right in France on the need to take a tough stance on controlling immigration levels and tackling crime. As Martin Farcy points out, the double peine is an issue that links two important areas of debate in contemporary French society: immigration and insécurité.4

The history of the double peine law and campaigns against it The double peine involves the addition of a deportation order to a prison sentence of at least one year and can be served on a foreign national in France in two different ways. First, a judge sentencing someone who has committed an offence can issue them with a banishment from French territory (ITF, in French), which can be either for a set number of years or definitive.5 Secondly, a minis­ terial expulsion order (AME) can be issued by the Interior Ministry or French local authorities.6 An AME is definitive, and can be pronounced in addition to an ITF, creating what some have referred to as a triple peine. It is intended to be used to punish offenders who pose a threat to public order and dates from a bill introduced in 1945.7 To summarise, issuing an ITF is a judicial decision whereas handing down an AME is an administrative decision. Opposition to the double peine law has been based around a variety of issues that Farcy helpfully splits into two categories: sociological and judicial. This distinction facilitates comparison of the strategies employed by campaigners and film-makers and helps to tease out important differences. For Farcy, sociological opposition to the double peine concerns social consequences of the law, notably the way that it can lead to people being separated from families, being

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prevented from working or being sent back to a country that feels more foreign to them than France. In addition, it also applies to how those who return to France, or remain there, can be forced to live in a precarious situation where they are in constant fear of expulsion.8 Judicial opposition contrastingly takes issue with the legal and constitutional legitimacy of the law, and often concentrates more closely on tensions between the double peine law and key principles of republicanism. For example, some argue that the double peine gives political power to judges by allowing them to control the regulation of immigration flows.9 The fact that Maghrebi males make up a disproportionately high proportion of those on whom the double peine is imposed suggests that the law has been utilised to specifically target a subgroup of foreigners living in France.10 Going beyond the distinction between citizens and non-citizens in this way blatantly contradicts France’s universalist republican principles. Léon Schwartzenberg has also stated that the law involves condemning someone twice for the same offence in an undemocractic manner that contradicts republican principles.11 Campaigning against the double peine began in earnest during the 1970s and gained momentum in the 1980s following a 1981 law change that allowed foreign nationals to form and be committee members of community groups.12 Mitterrand had promised to abolish the double peine prior to the 1981 presidential election, but did not stick to his word. Although decisions made by the Socialistled government of 1981–6 reduced the extent to which certain categories of foreigners could be subjected to the law, this was counteracted by legislation introduced by the subsequent rightwing government.13 Since the late 1980s, the actions (and inaction) of successive governments on both the right and the left have made it easier to deport foreigners under the terms of laws such as the double peine. This has created a situation whereby the moral or constitutional legitimacy of these types of procedures is automatically taken for granted by politicians from many parties. Within this context, Rosello argues that the 2001 loi Pasqua was ideologically important as it ‘turn[ed] the clandestin . . . into an enemy of the state, the most easily identifiable scapegoat’.14 In other words, it helped to create a negative image of immigrants that facilitated its objectives of making them easier to deport in both practical and political terms.

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The 2001–3 Campagne nationale contre la double peine was strategically timed in order to pressurise a left-wing government prior to the 2002 legislative (and presidential) elections. It followed on from previous smaller campaigns that had taken place in the 1990s and had been coordinated by a coalition of organisations, of which the main participants were Le Comité inter mouvements auprès des évacués (Cimade), Le Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples (MRAP), La Ligue des droits de l’Homme (LDH), Le Groupe d’information et de soutien des immigrés (GISTI) and Le Mouvement de l’immigration et des banlieues (MIB).15 Not all groups opposed the double peine for the same reasons or to the same extent. Farcy notes that LDH and GISTI were in favour of repealing the law, whilst Cimade favoured merely reforming it through the reintroduction of protected categories of foreigners established by previous legislation.16 In addition, it appears that MIB sided with the more radical groups calling for the repeal of the double peine law, whilst MRAP seemed closer to the groups merely in favour of reforming the law. The at times complicated arguments for opposing the double peine, and the fact that it concerns foreigners who have already been punished for breaking the law, are doubtlessly responsible for making it harder to publicise than the campaigns in favour of the sans-papiers. This is one of many factors that explain why the double peine has also been evoked in fewer films. The four studied in this chapter (Betrand Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées, Jean-Pierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Wesh Wesh qu’est-ce qui se passe? and Bled Number One) are notable due to the extent of their exploration of the legal, moral and existential issues faced by those subjected to the law. Other than Valérie Casalta’s Double peine: les exclus de la loi (2000), there are very few other films that seek to analyse the double peine in comparable depth. Casalta’s documentary has not been included here as it features several of the same interviewees as Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées, and also does not primarily explore the issue in relation to a single specific location in the same way as the four main films in this chapter. The relatively small number of films made about the double peine should not obscure its political and cinematic significance. It is a subject that involves non-French citizens being confronted with legislation that threatens their right to remain in France and that provokes many sociological and moral questions about identity,

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belonging and the notion of home. In this way, it has much in common with films about the sans-papiers and other works made since 1995 in which immigrants and descendants of immigrants living in France embark on, or come close to making, journeys ‘back’ to their country of origin. Within this latter category of films one can place fictions such as Karim Dridi’s Bye-Bye (1995), Ahmed and Zakia Bouchalaa’s Origine contrôlée (Made in France, 2001), Ismaël Ferroukhi’s Le Grand Voyage (2004) and Yamina Benguigui’s documentary Mémoires d’immigrés (Immigrant Memories, 1998). Because the double peine brings with it an enforced and at times swift removal from France towards a supposed ‘home’ country its presence in the films studied here means that issues of identity and belonging come to the fore in a particularly stark and uncompromising manner. This sets this chapter’s four main films apart from other works that evoke more general issues about hybrid identities and quests to find one’s true home.

Bertrand Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées (Stories of Broken Lives, 2001) Bertrand Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées is the film that had the closest links to the 2001–3 Campagne nationale contre la double peine, notably being shown at the campaign launch in Paris. Due to his film’s prominence within the campaign, Tavernier often acted as a champion of the cause and carried out numerous media interviews. Many of his interviews focused on the national situation and general reasons for repealing or reforming the double peine law, whereas his film concentrates more on hunger strikes that occurred in his home city of Lyon. Although his film helped to draw attention to the issue of the double peine, it was not viewed by a large number of spectators. This is symptomatic of a general problem that affects Tavernier’s documentaries, namely that ‘the emphasis placed on the director is to the detriment of a deeper analysis of the films, and . . . a film’s ability to be sufficient on its own independent from the context of its creation and its social-political context’.17 Histoires de vies brisées is a documentary that Tavernier made on a low budget between larger-scale fictional films. Although the film aims to challenge political and media discourses on immigration, and the marginalisation of immigrants and their concerns, it does not frame this critique within a radical aesthetic format. The film

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stemmed from a meeting with hunger strikers in Lyon in 1997 at which Tavernier promised to return to make a film, and he commenced this process the following year when a second hunger strike took place. This is typical of the way Tavernier ‘sees himself above all as a film-maker who starts by observing the world around him and whose cinema is often inspired by the events that he witnesses’.18 His film is a video diary of the protest and his voiceovers add a personalised feel that is in part due to the hunger strikers being from his own home city of Lyon. Many of the protesters (who are all Algerian or Tunisian) had lived there since a young age, and three of them were born in Lyon. This is used to ground the film’s main criticisms of the double peine law in sociological rather than judicial terms and appeals to a notion of citizenship based on residency as opposed to nationality. The predominantly local perspective of Tavernier’s film means that he does not seek to situate the double peine hunger strike within the context of protests against the law in general to the same extent as La Ballade des sans-papiers sought to contextualise actions of the sans-papiers. Nevertheless, Tavernier was keen to present his film as a response to the French media’s lack of interest in the lives of those affected by the double peine as the following words demonstrate: I wanted these men and women who are heard so rarely to be listened to. I did not wish to dramatise their views, only maintain the most hard-hitting phrases. In some reports, the fear of channel-hopping is such that a person is interrupted as soon as they start to express themselves due to the fear that it will not be possible to follow them, and the substance is lost. Listening properly requires time and that these people are not interrupted at the drop of a hat.19

Tavernier thus rejected more formatted and concise structures that characterise many television news and current affairs programmes, and that are symbolised by the way ‘dominant cinema commercialises time in carefully measured sequences [whereby] every moment has to count and produce its specific quantum of effect and spectacle’.20 Instead, Tavernier favoured more fluid and less tightly edited structures in order to give voice to people who are often marginalised or stigmatised as a result of media reporting. The interviews included in Tavernier’s film lack the sharpness of image evident in many commercially produced films. The home-video feel of many of these sequences appears to be part of an attempt to reinforce the

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fact that the interviewees are real people and not merely characters in a fictional film. It is their words, rather than accompanying sounds or images, that are left to have an effect on the spectator. Tavernier uses many close-ups of those speaking, which highlight their emotions and the force of what they are saying. This draws attention towards their idiosyncrasies and personal stories in a similar way to films by several of the directors in the previous chapter whose works highlight the internal diversity within the sans-papiers movement. Despite the general lack of sounds and images to accompany the interviews, Tavernier sometimes uses shots of Lyon to provide a visual backdrop to his voiceovers between interviews. This characterises the hunger strikers as people from Lyon and foregrounds their identification with the city as a source of solidarity and camaraderie. They are represented as sharing a primary sense of attachment to a French city and way of life rather than the lands from which their ancestors originated. This provides another example of a sociological argument for such people not being subjected to the double peine and Tavernier largely adopts this approach instead of analysing the judicial legitimacy of the law. He has argued that it is through listening to those affected by the double peine, rather than just looking at their dossiers, that one realises the true effects of the law, and this point is also made in his film by one of the hunger strikers. Tavernier seeks to engage the audience by not editing out moving scenes when the interviewees express their feelings.21 A prime example occurs when one of the hunger strikers (Abdel Chaba) starts to cry after mentioning that the double peine has led to the death of some of those deported ‘back’ to their supposed country of origin. Despite Tavernier audibly offering to stop filming, Chaba insists on continuing, saying ‘people have to see that’, pointing to his face as he cries.22 On one hand, the inclusion of such footage helps to explain why some have said that certain double peine documentaries are excessively voyeuristic due to their exploitation of the emotions of interviewees.23 On the other hand, Chaba’s insistence on being filmed suggests that he is aware of the potential strategic benefit of exposing his distress in order to encourage people to share his opposition to the double peine. In addition to its exposition of emotional suffering, Tavernier’s film provides a stark reminder of the physical effects of hunger strikes. Near the end, Ahmed Hassaine recounts how going for

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thirty-eight days without food left him in a coma. He mentions that he lost a significant amount of his hearing, has since experienced digestive problems and would prefer to lose a limb rather than do another hunger strike. Hassaine also explains that the psychological problems that stemmed from his struggle to restarting a new life on his return to Lyon from Algeria resulted in his falling back into drug taking. Tavernier’s tone of voice and facial expression during these sequences demonstrate his concern and a tone of worry is also evident in his voiceover just after the scene where Hassaine describes his suffering. The intensity of such suffering helps to explain why Tavernier chose to name his film Histoires de vies brisées (Stories of Broken Lives), a title that encapsulates his primarily sociological opposition to the double peine. On several occasions, Tavernier shows how the law can separate families and force people to begin a new life in a country that may be alien to them. Ahmed Hassaine explains that this expulsion to Algeria led him to realise that he was more French than he had previously thought: I really thought that Algeria was my country. When I arrived over there, I regretted that it was not my country. It was there that I realised that I grew up watching Jacques Martin on TV. I did not understand the television, the radio, everything that was happening over there . . .24

Despite this sense of attachment to France and Frenchness, the fact that Hassaine remained a foreigner in administrative terms is precisely why the French state was able to deport him under the terms of the double peine law. Despite their lack of French citizenship, the hunger strikers’ shared attachment to France is emphasised by all the interviews being filmed in Lyon. Furthermore, we do not see any images of the hunger strikers’ North African countries of origin and they rarely evoke these roots in a nostalgic manner. Tavernier pursues the sociological opposition to the double peine evident in Hassaine’s description of his expulsion to Algeria by showing that the law leads to people living in a precarious situation even after serving their punishment. Several of the hunger strikers who returned to Lyon after having spent the requisite number of years outside France tell of how they were not granted permanent residency documents that accorded them similar rights to most other immigrants who are legally present in France. This provides

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evidence of a differential approach that goes beyond the important national/non-national dichotomy that exists within the French republican model of citizenship. Hassaine expresses his anger at this situation when he shows his provisional residency documents to the camera and comments ‘there is my star: it is not yellow, it is green’.25 This demonstrates his ability to situate his own predicament within a wider historical context of exclusion and stigmatisation, admittedly in a highly polemical manner. The fact that Tavernier does not intervene to contextualise this observation is in keeping with the way that he leaves space for the hunger strikers to express themselves and also reinforces his closeness to them. Even though Tavernier’s film primarily concerns itself with sociological opposition to the double peine, it also provides some examples of judicial reasons to oppose the double peine. Rosello’s point that ‘human interpretation’ can play an important role in decisions about how to utilise immigration legislation is borne out by several interviewees.26 They suggest that a particular judge, Judge Finidori (president of the Appeal Court in Lyon), took pleasure in exercising his power in a manner that displayed his own prejudices. Ahmed Hassaine recalls how Finidori expressed his surprise at the fact that he was a ‘young Maghrebi from an underprivileged area’ who managed to get into university.27 These comments categorise someone as a member of a specific community in a way that contradicts republican universalism, and they suggest that some state representatives hold prejudices that are incompatible with such egalitarian values. In the film, Jean-Pierre Lachaize of Cimade argues that Finidori and his pronouncements highlight the particularly repressive nature of the courts in Lyon. This representation of the courts in Lyon is in keeping with Rosello’s view that immigrant rights campaigns in France have often sought to challenge the state’s emphasis on ‘illegal immigrants’ by suggesting that immigrants sometimes encounter ‘an illegitimate, illegal host’.28 Tavernier portrays the hunger strikers he interviews as victims of unjustifiable prejudicial treatment by a French state that is losing sight of the republican principles that are supposed to dictate how it operates. In order to elicit as much sympathy as possible, Tavernier appears strategically to highlight specific hunger strikers. He does not include interviews with all ten of the strikers in his film, and we learn more about the lives of some than others. He appears deliberately to avoid mentioning the precise nature of all

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the offences committed by the hunger strikers so as not to provide details that would reduce the extent to which audiences might feel sympathetic towards them. This suggests that Tavernier is not confident that judicial arguments alone are enough to win public support in the battle against the double peine, and that a more sociological focus on emotions and personal circumstances is necessary. This is particularly evident as Histoires de vies brisées closes with a voiceover from Tavernier just after an interview with Lila Boughessa outside the boarded up former offices of the JALB community group:29 Normally things should not end like that in front of an iron barrier. Normally in a normal film, a character such as Lila – Lila from Lyon, Lila from Vénissieux – should not walk in the street all alone without having gained anything other than a temporary job. Neither her, nor her ten comrades, these ten people who have Lyon in their hearts and their souls. Normally.30

These words encapsulate Tavernier’s hope that his film would lead to significant reforms to the double peine law and an end to the injustices that he believes it creates. Tavernier is implicitly arguing that it is wrong to apply the law to people who are not French in legal terms but whose lived identity is essentially French, which points towards a need to rethink Frenchness and the principles upon which citizenship is based. He is effectively questioning the consequences of the strict division between nationals and non-nationals established by France’s republican political ethos. Nevertheless, these words do not provide a particularly hard-hitting denunciation of the double peine. Tavernier states his case without the anger he shows in other films and he does not make clear whether he believes that the double peine law should be abolished or merely reformed. In addition to this lack of clarity, his film’s inclusion of several long unedited sections of interviews does not always make for gripping viewing. This suggests that there is a balance to be established between giving voice to marginalised individuals and doing so at lengths that do not detract from the overall watchability of a film. Tavernier’s no-frills documentary style certainly conveys the often grim reality of the lives of those sentenced to a double peine, but it also means that he may fall short of creating the ‘cultural energy’ that Wayne feels is necessary if political films are to inspire audiences to take action.31

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Jean-Pierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo (We are not brands of bicycles, 2003) In contrast to Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées Jean-Pierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo illustrates a radically different way of representing the double peine within a documentary. Instead of recounting the stories of several people who have experienced the double peine, Thorn’s film centres on a single protagonist. It also uses hip-hop culture to ground the double peine within the context of the at times tense relations between young banlieue residents and the French state, and combines radical politics and radical aesthetics by also making hip-hop a major part of the film’s aesthetic. Thorn became aware of the double peine due to his interest in hiphop, and through working with young people whilst making two previous documentaries about break-dancing in suburban Paris and an ultimately unsuccessful project to make a hip-hop musical for French television.32 It was during this latter initiative that Thorn first met the break dancer known as Bouda whose story is recounted in On n’est pas des marques de vélo. Thorn’s interest in hip-hop culture in suburban France symbolises his desire to give a voice to people who are marginalised or stigmatised by the French media and politicians, a preoccupation that he shares with several other directors studied here. Thorn has evoked his desire to ‘take his camera to precisely where the views of the excluded are no longer being heard’ and the title of his film also encapsulates this quest to react against exclusion.33 As the film’s press pack explains, être une marque de vélo (‘to be a brand of bicycle’) means to be ‘the lowest of the low on the scale of signs of social mobility’.34 Consequently, the film’s title can be understood as a demand for respect. The television channel Arte, which commissioned On n’est pas des marques de vélo, insisted that Thorn went beyond merely examining the double peine and wanted a film that provided ‘a true portrait of break-dancing rather than a simple militant documentary’.35 Consequently, Thorn’s interest in hip-hop played an important role in securing funding for his film in addition to creating a distinct aesthetic. Arte’s role in funding and later broadcasting Thorn’s film exemplifies Shohat and Stam’s vision of media’s potential role in challenging dominant representations of marginalised groups: ‘If dominant cinema has historically caricatured distant civilisations, the media today are more multicentred, with the power not only to offer countervailing representations but also to open up parallel

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spaces for symbiotic multicultural transformation.’36 Arte’s natural disposition to be more ‘multicentred’ emanates from its status as a television channel that features many programmes about culture and the arts that is co-funded by France and Germany. Thus, it provided an ideal vehicle for Thorn’s quest to challenge the stigmatisation of banlieue residents and immigrants within a novel cinematic format. However, Thorn was also keen to use hip-hop in On n’est pas des marques de vélo in order to make ‘a film [that was] as close as possible to the real life of a working-class area’ rather than purely to complement his radical politics and facilitate its diffusion.37 This desire to connect with a local area explains why his film includes few interviews with representatives of Parisian-based campaigning organisations involved in the 2001–3 national campaign against the double peine.38 The presence of too many people closely involved with the campaign would have taken the film closer to the ‘militant documentary’ that Arte wished to avoid, and risked drawing attention away from Bouda’s story of growing up in Seine-Saint-Denis. Elements of hip-hop culture bring together different parts of Thorn’s documentary that might otherwise have been linked by voiceovers or interviews with campaigners. Thorn does not act as a narrator and instead punctuates his film with graffiti-style inter­ titles, rap music and break-dance routines in order to tell the story of Bouda’s life and explain how the double peine operates. Thorn saw this as a way to create an alternative narrative structure that involved counter-hegemonic contestation in political and aesthetic terms: I am like a DJ mixing samples of what is real and archive images, a documentary and a choreographed piece of imagination, action and rap narration, scratches of images featuring tags and graffiti in order to break with the linear narrative. It is to break with naturalism; to encourage people to re-learn how to see the world, forget about preconceptions, and discover the strange, poetic, colourful and enchanted nature of areas that are too often hidden by an array of clichés aimed at scaring voters.39

The radical aesthetics of On n’est pas des marques de vélo challenge both conventional modes of representation and also the notion that much of post-1995 political cinema in France has been artis­ tically conservative.40 On one hand, Thorn’s film depicts the at times grim reality of suburban France from the perspective of someone whose attempt to live a normal life is hampered by having been

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sentenced to the double peine. On the other hand, hip-hop aesthetics add much more colour and dynamism than is present in many documentary (and fictional) films from this period that evoke similar issues. On n’est pas des marques de vélo also differs from Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées in thematic terms as it is much more critical of French politicians who it sees as responsible for the double peine law remaining on the statute books, and also for the poor living conditions in certain banlieues that can lead to young people turning to crime. Bouda’s experience shows that disillusionment can ultimately lead to deportation, and this is evoked in a rap that lists the stages of this process: ‘addiction, dependency, drugs, illusion, recklessness, ju­venile delinquency, police and legal action: verdict of double peine’.41 Several interviewees in the film suggest that the chain of events that led to Bouda’s deportation stemmed from widespread feelings of frustration at the lack of adequate leisure facilities on their housing estate in Dugny (near La Courneuve, Seine-SaintDenis). Interviewees also blame French hip-hop’s failure to maintain its impetus of the early 1980s on a lack of state support. Hebdige’s analysis of what subcultures represent explains why governments at times seek to silence, or do not actively support, subversive cultural forms: Subcultures represent ‘noise’ (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence which leads from the real events and phenomena to their representation in the media. We should therefore not underestimate the signifying power of the spectacular subculture not only as a metaphor for potential anarchy ‘out there’ but as an actual mechanism or semantic disorder: a kind of temporary blockage in the system of representation.42

As a vibrant art form often practised by young inhabitants of the banlieues in order to express frustration about the attitudes of the French state, hip-hop can be seen as both a ‘spectacular subculture’ and also a way of illustrating ‘blockage[s] in the system of representation’ of young people by the French media and politicians. It is also an art form that frequently highlights ‘blockages’ in the French republican system that is supposed to ensure that all citizens are equal. On n’est pas des marques de vélo argues that the French media and French politicians have helped to perpetuate negative representations of the banlieues and their inhabitants. Two examples of

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ways in which the media portray sensationalist negative images of the banlieues emerge during interviews with friends of Bouda who recall his arrest for drug-related offences. One friend says that media reporting of the drugs bust that led to Bouda’s arrest and subsequent deportation contained significant inaccuracies and exaggerations. Another friend argues that Bouda’s subsequent imprisonment meant that young people from the area were collectively scapegoated in a highly stereotypical manner that misrepresented life in Dugny. Although Thorn’s aesthetic approach symbolises a quest to be as radical as possible in challenging received ideas, the words of several of the interviewees demonstrate a clear desire to respond directly to negative ways that young people from the banlieues are represented. In so doing, they fall into a trap identified by Rosello whereby they fail to analyse how stereotypes operate and produce a ‘meta-utterance’ of ideas that they oppose that inadvertently suggests an ‘unavoidable element of allegiance’.43 Despite this, the conclusion of Thorn’s film shows that Bouda has the potential to be a positive role model. When Bouda talks about what led to his arrest in the film, it is clear that he regrets becoming involved with drugs. This is particularly evident in a scene where he goes back to the place where he smoked his first joint. He then talks of his desire to repent and start out on a new life in which he can distance himself from past misdemeanours. As a talented break dancer, he is admired by young people and this is demonstrated by several scenes in which we see them marvel when he demonstrates break-dance moves. Bouda’s general outlook on life is positive, and Thorn believes that this is due to his awareness that his story could influence public perceptions of the double peine law and potentially lead to its being reformed.44 Just like the hunger strikers in Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées, Bouda appears aware of the stra­ tegic importance of being involved in a film about the double peine. On n’est pas des marques de vélo also shares with Tavernier’s documentary the fact that it primarily evokes sociological rather than judicial reasons to oppose the double peine, and generally shies away from invoking republican principles in so doing. It mainly concentrates on the effect that deportation had on Bouda and his family, and also the way in which Bouda feels more attached to France than Tunisia. This is largely unsurprising given that he left Tunisia with his family only four months after being born. Judicial reasons to oppose the double peine are nevertheless mentioned when Bouda’s

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father says that his son has already paid his debt to society by serving a prison sentence, a fact that is also mentioned in rap lyrics near the start of the film. Several interviewees also suggest that the French government has sought to use the double peine law in order to be seen as tackling crime, and especially drug crime in the banlieues. Like Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées, On n’est pas des marques de vélo concludes by evoking the need for appropriate closure by reminding the audience of the need to act in the hope that the law will be changed. Rap lyrics accompany a break-dance routine that criticises those in government and provide a call for action that urges people to intervene before it is too late. Although this suggests that there are similarities between the ways in which Thorn and Tavernier perceive the law, it is important to recall that Thorn uses radical aesthetics as an explicit means of framing the radical politics of his documentary. His use of hip-hop, especially break-dance routines, creates an alternative narrative structure that establishes an additional diegesis within which meaning is less transparent and needs to be puzzled out by the spectator. However, it also provides a creative storytelling that generates a sense of energy and dynamism that is less evident in films such as Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées.

Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Wesh Wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? (Hey, What’s Up?, 2002) Despite being a fiction as opposed to a documentary, Rabah AmeurZaïmeche’s Wesh Wesh, que’est-ce qui se passe? has several elements in common with Jean-Pierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo. Ameur-Zaïmeche’s film also places the double peine within the context of life in France’s banlieues and explores its impact on a character who returns to a housing estate in the Seine-Saint-Denis area. It begins with the central character, Kamel (played by AmeurZaïmeche), returning to France after a period of enforced exile in Algeria due to the double peine law. Throughout the film, Kamel attempts to settle back into life on the housing estate where he grew up and avoid any of the violence and drug dealing that takes place in the vicinity. The film is tightly constructed as it is located in a largely enclosed suburban area and covers a relatively short time period. The origins of Wesh Wesh demonstrate that it is a work that mixes fiction and reality. Its director, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, is in many

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ways a cinematic equivalent of Azouz Begag as he is of Algerian descent, grew up in the banlieues of a major French city and has a background in sociology that has informed his fictional works. In an interview that is included as a bonus feature on the DVD of Wesh Wesh, Ameur-Zaïmeche’s co-scriptwriter Madjid Benaroudj describes how his and Ameur-Zaïmeche’s studies provided them with a view of the banlieues from the exterior as well as the interior. In other words, it added a more intellectualised and distanced approach that complemented their perspective as inhabitants. In another interview included in the DVD version of Wesh Wesh, AmeurZaïmeche argues that his roots mean that the double peine is a theme to which he can relate as he arrived in France as a 2-year-old and still possesses a residency permit rather than a French identity card. In other words, his status as someone who has not become a naturalised French citizen means that he could potentially be subjected to the double peine if he were to commit a crime. The link between Ameur-Zaïmeche and Benaroudj’s origins and the events is Wesh Wesh is further reinforced by the fact that the film was shot in La Cité des Bosquets in Seine-Saint-Denis, which is where Ameur-Zaïmeche grew up. The film’s cast is almost entirely composed of residents of the area with little acting experience and included several members of Ameur-Zaïmeche’s family. This creates an extra-textual link between the film’s story and those acting it out. Co-scriptwriter Benaroudj’s status as the boss of a leading French hip-hop label influenced choices made regarding the film’s soundtrack, and the songs chosen contextualise the socio-political issues that Wesh Wesh evokes. Although the film does not incorporate as radical a hip-hop aesthetic as Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo, rap lyrics from groups such as Assassin, La Bande des 4 and NAP are used to describe some of the harsh realities of growing up on a rundown housing estate. The gentle soul music of Curtis Mayfield’s Little Child Runnin’ Wild nevertheless tempers this during two nighttime scenes, and acts as a lullaby whose tone contrasts with that of the aforementioned rap music. This inclusion of soul music helps to challenge othering of French banlieues that is based on the idea that they are areas of unrest that deviate from the norms of the rest of France. The fact that most of Wesh Wesh is shot using a hand-held camera that closely follows events helps to create a sense of proximity between the viewer and the area filmed. It is during mundane everyday

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conversations that we hear how the double peine has had an impact on Kamel’s life, notably when his brother Mousse goes to call on a friend: Mousse: It’s a bastard’s way of doing things, you’d have to be mad. As if it wasn’t enough that you’ve done five years of prison in France. They have to expel you for two years. It’s crazy! Friend: That’s the double peine, and again if he hadn’t succeeded in coming back, I’m telling you, he could stay over there for the rest of his life. There you go. There are loads of guys in prison who have those problems, guys who were even born here. They are told ‘you have to return to your country of origin’. But when you are born in France . . . Mousse: Of course! What country of origin? 45

This dialogue involves Ameur-Zaïmeche taking a step back from portraying Kamel’s situation after his return to France by placing it firmly within the political context of how the double peine treats people who may consider themselves to be French as undesirable foreigners. This is precisely the sort of foreigner that Rosello argues that French immigration legislation has sought to characterise as ‘an enemy of the state, the most easily identifiable scapegoat’.46 The use of the pronoun ‘they’ by Mousse in the third sentence quoted demonstrates the existence of a ‘them and us’ mentality that defines how young residents of the housing estate perceive the French state. This is rarely broken down in the film and it is clear that those with grievances choose not to, or are unable to, ground them within the republican discourse of the French state. Dialogues between various characters in Wesh Wesh also help to show that Kamel’s lack of valid residency documents prevents him from finding work and restricts him to a monotonous and listless existence. At one stage Kamel explains to a group of children that he deliberately avoids the town centre as he fears being subjected to an identity check by the police. Consequently, he is reduced to the role of a spectator, rather than an actor, with regard to life on the estate and condemned to living on the margins by virtue of being wary of venturing into the town centre and being unable to work. This is illustrated in several scenes where Kamel sits down to watch cars go by, and in which he looks pensive and frustrated at the way life seems to be passing him by. This is similar to the way that Thorn

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begins On n’est pas des marques de vélo with shots of Bouda gazing down at trains from a footbridge as he explains how his life has been affected by the double peine. Such scenes highlight the spatial control that the double peine exerts and the way that it restricts social mobility. In other words, Wesh Wesh and On n’est pas des marques de vélo show that those subjected to the double peine have to deal with similar issues of spatial constraint to the sans-papiers. They do so in a manner that is in keeping with O’Shaughnessy’s characterisation of how the sense of confinement in films de banlieue is underpinned by ‘spatial dynamics [that] revolve tightly around the narrow frame in which the urban underclass is obliged to move and the struggle of the usually young male characters to inscribe their presence in public places’.47 In Wesh Wesh, the banlieue largely is an alienating back­ drop for Kamel where spatial constraints turn it into something akin to an open prison due to the way in which the double peine law restricts his movements. The focus on the way that Kamel’s life is affected by the double peine is typical of how Wesh Wesh primarily portrays sociological reasons to oppose the law. However, it also grounds Kamel’s hardship within the context of judicial opposition to the law, notably via its depiction of his interactions with the French state and its representatives. This goes beyond merely portraying criminal activity in the banlieues as a consequence of disillusionment and boredom. When we see members of the police in Wesh Wesh, their faces are often scrambled in the same way as the faces of people indulging in criminal activity are commonly scrambled in television footage. This role-reversal casts the police as aggressors or criminals rather than the residents of the banlieues. This subverts images of violence and crime in France’s banlieues that are presented by the media and often exploited by politicians. This procedure provides a further example of a practice that mirrors the way that the sans-papiers movement constructed the image of ‘an illegitimate, illegal host, corresponding to that of the illegal immigrant, the illegal guest’.48 The legitimacy of the actions of the police is called into question in Wesh Wesh on several occasions and their heavy-handed approach appears to perpetuate a cycle of violence on the housing estate. The most striking example of this comes near the end of the film when Kamel’s brother Mousse is arrested during a drugs bust in which a policeman pushes over the pair’s mother before spraying tear gas in her face. Seeing his mother in hospital following this incident

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makes the normally calm and conscientious Kamel determined to exact revenge, and he strikes the policeman responsible for his mother’s injuries over the head with a motorcycle helmet before spraying pepper spray in his face. In other words, Kamel takes revenge on the policeman by replicating the aggressive way that the policeman treated his mother. Consequently, he falls into the trap of behaving in a way he had intended to avoid as part of his attempts to start afresh. Wesh Wesh reaches a pessimistic conclusion since the possibility of Kamel successfully managing to do so is ruled out; the policeman in turn exacts revenge by chasing him into a wood and apparently shooting him dead. Kamel’s fate is the inexorable consequence of a chain of events brought about by the double peine. Whilst he is able to deal with his perceived mistreatment by the French state (that is, being subjected to the double peine law), he is unable to contain his anger when he learns of how his mother was physically mistreated by the police. The sense of tragedy is heightened by the fact that Kamel is shot in the woods beside the lake where he used to go fishing, a rare rural haven within the grey housing estate. This area offered him a form of escapism as vaulting over a locked gate allowed him to isolate himself temporarily from the frustrations of confinement that characterised his life on the housing estate. This greater freedom is often visually represented by wider shots that contrast with the tighter focus used in most of the scenes on the housing estate. The conclusion brutally shatters the notion that the woods are a safe haven as the policeman penetrates this zone of relative security. This again reinforces the importance of spatial constraints brought about by the double peine: Kamel has not been free to lead a normal life, and his virtual incarceration finally proves fatal. This brutal conclusion to Wesh Wesh means that the scenes of carefree enjoyment of life in green surroundings constitute mere fleeting moments of escape from the trials of life on the suburban housing estate. It is symptomatic of how the film deals not just with the double peine, but also with the wider sense of frustration and injustice felt by residents of the housing estate. Whether they are young or old, they appear enveloped by a sort of fatality. Be it due to the double peine, the attitudes of the police or society’s prejudices, they appear trapped in a situation that offers them few ways out and causes constant frustration. It is probably for this reason that Tarr sees Wesh Wesh as ‘a protest film [about] the on-going exclusion of

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young men of Maghrebi descent from mainstream French society’.49 Ameur-Zaïmeche’s desire to ground his film within the context described by Tarr is clear from the end credits of Wesh Wesh in which there is a dedication to ‘all the victims of the double peine . . . and to all our brothers who have died in racist crimes and as a result of excessive security measures’.50 This shows that, whilst his film was not as closely associated with the 2001–3 national campaign against the double peine as those of Tavernier and Thorn, Ameur-Zaïmeche was keen to place it within a similar context of representing the workings and consequences of a law that he perceived to be unjust. Although Wesh Wesh seeks to judge the police and the French legal system, it avoids being judgemental about the individual banlieue residents who are caught up in the system described above. Ameur-Zaïmeche deliberately did not include any scenes that involved dialogue between the calm and conscientious Kamel and his lazy and more wayward brother Mousse so as to avoid making moralistic judgements about the pair.51 The fact that we are left unsure as to the offence that resulted in Kamel’s imprisonment and subsequent deportation similarly helps to avoid deflecting attention away from how the double peine operates. Not knowing what crime Kamel has committed encourages reflection on the principles of the double peine in more general terms rather than its justness as a punishment for specific types of crimes. Thus, Wesh Wesh’s exploration of the life of its central character encourages broader contemplation of socio-political issues such as the role of the police in France’s banlieues and the way in which people who are not French citizens are treated by the French legal system.

Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Bled Number One (2006) All three of the films discussed thus far in this chapter primarily contextualise the double peine in relation to issues such as how France manages immigration and the relationship with France of those subject to the punishment. Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Bled Number One places the law in a different context since it takes place in Algeria as Kamel, the central character from Wesh Wesh, tries to settle into life in a country from which he has become disconnected. As with Wesh Wesh, the story begins with Kamel making a journey that could be perceived as a return home although what unfolds

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calls into question the extent to which Algeria really is Kamel’s home. Thus, the film questions the way that the double peine law operates and Kamel’s ‘return’ provokes mixed reactions from the villagers in rural north-east Algeria where he is seeking to make a fresh start. This brings another angle on how the notion of hospitality is connected to the double peine. From one perspective, the double peine can be seen as a sign of France’s lack of hospitality towards migrants. From another perspective, Kamel’s arrival in Algeria shifts the responsibility of hospitality from France to his supposed country of origin. Although there are clear links between Wesh Wesh and Bled Number One, a degree of confusion is introduced by the way that the DVD cover of the latter film features the phrase ‘avant ou après Wesh Wesh’ (before or after Wesh Wesh). Given that Kamel appeared to have been shot dead at the end of Wesh Wesh, it is natural to assume that Bled Number One shows the period he spent in Algeria after the deportation that followed his release from prison in France. Indeed, Kamel’s decision to try to leave Algeria towards the end of Bled Number One could be seen as the prelude to the return to France with which Wesh Wesh begins. However, whilst the conclusion of Wesh Wesh appears to involve Kamel being shot by a policeman, there are certain qualifications that are worth considering. Although we see Kamel being chased by a policeman and hear two gunshots, we do not actually see Kamel being shot. The film ends after we see a police car returning to the estate where Kamel lived. Conceivably, it is possible that Kamel was not fatally wounded or that he actually shot the policeman. This latter explanation is somewhat doubtful given that he was running away from the policeman before the sound of the gunshots. The phrase qu’est-ce qui se passe? (literally, what is happening?) that is part of the full title of Wesh Wesh is a question that Kamel appears to ask himself during his time in Algeria. His return seems devoid of nostalgia as he appears to feel somewhat alienated from his roots. This notion has echoes of the theories of the writer Frantz Fanon, and particularly his book Peau noire, masques blancs.52 Given that Fanon spent time working at an asylum in Algeria, Bled Number One can be seen as providing a further parallel with Fanon’s life when we see a character named Louisa end up in an asylum after being abandoned by her violent husband. As Jean-Luc Douin has observed, it is within the asylum in Ameur-Zaïmeche’s film that we

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hear a counter-hegemonic challenge as one of the residents comments that it is those on the outside who are mad.53 Notions of outsiders and insiders play a significant role in interactions between characters in Bled Number One. From the point of view of the locals, Kamel is an easily identifiable outsider. Indeed, some of them refer to him as ‘Kamel la France’. This is somewhat ironic given that it was Kamel’s lack of French citizenship that made it possible for him to be deported to Algeria. On occasion it appears that he has a degree of freedom in rural Algeria that contrasts with the confinement that frustrates him during Wesh Wesh. However, he remains an outsider. This is particularly clear at the start when his arrival is accompanied by one of many long continuous shots as he is driven into the centre of the village. This sequence is filmed from Kamel’s perspective and has the feel of a holiday video, in part due to Ameur-Zaïmeche’s decision to film using DSR 570 video cameras that are often used in television documentaries or news reporting.54 When we first see Kamel, he indeed appears like a tourist who is trying to take in a new range of sights and sounds, and often stands out as he frequently wears a sun hat and sunglasses. In the film, there are many different ways in which Kamel’s sense of dislocation is conveyed. Although Douin rightly suggests that the title Bled Number One evokes a sense of fondness towards Algeria, its combination of French and English hints at the importance of hybridity, difference and dislocation. The soundtrack similarly features songs in Arabic and English, although not French. When it comes to the dialogue, both French and Arabic are used. It is clear that Kamel is not fully at ease in Arabic, sometimes responding in French to questions that are posed in Arabic. Spectators who do not understand Arabic are placed in a similar position to Kamel as not all of the dialogue in Arabic is subtitled, and Higbee argues that this is highly significant: The spectator is frequently denied access to what the characters are saying during key and intimate exchanges . . . If the soundtrack allowed us to hear what the characters were discussing, the sense of distanciation and dislocation between spectator, protagonist and the environment of the bled would be far less extreme.55

Spectators are thus encouraged to view the Algerian setting from a similar perspective to that of Kamel, who also sometimes

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struggles to fully comprehend what is going on. However, as Higbee also points out, the use of ‘a combination of long shot and zoom [means that] the spectator observes the bled from a position of detachment’.56 Although these visual elements draw the spectator away from Kamel at times when other choices could have provided greater access to his thoughts, they mean that the spectator experiences a sense of detachment or dislocation that mirrors that of the lead character. This is perhaps achieved most powerfully by the piercing sounds of the electric guitar of Rodolphe Burger that punctuate Bled Number One, notably in the closing sequence. This music often seems out of kilter with the film and the setting, especially near the end where the presence of Burger, his electric guitar and amplifier appear distinctly out of place on a rural hillside. The way that he is heard before being seen blurs the boundaries between diegetic and extra-diegetic sound. This appears highly symbolic, especially given Higbee’s argument that ‘“displaced audio” [is often used by FrenchMaghrebi directors as] a means of questioning fixed notions of ethnicity and identity’.57 Thus, the soundtrack effectively challenges the rigidity of republican definitions of citizenship and the strict dichotomy between nationals and non-nationals. The subtle use of such cinematic techniques is of particular interest when exploring how the theme of the double peine is represented in Bled Number One, especially as it is rarely evoked explicitly. However, a discussion between the villagers in which Kamel is referred to as a ‘bandit’ halfway through the film provides a reminder of the reason for his deportation to Algeria. Similarly, other events appear to symbolise how the law operates. At one stage, Kamel accompanies Bouzid when the latter goes to purchase beer. During a dispute with the shop owner Bouzid argues that he has already paid for the beer, involuntarily replicating the sort of vocabulary used by those who criticise the double peine for punishing someone twice for the same offence. By largely leaving debates about how the double peine operates to one side, Bled Number One creates more space in which to explore the consequences of a deportation. This contrasts with the way in which deportations under the double peine law are referred back to by interviewees in Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées after they have been able to return to France. What Bled Number One ultimately manages to do is to demonstrate the complexities of hybrid identities that are largely neither

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accommodated by republicanism nor taken into account when it comes to the application of the double peine law. This constitutes an indirect appeal for a conception of citizenship that is less based on nationality and gives greater weight to factors such as residency and family connections in France. As in Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées and Alain Gomis’s L’Afrance, a diaspora member’s ‘return’ home exposes how detached from their so-called country of origin they have become. Bled Number One also demonstrates how tensions regarding identity affect both those who live in former colonial powers such as France and also former colonies such as Algeria. The Algeria to which Kamel returns is one where there is a tension between the old and the new and where competing ways of life create tensions. This is particularly clear when we see a gang arrive in the village and threaten residents such as Bouzid because they do things – such as play dominoes and drink beer – that the gang sees as incompatible with Islam. Although it was shot entirely in Algeria, Frodon argues that Bled Number One largely owes its existence to French funding.58 Its focus on postcolonial issues from a primarily Algerian perspective provides a prime example of the sort of intercultural dialogues that have become an increasingly prominent feature of French and francophone cinema in recent years. Alison Murray Levine’s description of beur cinema provides a concise summary of the issues that are often involved: ‘By its very existence, Beur cinema goes beyond the objective of giving voice to the immigrant experience; it incarnates the immigrant experience itself. It is both outside and inside, both belonging and affirming the right not to belong.’59 Via its Algerian setting, Bled Number One provides a powerful portrait of the sense of dislocation that Kamel faces in a land where many of the locals see him as an outsider despite it being the land of his birth. Due to his deportation’s being a consequence of the double peine law, it demonstrates that the legislation cannot only punish people twice for the same offence but also can mean that they end up feeling like out­siders in two different locations.

Conclusion The consequences of the double peine law portrayed in the four films analysed here raise important issues about the way that French republican ideology functions. The double peine shows a

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consequence of the strict dichotomy between nationals and nonnationals that is inherent in the republican model of citizenship. When it comes to residency rights and treatment by the courts, radically different paths are mapped out for those who may have lived most of their life in France but who are not officially French citizens and those who are French citizens, whether they were born in France or not. The films suggest that the theoretically egalitarian Republic not only seeks to exclude perceived undesirable others on the basis of the aforementioned national/non-national distinction, but also targets specific groups in a way that contradicts the Republic’s universalist ideals. However, it is noticeable that few of those with first-hand experience of the double peine ground their criticisms of it in the language of republican political culture. Rather than necessarily suggesting a lack of knowledge on their part, this could be seen as a refusal to believe in the inclusionary potential of the Republic. The presence of a French tricolour flying outside a municipal building near the end of Wesh Wesh when Kamel tries to regularise his situation is significant, and this is visually signalled by the way it is foregrounded in the shot. Given that Kamel is unable to regularise his situation when he goes to this building, the flag provides a visual suggestion that it is the French state that is responsible for the hardship that he and others have endured. Although the films largely point to similar conclusions about the French state’s treatment of immigrants, they are not all equally forceful in their denunciations of hegemonic discourse. Whilst not providing a hard-hitting criticism of the fact that the actions (and inaction) of French politicians could be seen as part of the reason why the double peine remains on the statute books and something that risks alienating those affected by the law, it could also be viewed as a potentially shrewd ploy for other reasons. It is conceivable that Bertrand Tavernier, for example, was deliberately trying to win the government over to his way of thinking without antagonising it. This strategy could also be interpreted as a sign of a director’s belief that the double peine is in need of reform rather than outright abolition. The general tendency within the four films analysed here is to question the legitimacy of the double peine, and consequently the legal procedures of the theoretically egalitarian French state, primarily by concentrating on sociological rather than judicial issues. It seems that the three directors see this approach as a more effective

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means of eliciting sympathy from spectators in order to encourage them to believe that the law needs to be abolished, or at least reformed. There is, however, a significant difference between the way that Tavernier does so within a video diary format and Thorn’s use of a more aesthetically radical approach. Both Thorn and Ameur-Zaïmeche also ground the existence and implementation of the double peine within the wider context of treatment of residents of France’s banlieues and legacies of colonialism, something that Tavernier largely does not do. The directors’ desire to challenge hegemonic discourse on immigration and the banlieues was perhaps hampered by the fact that they all struggled to achieve wide distribution and reach large audiences. For example, Wesh Wesh gained a distributor only after winning an award at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival. Although all the films were screened at events involving groups that participated in the national campaign against the double peine, these events will often have involved preaching to the converted or at least the more easily convertible. Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, director of Wesh Wesh and Bled Number One, has argued that films such as his need to go further than being shown in art-house cinemas and should also be shown in multiplexes in order to reach a wider audience that includes people likely to be directly affected by issues such as the double peine.60 He contends that multiplexes have sought to justify their decision not to programme his film with the argument that it might lead to disturbances. In other words, certain French cinemas have been reluctant to programme films that imply criticism of the state, and especially the police, in areas where people may share such grievances. All four of the films analysed in this chapter provide groups campaigning against the double peine with a potential resource to help them bring to life their arguments.61 However, most of their directors have pointed out that they wanted their works to be appreciated as films and not just seen as campaigning tools. Despite such ambitions, both the documentaries struggled to achieve widespread distribution outside political circles and neither Wesh Wesh nor Bled Number One were widely shown outside the art-house circuit. This demonstrates the difficulties involved in exploring a complicated and significant, yet low-profile, political issue in an accessible and dynamic film that simultaneously generates media coverage, critical acclaim and commercial success. It also made it easier for

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politicians to claim that the issue of the double peine had been resolved via the introduction of a series of reforms whose scope was more limited than initially apparent. This is precisely what Nicolas Sarkozy did as interior minister in 2003, somewhat ironically as part of a wider programme that was generally seen as symbolising a highly repressive attitude to controlling immigration and those living in France’s banlieues. Crucially, these reforms did not call into question the legitimacy of the premises upon which the double peine is based and mean that the four films analysed in this chapter concern a subject that is yet to be resolved.

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Chapter Four

Challenging or Perpetuating Clichés? Young People and the Police in France’s Banlieues Introduction Relations between young people and the police in France’s banlieues have been an important theme within the renewal of social and political film-making in France since 1995, both in fictional and documentary films. Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (Hate, 1995) provides an iconic example of this topic that has continued to interest French film-makers in the subsequent decade and a half. Interactions between young people and the police in France’s banlieues show how power relations are maintained or challenged. The police – as representatives of the state – symbolise its values and are responsible for upholding them. How they do so, and especially how they treat groups such as banlieue residents and visible ethnic minorities, provides a snapshot of dominant power relations in French society. Given existing negative stereotypes that associate French banlieues with crime and violence, finding a way to depict relations between young people and the police in these areas that does not to some degree perpetuate these clichés provides film-makers with a challenge. As Rosello argues, tackling stereotypes head on can be problematic as simply seeking to establish a more accurate picture often fails to assess the workings of pre-existing stereotypes in an adequate manner.1 Consequently, it is important to assess to what extent films set in France’s banlieues contextualise subjects such as crime and violence. In the case of documentaries, Bourdieu’s belief in the need to prepare those unfamiliar with the workings of the media in order to help them to express themselves encapsulates

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how some film-makers seek to make it easier for banlieue residents to present themselves in a manner that is not dictated by existing stereotypes.2

The importance of interactions between young people and the police in France’s banlieues In the face of perceived injustices such as racial discrimination and the French state’s alleged neglect of certain banlieues, the police can become a target for those with grievances. Michel Felkay, who served as a senior police officer in Parisian banlieues, argues that the police in these areas often find themselves ‘on the front line, up against all the malfunctioning elements of society’.3 An important reason for this is that the police are among the few state actors who remain in certain estates that may lack leisure facilities, adequate public transport and healthcare. In addition, young inhabitants of the banlieues (especially those who are from visible ethnic minor­ ities) often complain of being subjected to excessive identity checks by the police, and Laurent Mucchielli argues that young people see this as ‘the symbol and daily confirmation of the fundamental racism of French society’.4 Felkay’s and Mucchielli’s analysis illustrates that young people’s animosity towards the police can be both a consequence of perceived mistreatment by the police at a local level and a belief that they are being mistreated by the French state in general. This sense of injustice explains why Saïd Bouamama describes the aggressive behaviour of young people in France as often being a response to violence they have been subjected to by others, notably due to repressive government policies and a period of socio-economic crisis.5 However, this holistic perspective rarely features in the French media’s portrayal of young people from the banlieues, which generally casts them as perpetrators rather than victims of crime and violence. This approach is consistent with the ways that successive French governments, on the left and the right, have strived to be seen as being tough on crime. However, the Jospin government of 1997–2002 nevertheless sought to monitor and control the use and abuse of police powers by forming the Conseil supérieur de la déontologie et de la sécurité (CSDS) in 1997.6 It subsequently published the Guide pratique de la déontologie de la police nationale in 1999.7 The latter built on the Guide pratique de la déontologie de la police nationale.8

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This was drawn up by the left in 1986 and distributed by the rightwing government that came into power later that year.9 This shows that even if the left in France has increasingly adopted a similar approach to crime to the right, the left remains the source of several checks on political use or misuse of police power. Following the legislative elections of 2002, the appointment of Nicolas Sarkozy as interior minister led to an increasingly uncompromising and repressive approach to crime. In February 2003, Sarkozy provided a clear statement of his intentions by telling police officers in Toulouse that ‘the police force is not here to organise sports tournaments but rather to arrest criminals’ and reminding them that they were ‘not social workers’.10 This has done little to help young people living in France’s banlieues, and several critics argue that it made their situation more difficult.11 In October and November 2005, nationwide demonstrations followed the death of two adolescents in Clichy-sous-Bois who were electrocuted after climbing into an electrical substation whilst being chased by police. These demonstrations were a response not just to a single incident, but also to wider societal issues. Among the factors that gave rise to the protests was a feeling that groups such as descendants of immigrants were not being listened to or adequately represented within the public sphere in France and that French police actions reflected their perceived sense of entitlement to take a tough line in tackling crime.12 In films set in France’s banlieues, many of the victims of police violence are from visible ethnic minorities. Assessing to what extent this general picture is consistent with reality is difficult as repub­ lican universalism can obscure racial differences and make racism hard to identify or quantify. Data that the French police collect regarding people arrested is restricted to their gender, whether or not they are an adult and whether they are French nationals or foreign nationals.13 In other words, whilst nationality is taken into account, ethnicity is not. Thus, someone’s status as an Algerian national would be noted, but being of Algerian descent would not be recorded if someone were a French national. Despite this, Fabien Jobard has identified important trends that suggest that ethnic minorities form a disproportionately high percentage of victims of police violence. In a study of police violence based on 225 incidents reported in the French press from December 1986 to November 2001, Jobard notes that there were 82 incidents that led to the death

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of a victim and that 65 of these were caused by gunshots. Of the 56 cases where it was possible to get an indication of the ethnicity of the victim, there were 25 French of French descent and 24 Arabs or children of Arabs. In cases of non-fatal (and non-sexual violence), the number of Arabs or children of Arabs concerned exceeded that of French people of French descent.14 These figures suggest that the number of people considered to be Arab or of Arab descent (that is, from an ethnic minority group) who were victims of police violence was roughly equal to the number of French people of French descent (that is, those from the majority ethnic population).

The significance of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (Hate, 1995) Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine provides a well-known cinematic representation of police violence and the victims are from visible ethnic minorities. The starting point of the film is the news that a beur teenager named Abdel Ichaha is in a coma following an alleged case of police brutality. Abdel’s subsequent death leads to a bleak conclusion for the three protagonists. Vinz is shot dead by a policeman whose gun goes off accidentally, and Saïd can only watch as the ensuing stand-off between his friend Hubert and a policeman ends with the screen going black and a large bang sounding. The way that La Haine is thus framed by violent events suggests that such occurrences are cyclical and an unavoidable feature of life in certain banlieues. However, the film sees clashes between police and ethnic minority youths occur not just on the protagonists’ housing estate, but also in central Paris where Saïd and Hubert are physically and racially abused by officers after being arrested. This leaves Vinz as the only victim of police violence in La Haine who is not visibly of foreign descent. Despite their awareness of the existence of discrimination, Vinz, Saïd and Hubert are generally unable to situate their predicament within a wider historical, social or political context. Although they refer to republicanism at one point, they do so in a manner that parodies its relevance to life on a suburban estate. When they recite a series of sayings and clichés whilst apparently stoned as they look out across Paris, Vinz mentions ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ after Hubert asks him: ‘tu en as d’autres, des phrases à la con?’ (‘Do you have any more of those stupid sayings?’) This shows that they do not

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view republicanism as a concept that allows them to express grievances or can increase their chances of being heard. Their cynicism symbolises La Haine’s pessimistic outlook and appears to be a consequence of growing up in suburban Paris and especially tense interactions with state representatives such as the police. The fact that La Haine highlights social problems that exist in certain banlieues has led to its often been discussed as if it were a documentary despite being a fiction. It has also meant that many articles about it in English-language publications begin by situating La Haine within a socio-political context. Keith Reader does so by referring to 1980s and 1990s protest movements in France’s banlieues and connotations of the term banlieue.15 Jill Forbes, as well as Zisserman and Nettelbeck, describe how the French media’s overwhelmingly negative representations of France’s banlieues constitute a problem in itself for inhabitants of such areas.16 Konstantarakos highlights the crisis of identity for young people living in such areas.17 However, these articles also situate La Haine within France’s cinematic history, and more specifically that of banlieue cinema. Although academics writing on La Haine have provided in-depth analysis of both cinematic and political issues, Kassovitz quickly became frustrated at the way that much of the media coverage at the time of the film’s release focused primarily on political issues. In a television interview at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival he stated that ‘we are here to defend a film . . . not to stir things up’.18 Kassovitz has also pointed out that important elements of La Haine distance it from reality. For example, he made the central trio a Jew, a beur and a black in order to give the film a fable-like quality and address wider issues than just relations between the police and beur youths. Furthermore, La Haine was deliberately filmed in an area that was not going to be as instantly recognisable as certain wellknown housing estates that are frequently associated with socio-economic problems.19 Zisserman and Nettelbeck identify this as a key way that La Haine attempts to avoid clichés associated with more run-down banlieues.20 Although La Haine challenges certain aspects of dominant power relations by generally casting the police as aggressors and young people as victims, it nevertheless reinforces the stereotypical association between banlieues, crime and violence.21 At first glance, it could be argued that much of La Haine’s success stemmed from its relevance to a time when la fracture sociale was a major news issue. However, the film’s narrative and cinematic style

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(including the use of jump cuts and black-and-white footage) led to critical acclaim and contributed to its success. In 1995, Kassovitz became one of the youngest recipients of the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival. The commercial success of La Haine was particularly notable, especially compared to other banlieue films. The fact that almost two million people went to see it in cinemas places it well ahead of relatively well-known banlieue films such as Thomas Gilou’s Raï (1995, 126,419 spectators) and Jean-François Richet’s Ma 6-T va crack-er (My Estate’s Gonna Explode, 1997, 69,534 spectators), and means that it was seen by several times more spectators than any of the other main films analysed in this book.22 Reader sees La Haine as having revitalised French cinema.23 However, Tarr argues that it deflected attention away from other banlieue films made around the same time.24 For many, especially those outside France, La Haine is the sole cinematic reference point concerning relations between young people and the police in France’s banlieues. This provides good reason to delve deeper and explore how other films have subsequently represented relations between young people and the police in the banlieues. The importance of the four main films analysed in this chapter (Ma 6-T va crack-er, Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles, L’Embrasement and Banlieues: sous le feu des médias) stems from the way that they are all tightly constructed around periods preceding or following clashes between young residents and the French police. This, allied to their different geographical perspectives and relationships to real events, means that analysing them provides a way to trace methods of contextualising violent clashes between police and young people in suburban France. As already suggested, relations between the police and young people in suburban France constitute an important theme in many other films set in the banlieues. Thomas Gilou’s Raï and Jean-François Richet’s État des lieux (1995) are further examples of fictional works that explore such issues. The former is, however, less closely structured around relations between young people and the police and the latter has not been included here as it was filmed prior to 1995 and thus falls outside the period being examined. Other films with similar preoccupations raise important issues about how relations between young people and the police in suburban France are represented. Although the quality of the acting in Paul Vecchiali’s Zone franche (Free Zone, 1996) is variable, the film is certainly of interest as a sociocultural project as

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it allowed residents of the Les Coteaux estate in Mulhouse to play a role in writing and acting out events based on their own lives. Pierre Morel’s Banlieue 13 (District 13, 2004) provides a striking representation of the policing of an unruly housing estate on the suburban fringes of Paris in which the urban sport of parkour (or ‘free running’) is at the heart of visually spectacular action sequences. However, its heavily clichéd dialogue and plot, as well as its failure to situate its key themes in relation to a meaningful socio-political context explain why it has not been included here. The four main films in this chapter provide more meaningful contextualisation and facilitate analysis of how representations of relations between young people and the police in France have evolved between the release of La Haine in 1995 and the period following the autumn 2005 unrest in much of suburban France.

Jean-François Richet’s Ma 6-T va crack-er (My Estate’s Gonna Explode, 1997)25 Like La Haine, Jean-François Richet’s Ma 6-T va crack-er examines tensions within a suburban Parisian housing estate that lead to a violent clash between young people and the police. However, Richet’s film more explicitly grounds its critique of the state’s interventions in the banlieues within the context of republicanism despite being significantly more violent than La Haine. This provides a counter-example to O’Shaughnessy’s argument that many contemporary French political films no longer situate struggles in relation to universal ideals.26 However, it is worth asking to what extent the violence in Ma 6-T va crack-er is compatible with the film’s attempt to place the situation in Parisian banlieues within a wider context. Rosello argues that, especially when it comes to ethnic stereotypes about crime, it is possible simultaneously to show crime taking place and to challenge stereotypical views of crime by ‘insist[ing] on an extreme contextual specificity of the concept of delinquency’.27 This provides a potential means of showing a stereotype whilst also delving deeper and explaining how it came into existence. Ma 6-T va crack-er also differs from La Haine due to its director being from the banlieues and setting his film in the area where he grew up (Meaux, north-east of Paris). This detail appears to have influenced how Ma 6-T va crack-er is filmed. Higbee notes that the camera in the film often follows, or is placed within, the groups of

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youths who are the film’s protagonists and that ‘the spectator thus adopts the point of view of the young male banlieusards’.28 The shaky hand-held footage also creates a rawness that contrasts with the artistic slickness of La Haine. Furthermore, Richet’s film also featured more cast members in major roles who were from the area and did not have previous acting experience. Ma 6-T va crack-er follows the day-to-day lives of two groups of young males. The younger group is composed of Arco, Malik and Mustapha, who are in their early teenage years and still at school. The four members of the older group – Djeff (played by Richet), JM, Pete and Hamouda – appear to be in their early twenties and are all unemployed, and represent the unappealing future that lies ahead for the members of the younger group. Life on the estate and in the local school features a lot of violence and confrontations with authority figures, be they teachers or the police. There are no parental figures in the film who are able to control the young people. The protagonists’ gangs represent the only coherent groups or support structures that exist in their lives. Much of the film features conflicts between gangs that build up towards an explosion of violence. Initially, there is a shoot-out between rival gangs outside a nightclub where a hip-hop event is taking place, and this precedes a forceful police response. Malik is shot dead by a policeman after vandalising and setting fire to a car in a Leclerc supermarket car park and then attempting to steal another car. This provokes rioting on his estate, and further clashes between the police and the young residents as the cycle of violence escalates beyond control. The film ends by characterising revolution as a necessary response to the treatment of the young people in the film, citing article 35 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (‘When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is, for the people and each group of the people, the most sacred of rights’).29 In addition to providing the explosion of violence announced by the film’s title, the ending of Ma 6-T va crack-er creates a degree of symmetry due to the presence of revolutionary images right at the start of the film. Before the first images of the housing estate, a young mother played by Virginie Ledoyen appears on screen waving a red flag and playing with an infant, before pointing a gun at her own head. The presence of several screens in the background showing rioting is reminiscent of the footage of looting and violence at the start of La Haine. However, whilst the initial and final moments

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of La Haine ground its tightly constructed narrative within a pessimistic fable-like context, Ma 6-T va crack-er is framed in a more overtly political manner that evokes France’s republican traditions. Ledoyen’s waving of the red flag against a backdrop of protests and riots evokes the French revolutionary icon Marianne. The fact that Ledoyen’s modern Marianne-like figure points a gun at her head suggests that the French Republic is faced with major societal problems of its own making. Despite the prominent presence of Ledoyen’s Marianne figure at the start of Ma 6-T va crack-er, the film – like many other banlieue films – is composed of an almost exclusively male cast. Richet’s film relegates women to peripheral roles that render them virtually invisible. This goes beyond the way that they are generally confined to domestic settings in La Haine and excludes them from real-life issues, unconsciously repeating a lack of equality that previous republics failed to address. This shows how hegemonies based on issues such as race, gender and class can interact, adding weight to Loomba’s assertion that ‘wherever our subalterns are, they are positioned simultaneously within several discourses of power and resistance’.30 When interviewed about Ma 6-T va crack-er, Richet has insisted on the need to examine the power structures that provoke the frequent violent exchanges in his film. He has grounded socio-economic problems in certain banlieues within the context of the exploitative nature of global capitalism, thereby going beyond locating them within a purely French context.31 For most of Ma 6-T va crack-er, the young residents of the estate appear to be locked in a cycle of crime and violence whose roots are beyond their comprehension and influence. Their frustration at their predicament is voiced in a conversation at a bus stop where Arco, Malik and Mustapha discuss their uncertainty about their futures in a society where ‘they [presumably those in power] do what they want to us’.32 Seeing the trio at a bus stop at which a bus does not arrive reinforces their lack of social mobility. The non-specific use of ‘they’ demonstrates the protagonists’ inability to identify precisely who is to blame for their situation, and creates a major hurdle to be overcome before they are able to start the revolutionary process advocated by Richet. This impasse provides one of many examples of the young people’s frustration at life on their estate and their repeated expression of this frustration via physical violence makes the film’s apocalyptic ending inevitable. Such scenes are made all the more .

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realistic and potentially shocking due to the rawness of shaky footage that is generally filmed in close-up. Near the end, rap lyrics announce the imminent apocalyptic conclusion (‘my neighbourhood is about to explode’) and its roots (‘the police are killing, my estate is catching fire, I hate the cops’).33 As two gangs engage in a shoot-out outside a nightclub, further lyrics voice Richet’s revolutionary ideals. These include sentiments such as ‘nothing and no one can stifle a revolt’, the prediction that ‘the explosion of all the estates is approaching’ and ‘my estate is going to explode, a complete revolution’.34 These lyrics characterise the violence of the young people in Ma 6-T va crack-er as a response to their treatment by the police that paradoxically appears both empowering and destructively selfperpetuating. Whilst it may seem to be part of a revolutionary challenge to the legitimacy of the police (and, therefore, the French state), it does not enable them to improve their situation. The basis within the film for the use of such violence is the abuse by the police of their power. The legitimacy of their presence on the estate is questioned several times, notably by one young resident who states that ‘the police must not go onto the estate . . . it must not become an occupied territory’.35 These words demonstrate both the young people’s antagonism towards the police and also the thought pro­cesses behind it. They also have echoes of the Occupation or anti-colonial resistance, and the notion of intifada. However, official discourses would justify the presence of the police in areas such as the housing estate in Ma 6-T va crack-er as part of a refusal to allow such areas to spiral out of the control of the Republic and a sign that the state was not neglecting the banlieues. The notion that the state needs to take control of unruly areas evokes colonial logic such as that used by the French state to justify its military intervention in the Algerian War of 1954–62. The image of the police as unwelcome occupiers in the banlieues provides a reminder of the tensions between the centres and peripheries of major cities in France. A suburban train station and a road sign pointing towards Paris (40 kilometres away) provide rare reminders that the estate where Ma 6-T va crack-er is set is within relatively easy reach of the French capital. A headline on a billboard advertising the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur that Arco, Malik and Mustapha walk past at one stage reinforces the notion that Meaux is a poor relation in comparison with Paris via its evocation

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of ‘the estates where the police no longer go’, suggesting that the French state is resigned to the fact that certain areas are out of control.36 The notion that the young people’s estate is an abandoned and insignificant area is reinforced when one of the older gang members comments that the French state would be much more worried by a general strike by workers than protests by young people in the banlieues. As most of the older youths in Ma 6-T va crack-er are unemployed, they are isolated from the potential support of trade union membership or workplace solidarity. Despite allusions to social causes of violence, Ma 6-T va crack-er does much to confirm negative stereotypes about the banlieues. Higbee argues that it reinforces negative images of these areas by providing ‘a representation of the urban periphery as the site of socio-economic deprivation characterised by degraded housing, high unemployment and delinquency’. Furthermore, he contends that the film reproduces the stereotypes associated with sensationalist media coverage of the banlieues, and the sorts of political discourse on the banlieues that are used to justify a repressive response from the police.37 It is possible to reject popular negative representations of the banlieues whilst acknowledging the presence of violence and social problems in these areas.38 However, it helps if it can be shown that there is more to young people’s lives than gang conflicts, frustration and violence. The frequency and intensity of violence in Ma 6-T va crack-er reduces the extent to which it is able to create a counter-hegemonic space as it appears overly determined by existing negative stereotypes. Ultimately, the prevalence of violence in Ma 6-T va crack-er led to a largely negative reaction from many potential funders and distributors, which in turn helps to explain the film’s relative lack of commercial success. The film’s producer, Pascal Caucheteux, felt that it had been subjected to a boycott by distributors and its shooting was disrupted by several authorisations and sources of funding being withdrawn at the last minute.39 Nevertheless, both the film’s soundtrack album and a single protesting against perceived racist laws in France (with which Richet was involved) were seen as commercial successes, both selling in excess of 60,000 copies. In addition, TF1 sought to profit from the controversy surrounding the release of Ma 6-T va crack-er when distributing the film on DVD by billing it as ‘the “banned” film’ and ‘a brutal film’, encouraging people to ‘discover on DVD the provocative film withdrawn

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from cinemas!’40 Although the controversy surrounding Ma 6-T va crack-er arguably reinforces hegemonic discourse on the banlieues, it paradoxically helped to explain its lack of box office success and also make the DVD of the film appear marketable.

Éric Pittard’s Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles (The Noise, the Smell and a Few Stars, 2004) Éric Pittard’s Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles initially appears to be in many ways the opposite of Ma 6-T va crack-er ; in addition to being a documentary rather than a fiction, it is primarily about a period following, rather than preceding, an incident of police violence. Whilst Pittard’s film also focuses on a group of young males from a housing estate, it shows that it is possible for people from such areas to express a sense of injustice without resorting to violence. Although Pittard is not from the Toulouse housing estate where his film is set, it is clear that he adopted a sensitive approach towards getting to know the protagonists and helping them to represent themselves. He engaged in a preparatory process similar to that outlined by Bourdieu in Sur la télévision so as to help Farid Benfodil, Farid Mekouchech and Kader Benguella to express themselves in a personalised way that was less likely to reproduce stereotypes associated with mainstream media discourses about France’s banlieues.41 Pittard’s film demonstrates his desire to portray the residents of the La Reynerie estate as thoughtful, articulate and able to express their opinions within a republican framework. The film’s title encapsulates Pittard’s vision of the housing estate where he films most of the scenes. ‘Le bruit et l’odeur’ (‘the noise and the smell’) is a clear reference to Chirac’s 1991 speech in which he evoked problems such as overcrowding and poverty that he blamed on high concentrations of Muslim and black immigrants. This negative element is tempered by the addition of ‘et quelques étoiles’ (‘and a few stars’) in the title, which introduces an element of hope. ‘Le Bruit et l’odeur’ is also a means of referencing the music of the politically engaged Toulouse band Zebda that punctuates the film. Zebda famously released a single and album entitled Le Bruit et l’odeur in 1995 in which they denounced Chirac’s alarmism. Several band members grew up near the La Reynerie estate and Zebda’s success challenges negative representations of France’s banlieues by demonstrating that they are also areas characterised by

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cultural dynamism and not just social problems such as crime and violence. By using the music of Zebda instead of his own narration, Pittard allows local Toulousain accents to represent the experiences recounted by Farid Benfodil, Farid Mekouchech and Kader Benguella in a dynamic way that helps to structure the film and make it visually appealing. Both the lyrics of Zebda’s songs and the locations where they perform them bring to life the film’s representation of the housing estate. By not acting as a narrator himself, Pittard gives much greater space and prominence to the residents of La Reynerie. Pittard has described Zebda’s contribution as having played a crucial role in turning his film into an opéra-documentaire, a hybrid genre that juxtaposes a fictional genre (opera) and a factual genre (documentary). Mogniss Abdallah sees this as a device that Pittard uses to differentiate his films from the conventional style of certain television documentaries that aim to take a sociological approach but remain largely superficial and stereotypical in their representation of France’s banlieues.42 Le Bruit et l’odeur received funding from a variety of different sources, of which only one had links with the French state. The film’s criticism of the French state, and especially the police and legal system, may explain why it did not receive (or seek to access) more state funding, and consequently relied on funding from several Belgian organisations in addition to some support received from Canal Plus in France. A crucial factor that allows Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive picture of life on a suburban housing estate than the French media often does is its time structure: it concentrates on a period of several months following the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old named Habib by local police. This differs from La Haine’s representation of the considerably more immediate aftermath of a similar incident, and the way that Ma 6-T va crack-er depicts a short period prior to a flashpoint. Although Pittard’s film adopts a similar strategy to La Haine by portraying the police as aggressors and young banlieue residents as victims, its central trio are considerably more au fait with republicanism and the ways in which it can be used as a means of framing their grievances and advancing their cause. Portraying the young residents as victims may sound disempowering, but characterising the police as those at fault mirrors how the sans-papiers sought to

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invert dominant discourse by portraying the French state as an ‘illegitimate, illegal host’.43 The importance of the role of the Republic to the theme of Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles is alluded to in a strapline that has appeared on posters publicising the film and on the cover of its DVD edition: ‘three boys, the Republic, a police shooting, everything goes well, everything goes wrong’.44 The DVD cover and publicity materials also feature large tower blocks from the La Reynerie estate and a picture of a young resident alongside images of the French Revolution. This grounds young banlieue residents’ battles for rights within France’s national history by representing those demonstrating as French citizens fighting for the soul of their Republic. This republican context is evident within the film and evoked by its protagonists. Their vocabulary is that of people who are aware of republicanism and utilise its language to further their cause, and this is demonstrated when they state ‘we wanted to be citizens’ when standing at the bottom of a tower block.45 Thus, they primarily associate citizenship with socio-political participation and do not link it as closely to national status as French republicanism often does. The group’s actions also provide an example of what Rosello terms ‘tactical universalism’ as they appear deliberately to express their desires in the dominant political language in order to be heard.46 Rosello has stated elsewhere that ‘criminalizing an individual is easier when he or she is not conversant with the legal jargon’, and this provides a further reason to strategically utilise elements of republican ideology.47 The fact that the three protagonists created a community group as part of their campaign for justice for Habib further demonstrates an awareness of opportunities for collective action that are possible in French society. When they talk about the group, the trio’s chemistry is clear. These interviews are generally filmed in close-up at a variety of locations around the housing estate and the three friends often chip in to expand on or support what each other is saying. Furthermore, their descriptions of the lengths they went to in search of justice for Habib demonstrate their considerable energy and enthusiasm. By evoking concepts such as citizenship in their fight for justice, the trio exploit an approach that Silverman identifies as a means by which republicanism can facilitate challenges to the authority and workings of the state:

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It is at the moment when those people previously defined as an ethnic group want to be ‘individuals’, the moment when subjects want to be citizens, the moment when inequality is challenged in the name of equality that the contradictions of the republican nation-state come to the surface.48

Silverman’s analysis of the opportunities that become available when people ground claims within a republican framework encapsulates the way that the protagonists of Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles use this strategy both to express themselves and to criticise actions of representatives of the French state. Pittard dramatises this situation via several scenes in which a lawyer, wearing his legal robes, addresses the camera from a courtroom. The lawyer in question represented the prosecution in the case against the police officer who shot Habib and reflects upon the issue of dominant power relations within a framework of theoretical equality. He describes how independent experts doubted the policeman’s excuse that his gun went off accidentally, and adds that this sort of defence would not have been taken seriously had roles been reversed and Habib shot a policeman. The lawyer states that a key element of ‘republican speech’ is not giving more weight to the words of some rather than others due to their status.49 His downbeat tone suggests that he fears that this principle is often forgotten. This sort of cynicism has been evoked in more general terms by the sociologist Fabien Jobard, who argues that close relations between the courts and the police in France can make it difficult for victims of alleged police brutality to receive justice.50 The scene described above marks a change in tone as the optimism associated with the formation of their community group is tempered by pessimism. The central trio describe how they became frustrated at local politicians’ broken promises and were shortly afterwards sent to prison for stealing and crashing a car. Consequently, Pittard’s attempts to challenge dominant negative representations of suburban housing estates do not seek to conceal the existence of criminal activity in the banlieues or create a simple dichotomy between the ‘good’ young residents and the ‘bad’ police. The pathways mapped out by republicanism appear not to have allowed the three founders of the group to achieve their objectives as quickly as they wanted. It seems that this context and feelings of continued exclusion led to, but did not necessarily justify, their crime. Whilst the trio mention during the first half of their film that

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their community group had given them and their cause greater legitimacy in the eyes of local journalists, close-ups of local newspapers towards the end show that journalists were quick to question its aims and methods following their arrest. Nevertheless, the end of the film also contains elements that challenge dominant images of young people from the banlieues. When the three protagonists reflect on their time in prison, one of them contextualises their experience by referring to Plato’s analogy of the cave. Plato’s text seems to have been particularly pertinent to him as he read it in prison. The fact that Plato’s analogy of the cave involves prisoners becoming aware of the presence of light outside the cave introduces a hopeful element even if those confined to the cave struggle to make sense of what this world outside really looks like. The way that this analogy helps one of the protagonists of Pittard’s film to make sense of his situation demonstrates a reflective side to young people from France’s banlieues that is not often portrayed in the mainstream media. To return to Bourdieu’s the­ories about empowerment in Sur la télévision, Plato’s text has complemented Pittard’s preparatory work aimed at helping the central trio to express themselves by providing an unexpected means of contextualising life in France’s banlieues. Pittard’s film also facilitated this process due to his refusal of tight editing. In terms of the effect on the spectator, this practice is reminiscent of Bazinian realism’s tendency to ‘not draw attention to itself, [but] nonetheless provides the spectator with space to read the text for him or herself’.51 Throughout the film, space is left for silences, gestures, hesitations and thoughts during and just after the interviews with the three founders of the community group. This illustrates the respect Pittard has for them and brings out their personalities, humour and warmth. This contrasts with the highly constructed stereotypical negative narrative of conventional news footage of the banlieues by representing young people from these areas in a more positive manner that challenges an array of negative stereotypes. In other words, the ‘quelques étoiles’ (‘the few stars’) are accentuated rather than ‘le bruit et l’odeur’ (‘the noise and the smell’).

Philippe Triboit’s L’Embrasement (The Burst of Flames, 2007) Philippe Triboit’s L’Embrasement was motivated by a similar starting point to Éric Pittard’s Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles. However,

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whilst the latter evoked an event that occurred six years prior to its release the former was about a more recent high-profile flashpoint in relations between police and young people in France’s banlieues. L’Embrasement is a fiction based on the death of two adolescents in Clichy-sous-Bois in October 2005 who were electrocuted after jumping into an electrical substation whilst being pursued by the police. Rather than focusing on the subsequent unrest in many areas of France, Philippe Triboit’s film primarily concentrates on the immediate aftermath of the events in Clichy and the initially disputed accounts of the circumstances that led to the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna. This means that it addresses both specific cases of alleged police misconduct and also wider issues such as policing methods and the French state’s treatment of young banlieue residents. The idea for the film stemmed from producer Fabienne Servan Schreiber’s suggestion that Philippe Triboit adapted the diary of the lawyers of Bouna Traoré and Zyed Benna (Jean-Pierre Mignard and Emmanuel Tordjmann’s L’Affaire Clichy: morts pour rien) into a television film to be shown on Arte shortly after the first anniversary of the events in Clichy.52 The film does more than just set out to commemorate and chronicle what happened by also striving to make sense of what happened and how it was reported. Although using a fictional film to represent and problematise real-life issues brings with it paradoxes and challenges, it is important to remember that much of the initial reporting of events in Clichy was itself highly problematic. Triboit based his film not only on the lawyers’ book, but also on interviews of people in Clichy who knew those involved in the incidents of autumn 2005. A key person in this process was Muhittin Altun, who was seriously injured in the incident in which Bouna Traoré and Zyed Benna were electrocuted. Triboit’s film challenges initial police accounts that suggested that Bouna, Zyed and Muhittin were not being chased by officers when they climbed into the electrical sub­station. He has argued that the need to counter the subsequently disproved police version of events was particularly important as it was ‘widely broadcast by the media who today are overly hasty and lack control’.53 By using a fictional format, the director and his scriptwriter Marc Herpoux sought to examine interactions between young people, the media and the police in France’s banlieues.54 The initial police chase of Bouda, Zyed and Muhittin is not shown at the start of the film, although it subsequently features several

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times as an overexposed black-and-white flashback. By not sensationalising this element of the story, L’Embrasement uses the incident that led to the deaths of Bouna and Zyed as a starting point rather than an end point within its exploration of relations between young people, police and the media in suburban France. The film begins with an establishing shot of a group of young people (including Bouna, Zyed and Muhittin) playing football on a five-a-side pitch in front of several tower blocks before slowly zooming in and then zooming out as it begins to get dark. A smooth transition to a nighttime street follows and the streetlights suddenly going out provides an implicit evocation of the electrocution of Bouna and Zyed. This is followed by a shot of Muhittin trying to run away from the sub­station. Shortly afterwards, there is a brief sequence of cars being torched on a housing estate where rioting is taking place. The arrival of a Belgian journalist at the Gare du Nord immediately afterwards is an event that initially appears mundane but he plays a central role in what follows. By placing a fictional Belgian journalist named Alex Martens at the centre of the quest to establish what happened in the incident that provoked two fatalities, L’Embrasement introduces an outside observer whose perspective is less conditioned by the conventional negative representations of the banlieues that appear in much of the French media. His presence in the film mirrors the way that several Swiss journalists came to Seine-Saint-Denis during the initial phase of unrest in the banlieues and founded a website called the Bondy Blog. This website sought to explore the wider root causes of the autumn 2005 unrest in France’s banlieues and involve young people from these areas in this process. Scriptwriter Marc Herpoux has acknowledged that Alex Martens was deliberately based on one of the Swiss journalists involved with the Bondy Blog.55 In L’Embrasement, Martens is a central figure due to the way that he interacts with all the main groups of people in the film: the young residents of Clichy, the lawyers representing Bouna and Zyed’s families and the police. Whilst L’Embrasement sometimes shows the police in a negative light, it does so in a more nuanced manner than Ma 6-T va crack-er or La Haine as we do not see them inflicting physical violence. Their misdeeds in the film often involve procedural issues, such as when two officers interrogate the clearly shaken, dazed and unwell Muhittin in hospital within twenty-four hours of the incident that left two of his friends dead. It is in this situation that they convince

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Muhittin to sign a statement that implies that he, Bouna and Zyed were not being chased by the police when running towards the electrical substation. When Bouna and Zyed’s lawyers (Jean-Pierre Mignard and Emmanuel Tordjman) appear, played by actors, it is often to denounce the police’s actions and the fact that officers are effectively carrying out a less than impartial enquiry into themselves. Although Triboit had wanted to interview police officers in Clichy when making his film, they were not prepared to cooperate. Within the film, this is mirrored by the difficulties that Alex Martens has in finding an officer who is willing to talk to him. Despite this, neither the journalist within the film nor the makers of the film adopt a straightforward anti-police stance. Alex’s reflection on the events that preceded the deaths of Bouna and Zyed suggests that he is aware of the vicious circle involved in relations between young people and the police in Clichy: ‘the young people run because the police chase them and the police chase them because the young people run’.56 Although Triboit’s film does not show the police discussing the alleged pursuit of Bouna and Zyed, they are shown talking about how tensions are managed on suburban housing estates. At one point, an officer changing out of his work clothes expresses frustration at the demands placed on them by the French state. The pressure on such officers is emphasised by a news clip where Nicolas Sarkozy states that ‘the police have a duty to be beyond reproach’.57 Consequently, the police are not just shown from the very negative perspective of Clichy’s young residents. This is particularly true of an officer named Sylvie who many of the young people feel is antagonistic. The hours she has to work due to the unrest in the area place particularly tough demands on her as a single mother who is struggling to organise childcare for her daughter. The way in which Triboit thus seeks to humanise, rather than demonise, the police is quite rare in contemporary French films about tensions between officers and young banlieue residents. The nuanced representation of the police in L’Embrasement mirrors the way that young people from Clichy are portrayed. On one hand, Triboit set out to base his film around the accounts of Clichy’s young residents due to the way that they were sometimes ignored or misrepresented in the immediate aftermath of the deaths of Bouna and Zyed.58 He does this by focusing not just on violent expressions of their anger such as rioting, but also the

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formation of a group that calls for the police officers involved in the fatal chase to be brought to justice. Muhittin is portrayed as someone whose incomprehension stems from both the initial events that led to the deaths of Bouna and Zyed and the subsequent rioting. Like Éric Pittard’s Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles, L’Embrasement demonstrates a contemplative and thoughtful side to young people in France’s banlieues that is absent from much media reporting. Triboit is also unafraid to include some more negative aspects of how they act, such as a short scene involving drug dealing and some shots of rioting. The images of the rioting are generally brief, perhaps due to their status as events of which spectators would already be aware, and generally concentrate more closely on the cars being burned rather than those burning them. Despite its focus on tensions between young residents of the estate and the police, its conclusion increases hope of a potential reconciliation. Police officers calmly sit Muhittin down after he has turned up at their station to vent his anger at their involvement in the deaths of his two friends. However, a caption that appears as Muhittin is helped from the police station by his dad and Bouna’s brother provide a reminder of the source of his anger. The first mentions a court judgement that ruled that his interrogation in hospital by officers was unethical and two further ones mention that, at the time of the film’s release, several officers’ conduct was under investigation due to allegations of offences such as ‘failing to provide assistance to a person in danger’ as well as ‘deliberately endangering the life of others and forgery’.59 The onscreen captions that appear at the end of L’Embrasement create a degree of symmetry by replicating the way in which the film began by emphasising that it was based on real events. The initial caption read ‘this film is a fiction inspired by real events. Apart from the victims, their families and their lawyers, all the characters are fictitious.’ Triboit saw this as a means of ‘bringing a different perspective on contemporary history to that of the documentary’ and one that would more easily engage spectators.60 Despite his assertion that key events in the film such as the police chase and their interrogation of Muhittin in hospital had been proven to have taken place, others have suggested that the mixture of fiction and reality is problematic for those who do not possess the sort of information about the film’s production that is contained in its press dossier.61 The extent to which films ‘based on a true story’ are

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faithful to real events provokes much debate and this often takes place at the expense of considering how their stories are told and the cinematic techniques involved. L’Embrasement usefully fills in a gap left by media coverage of the aftermath of the unrest in Clichy by showing the perspective of the victims and creating a format that provides a nuanced study of the complex relations between young people, police and journalists in France’s banlieues. Triboit’s attempt to negotiate a route between basing his film on real events and including fictional characters involved keeping those who were real and those who were imagined as separate as possible.62 By interspersing his story with real news reports, including those of Nicolas Sarkozy speaking about the incidents in Clichy, Triboit succeeds in challenging the way in which the events were initially represented by many journalists and politicians in France. Via admittedly fleeting references to the man who was French president at the time of his film’s initial broadcast, L’Embrasement nevertheless calls into question the way that his political ascension often involved utilising his close relations with the media to convey his largely repressive approach to policing France’s banlieues.

Christophe-Emmanuel Del Debbio’s Banlieues: sous le feu des médias (Banlieues: Under the Glare of the Media, 2006) Christophe-Emmanuel Del Debbio’s documentary Banlieues: sous le feu des médias is another example of a film that examines and challenges how French television news represented the suburban unrest that followed the deaths of Bouna Traoré and Zyed Benna in October 2005. Del Debbio has talked of his desire to produce a film that provided ‘the reaction of a television viewer, but an informed television viewer’.63 Unlike Triboit’s L’Embrasement, Del Debbio’s Banlieues: sous le feu des médias was released in cinemas. It is now possible to watch the entire film on the website of Clap36 (www. clap36.net), an organisation that supports independent documentary film-making and helped to produce the film. Del Debbio’s film is built around a highly didactic structure punctuated by frequent intertitles (white text on black background), and this is particularly evident in the first half. The opening intertitle tells viewers that ‘the film that follows is made from concentrated extracts of French television’ and precedes a succession of short clips from news and talk shows dating from the beginning of the reaction to the two deaths

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in Clichy-sous-Bois.64 This format allows the film both to highlight and to categorise ways in which the French media was sometimes swift to make questionable statements about the events. The first assertion to be challenged appears within the first minute of the film: ‘young burglars the reason for the riots?’65 Parts of important news clips are paused and replayed with key phrases appearing on screen. A prime example involves the phrase ‘they are thought to have fled from the police after an attempted burglary’ that Laurence Ferrari used to introduce an 8 p.m. TF1 news bulletin that begins by mentioning the deaths of the two adolescents in Clichy.66 This contrasts with a clip from an M6 news bulletin that follows and refers to two young people who were ‘electrocuted in a power transformer after a police check’.67 As if to reinforce a point also made in L’Embrasement, an ensuing intertitle tells the audience that ‘the two young people were not burglars, they were returning from a football match’.68 This leads into a section of the film entitled ‘les mots’ (‘the words’) in which similarly questionable assertions in news coverage of the banlieues are exposed, as is journalists’ use of leading questions in interviews. An additional layer of criticism is added by the way that the next section is entitled ‘les images’ (the images) and primarily challenges the way that many television news reports sought to use images to reinforce points being made in the voiceovers in a contradictory or inconclusive manner. The third section, entitled ‘jeunes porte-paroles’ (young spokespeople), concentrates on footage of people such as community workers or banlieue residents on television and shows where the situation in the banlieues is being discussed. This demonstrates that such people often faced repetitive questions from journalists who adopted an authoritative stance that was often based on questionable assertions about the extent and nature of the protests taking place in suburban France. An example is provided when a television presenter states, without qualification, that the aftermath of the deaths in Clichy has seen ‘one in every two minors arrested’.69 This theme of misrepresentation is expanded upon in the ensuing section ‘des informations’ (the news) that shows how French television channels were quick to situate a variety of disturbances that occurred in early November 2005 within the context of suburban unrest, even if the link between the specific event and the wider phenomenon was unclear. The first half of the film closes with a fifth section entitled ‘des critiques’ (critics) that begins by

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showing French television channels criticising foreign counterparts for sensationalist coverage of the suburban protests, and then shows that many French channels were themselves quite sensationalist. As if to balance this sensationalism and the loaded questions of journalists contained in many of the clips in the first half of the film, the second half of the film gives banlieue residents an opportunity to respond to many of the clips. As with several other directors who have worked in France’s banlieues, including Éric Pittard, Del Debbio has mentioned that ‘it took me time to establish a dialogue and for them [the residents of the banlieues] to tell me interesting things that went beyond the gut reaction “journalists are all corrupt”’.70 In other words, the tendencies of the journalists criticised in the first half of the film made Del Debbio’s task of making the second half of the film even more difficult. One of Del Debbio’s main interviewees in the second half of the film is a community worker named Samir Mihi. Some of his appearances on television news programmes feature in the first half of the film and he is extremely critical of much of the coverage. He argues that his television appearances often involved having to deal with incoherent assertions from journalists who were trying to encourage him to say what they wanted to hear. An alternative to the approach of much of the French media is provided when Del Debbio interviews Serge Michel, a Swiss journalist who helped local residents to create Le Bondy Blog.71 The film closes with residents of a housing estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois talking about their aspirations, and the final phrase sees one sigh as he states ‘us, we want to have a future’.72 Despite setting out to challenge reductive and inaccurate elements of French media reporting of protests in the banlieues during autumn 2010, the way in which the film is constructed arguably reduces its effectiveness. As Jade Lindgaard states, it somewhat problematically features a ‘frenetic repetition of the same images [that it criticises]’.73 In other words, by reproducing many of the images and words that formed part of this coverage, it ends up repeating many of the stereotypes that it wishes to challenge. As Rosello argues, such ‘meta-utterances’ can be counterproductive as they inadvertently end up giving a certain degree of credence to the initial assertion.74 Similarly, the heavily didactic nature of Del Debbio’s film replicates another problem evident in the conventional media approaches that he criticises as he is effectively also telling the spectator what to think in a direct manner. Although the

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exposition of the array of clichés that featured in French television news coverage of the aftermath of the two deaths in Clichy is instructive, the film does little to analyse how the stereotypes came into existence. This, and the tackling of many of these stereotypes head on in its second half, provides further evidence of how the film’s engagement with such notions is symptomatic of a problematic approach identified by Rosello that was mentioned at the start of this chapter.75 However, it could also be argued that Banlieues: sous le feu des médias constitutes a useful case study of the reductive and alarmist way that the French media at times approaches the subject of the banlieues. The film initially identifies problems before subsequently emphasising the need to create means by which banlieue residents can express their viewpoint. Its preoccupation with existing stereotypes, such as those evident in the news clips it features, creates a format that influences how the banlieue residents in the second half of the film express themselves. By showing them the problematic news clips and seeking their responses, Del Debbio places his interviewees in a situation where their interventions are heavily conditioned by the existing reductive discourses that his film sets out to counter and makes this section of the film less open ended than it might have been. Nevertheless, his film’s examination of the workings of the French media makes it clear that an alleged example of police misconduct was arguably followed by a series of examples of media misconduct that contributed to the continued pigeonholing of young people who live in suburban France.

Conclusion All four of the films studied in this chapter raise important questions about the ways that dominant power relations operate, and this process has been outlined by Jackson Lears: ‘Ruling groups do not maintain hegemony merely by giving their domination an aura of moral authority through the creation and perpetuation of legitimating symbols; they must also seek to win the consent of subordinate groups to the existing social order.’76 In other words, policing of the banlieues based on repression without dialogue neglects the question of consent. Furthermore, the use of violent tactics of the sort seen in several of the films analysed in this chapter is unlikely to enhance the ‘moral authority’ of the police and, consequently, the

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French state. Many of these films demonstrate that repressive police strategies, and especially the use of force, can provoke violent flashpoints rather than help to re-establish law and order in tense situations. The presence of Nicolas Sarkozy in both L’Embrasement and Banlieues: sous le feu des médias calls into question the logic of the tough approach he has taken to policing the banlieues. However, a significant problem for several of the films studied in this chapter is that they engage with hegemonic discourses that are used to justify police repression and that characterise France’s banlieues as areas where crime and violence are rife. Ma 6-T va crack-er portrays many negative stereotypes about young people and living conditions in suburban housing estates. Its visually striking representation of violence between young people and the police, or between rival gang members, obscures the context within which it seeks to place such behaviour. In other words, Ma 6-T va crack-er attracts more attention to the stereotypes it attempts to challenge than to the means of challenging them. As Rosello argues, this is a trap that needs to be avoided if stereotypes are to be challenged effectively.77 Ma 6-T va crack-er shows few positive aspects of life on housing estates and struggles to show a sense of community that is based on anything other than violence and confrontation. Éric Pittard’s documentary Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles largely avoids such pitfalls due to its focus on events over a more prolonged period of time following a flashpoint. Pittard’s use of the documentary format provided young people who are often stigmatised by political and media discourses about France’s banlieues with an opportunity to explain their perspective. Its refusal of tight editing helped to construct a format that enabled an in-depth exploration of life on a suburban housing estate. This created a more sedate and reflective feel and gave the protagonists greater opportunity to express themselves in ways not defined by the perceived need to respond to existing stereotypes. A similar outcome was achieved in Triboit’s L’Embrasement by concentrating primarily on the aftermath of a fatal flashpoint and conflicting attempts to tell the real story about what happened. This meant that the images of the unrest that featured in ChristopheEmmanuel Del Debbio’s Banlieues: sous le feu des médias were less present. As well as concentrating on media coverage of the suburban unrest, L’Embrasement also shows how the workings of the police can aid those in power rather than those who feel that they have

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been treated unfairly by such people. By zooming in on a specific incident, L’Embrasement teases out the complex way that the sort of media reports criticised by Del Debbio can emerge. Whilst Banlieues: sous le feu des médias features exposition and criticism of media practices, it does not provide detailed analysis of how and why they come into being. The varying extents to which clichés are successfully challenged in the four main films in this chapter is largely mirrored by the ways that some engage with republican ideology more closely than others. In Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles, the three young banlieue residents demonstrate an understanding of republican mechanisms. However, Richet’s extra-textual use of a republican framework to ground his political views in Ma 6-T va crack-er plays little part in the diegesis of the film itself, and republican principles mean little to its protagonists. It is noticeable that republicanism is rarely referred to in the two films about the reactions to the 2005 events in Clichy-sous-Bois. The four main films analysed in this chapter demonstrate that, although republicanism can provide an important reference point when analysing interactions between young people and the police in France’s banlieues, not all young people in these areas are aware of how it can potentially contextualise their experiences. Given that several of the main films in this chapter have struggled to challenge dominant power relations without showing or perpetuating clichés, the next chapter will examine works that adopt a different approach. Whilst this chapter has dealt with an issue that receives much coverage in media reporting on France’s banlieues, chapter five will instead analyse films that show less widely covered issues. It will ask to what extent concerning oneself with positive aspects of life on suburban housing estates, rather than debates about crime and violence, provides a better way of challenging negative stereotypes about France’s banlieues.

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Chapter Five

Challenging Stereotypes about France’s Banlieues by Shifting the Focus? Introduction Although the films analysed in the last chapter all tried to challenge ways in which young residents of France’s banlieues are represented, several unwittingly confirm negative stereotypes that associate these areas with crime and violence. Some films also failed to adequately explore the origins of important stereotypical visions and fell into a further trap identified by Rosello: ‘The decision to pronounce a stereotype leads inexorably to a moment when the stereotype has to be uttered and . . . even this type of meta-utterance, this distanced repetition of a framed stereotype involves a minimum, unconscious yet unavoidable element of allegiance.’1 This view is echoed by the assertion by Chalcraft and Noorani that ‘the contestation and manipulation of dominant terms by subalterns can be seen as consolidating the legitimacy of these terms’.2 This chapter will take a somewhat different approach to that of chapter four by assessing to what extent focusing on community life and cultural activities makes it easier for films about France’s banlieues to challenge negative stereotypes. Whilst the four films in this chapter all acknowledge the existence of social problems and tensions in France’s banlieues, they primarily accentuate positive aspects of life in these areas. In doing so, they devote less time to examining relations between young people and the police, and instead identify sources of solidarity and hope on suburban housing estates. This establishes a potential means of sidestepping the influence of stereotypes that associate France’s banlieues with crime and violence. However, the approach of the films studied in this chapter is not without its own potential pitfalls. As Rosello argues, negative stereotypes about unrest in France’s banlieues must not merely be

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replaced by equally stereotypical positive representations of life in these areas: Even if the sensationalist apocalyptic predictions favoured by certain factions of the mass media are greatly exaggerated, it is just as silly to pretend that the banlieues are prosperous cradles of diversity, bilingualism, biculturalism, mutual respect, and tolerance among different waves of more or less well settled immigrants.3

The simplicity of the overly positive approach criticised by Rosello above would do little to further the cause of those who challenge dominant power relations as well as media and political discourses about France’s banlieues. When this problem of overly accentuating the positive is considered alongside the risks associated with tackling stereotypes head on, it is clear that film-makers wishing to challenge hegemonic representations of France’s banlieues have to negotiate their way carefully around several challenges.4 The extent to which the directors of the films studied in this chapter avoid reinforcing elements of hegemonic discourse about France’s banlieues without providing an overly rose-tinted view of these areas is a key issue. It is also important to concentrate on if and how they challenge cinematic or televisual norms through their films, and the degree to which their films explore local and universal issues. This chapter will explore these questions by comparing four films by different directors. The first half of the chapter will compare two documentaries that adopt differing strategies in seeking to counter negative representations of France’s banlieues. Bertrand Tavernier’s De l’autre côté du périph’ (The Other Side of the Tracks, 1997) provides a prime example of the work of a director who is unafraid of being confrontational and vitriolic, whilst Christophe Nick adopts a more contemplative approach in Les Mauvais Garçons (The Bad Boys, 2005). After assessing and comparing these methods, the second half of this chapter will consider two films that primarily concentrate on cultural and community activities in the Seine-Saint-Denis area to the north of Paris. Hugues Demeude’s documentary 93: l’Effervesence (Effervescence, 2008) and Abdellatif Kechiche’s fiction L’Esquive (Games of Love and Chance, 2004) illustrate how this sort of approach makes it possible to (re)present French banlieues without engaging as closely with the sorts of stereotypes evoked in the previous chapter. Bringing together these four films also provides a way into crucial debates.

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For example, to what extent is the ideological basis of republicanism important to both the directors and protagonists of these films, and what does this suggest about relations between urban centres and suburban peripheries in contemporary France? The four main films in this chapter have been chosen, in the case of the first three, due to the way that responding to, or challenging, conventional negative representations of France’s banlieues is their very raison d’être and in the case of L’Esquive due to its originality in utilising a Marivaux play to make sense of the lives of its young protagonists. Films by many other contemporary directors also focus on cultural vibrancy within suburban housing estates in France that stems from involvement in musical activities, and especially hiphop. This is true of films by Malik Chibane such as his 1997 fiction Nés quelque part (Born Somewhere, 1997) and Jean-Pierre Thorn’s hip-hop 1996 documentary Faire kifer les anges (Making the Angels Rock). Recent years have seen (re)presenting the often stigmatised Seine-Saint-Denis département almost become a subgenre of the banlieue documentary as films such as Yamina Benguigui’s 9/3, Mémoire d’un territoire (9/3, Memoir of a Territory, 2008) and JeanPierre Thorn’s 93: la Belle Rebelle (The Beautiful Rebel, 2011) have respectively placed the evolution of the area within a socio-historical context and examined its diverse cultural vibrancy. These additional films described above are doubtlessly all worthy of study in their own right although they generally, with the exception of Jean-Pierre Thorn’s 93: la Belle Rebelle, focus less closely on how cultural activities can broaden perspectives of and within suburban housing estates. If 93: l’Effervescence is studied in detail here instead of 93: la Belle Rebelle, it is in part due to a desire to avoid returning to themes that are evident in Thorn’s representation of suburban France and hip-hop culture in On n’est pas des marques de vélo (see chapter three) and so as to increase the number of different directors whose work is analysed in this book. Given the context described in the paragraphs above, the four films analysed in this chapter can be seen as the tip of an iceberg whose true size has become increasingly visible in recent years.

Bertrand Tavernier’s De l’autre côté du périph’ (The Other Side of the Tracks, 1997) De l’autre côté du périph’ was initially broadcast in two parts (of eighty-five and sixty-four minutes) on the television channel France

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2 on 7 December and 14 December 1997 and it was not released in cinemas. France 2 also helped fund its production by reportedly providing 1.3 million francs.5 The fact that the two episodes were each watched by 2.5 million spectators means that its television broadcast saw De l’autre côté du periph’ reach a significantly larger audience than is achieved by the vast majority of banlieue films released in French cinemas. Although Bertrand Tavernier is primarily a director of fictional films, De l’autre côté du périph’ is one of several significant documentaries that he has made. For Alison Smith, Tavernier is a director whose 1990s films ‘ask[ed] questions about the dominant representations of French history (La Guerre sans nom, 1992), society (De l’autre côté du périph’, 1998 [sic]) and institutions (L627, 1992, Ça commence aujourd’hui, 1999)’.6 The fact that three of these four films are fictions indicates how a preoccupation with socio-historical issues is not restricted to the documentary films of Tavernier’s oeuvre. What unites these four works is a preoccupation with how the French state wants to represent itself and its institutions, and the role of the state in addressing social and political problems. Tavernier’s 2001 double peine documentary Histoires de vies brisées that is analysed in chapter three arguably marked a continuation of the trend identified by Smith that is discussed above. However, as this chapter will show, De l’autre côté du périph’ features subtle differences in tone, atmosphere and cinematic techniques compared to Histoires de vies brisées. The very title De l’autre côté du périph’ is symptomatic of how Tavernier explicitly evokes hegemonic discourses and stereotypes that he seeks to challenge. It encapsulates how banlieues are sometimes perceived as the poor relations of city centres, or seen as symbols of a different and unruly France. The way that Tavernier engages with existing negative clichés is indicative of his film’s origins. Following the publication of the Manifeste des 66 cinéastes (The Manifesto of the 66 Film-makers) in 1997, which called for fairer treatment of the sans-papiers and those who shelter them, Tavernier was told by government minister Éric Raoult that ‘integration is not about acting around’.7 In other words, Raoult simultaneously sought to emphasise the seriousness of integration and question the extent of the film-makers’ ability fully to comprehend this. Furthermore, Raoult (the minister for Municipal Affairs and Integration) suggested that each of the sixty-six signatories should spend a month in a location he designated in order to gain

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a greater appreciation of what he perceived to be the reality. Raoult invited Tavernier to go to the Cité des Grands Pêchers in Montreuil. This context demonstrates that although Tavernier sought to challenge dominant power relations, he was playing a game whose rules were dictated by an opponent and he has acknowledged that he made ‘a sort of film to order’ so as to ‘respond rapidly’ to Éric Raoult.8 Consequently, Tavernier appears to have given credence to elements of the stereotypes he opposed via a ‘meta-utterance’.9 This is particularly evident as the film starts with Tavernier reading the letter he received from Raoult in order to establish a list of arguments to disprove. He does this as an off-screen narrator whilst a car drives along Paris’s boulevard périphérique (ring road) towards Montreuil. In the first half-hour of De l’autre côté du périph’, Tavernier systematically tackles key assertions from Raoult’s letter and keeps score before announcing a 3–0 victory over the minister. Tavernier’s almost vitriolic approach is evident at the start of the second part of the film, when he proudly announces that the 1997 legislative elections in France mean that Raoult is no longer a minister. The personal nature of this confrontation is clear when Tavernier points out that he is still a film-maker. This shows that De l’autre côté du périph’ is very much a film where Tavernier displays a clearer sense of anger and desire to blame representatives of the French state than in Histoires de vies brisées. In the former film, his at times vitriolic tone is noticeably different from his more measured and calm approach in the latter. His closing comments in De l’autre côté du périph’, like most of his voiceovers in the film, are made as an offscreen narrator. Despite remaining a predominantly off-screen presence, the centrality of his role as narrator and his personal combat against Raoult at times draw attention away from the residents of Les Grands Pêchers. For some critics, such as Carrie Field, this would breach an important principle of documentary filmmaking. Field is in favour of ‘presenting the material in an analytical structure that’s accomplished in the editing room, if possible, and letting people deduce for themselves – aided by an analysis you give in the way you structure the material’.10 The directness of Tavernier’s voiceovers, especially his criticism of Raoult, means that he adopts a noticeably different approach to the one advocated by Field. His voiceovers, particularly in the opening and closing minutes, make his film sound like a call to action from a well-meaning left-wing intellectual. In other words, Tavernier

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often treads a fine line between speaking for and speaking with those he films. As established in the analysis of Spivak in this book’s introduction, this is an extremely important power relations issue. However, Tavernier is aware of this and employs certain techniques that counteract his ‘speaking for’ role and tries to shift the emphasis towards his interviewees. This is particularly important due to his status as an outsider in relation to those who he films. He is from Lyon rather than Paris, and from a better-off background than most of his interviewees. His journey towards Cité des Grands Pêchers at the start of the first part of De l’autre côté du périph’ reinforces his status as an outsider and creates a different type of starting point to Histoires de vies brisées, which was shot in his native Lyon. He mentions that he needed to be careful when starting to film since the residents of the Cité des Grands Pêchers felt stigmatised by the way television crews conventionally represent the banlieues. Tavernier’s integration into life on the estate appears to have been aided by the fact that it was the residents who initially invited him to meet them rather than vice versa, and he mentions this at the beginning. This empowers the residents by portraying their actions – rather than just those of Tavernier or Raoult – as the catalyst for making De l’autre côté du périph’. Most of the film involves the estates’ residents describing their daily lives and Tavernier’s refusal of tight editing further empowers them by allowing them considerably more time to formulate opinions than short television news reports offer. This process demonstrates how the desire to give a voice to those who are often denied one that motivated Tavernier to make Histoires de vies brisées was also a motivating factor in the production of De l’autre côté du périph’. The latter film may be primarily about perceived otherness that is based on where one lives rather than being an immigrant who has broken the law, but both seek to challenge the ways in which their protagonists are at times perceived to be symbols of different, unruly and undesirable elements present within French society. Despite Tavernier’s genuine desire to seek to give banlieue residents an opportunity to express themselves in a way that challenges the workings of much of the mainstream media in France, his use of the end credits of De l’autre côté du périph’ to thank the residents for holding the camera during certain sequences is perhaps somewhat condescending. Although involving the residents in the shooting some parts of the film was a means of potentially empowering, it

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could also be seen as a largely symbolic action given that Tavernier and his son Nils were the people who decided what to film and how to edit the footage. That said, their stylistic simplicity helps to focus attention on the words of the residents, in addition to making it easier for them to participate in the film’s production. The footage used in most of De l’autre côté du périph’ appears to have been shot using a shoulder-mounted camera and the interviews are filmed at locations around the housing estate that provide a flavour of living conditions and daily life. The camera generally maintains a reasonably tight focus on the person talking although several panning shots give a wider view of the estate. This demonstrates that Tavernier uses filming techniques to avoid diverting attention away from the residents and what they have to say, and this partially counteracts his presence as a narrator. Certain locations are deliberately used to reinforce the vision of life on the housing estate that Tavernier’s film projects. Several scenes are filmed in or around sports pitches, sports centres or after-school clubs so as to highlight the lively community spirit in the area. This community spirit is particularly evident in the middle parts of both episodes of his film and it shifts the attention away from directly responding to stereotypes about banlieues and integration. He also avoids creating the sort of overly simplistic positive image of life on a suburban housing estate described by Rosello.11 Tavernier provides a more nuanced perspective by including footage that acknowledges the existence of some criminal activity on the estate. A scene where a community worker explains that not all estates are full of people who cause problems is followed by another in which a delivery boy addresses the camera having fallen off his motorcycle after a bullet or pellet was fired at him from the window of a tower block. In talking about the shooting, a teenager from the area jokes that ‘once again it is a case of the social malaise’.12 This use of irony demonstrates his awareness of terms used in standard discourses about the banlieues although the incident to which he refers does little to challenge notions that associate such areas with crime and violence. However, Tavernier seeks to explore the context within which the shot was fired at the delivery boy in a manner that introduces important nuances. Both the young people on the estate and local adults, including the police chief, describe how such events are often motivated by boredom. The police chief complains that not enough officers are assigned to the area, but also says that it is not as unruly

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as some suggest. The opinions of police and the young residents of the state suggest a degree of mutual understanding that is singularly absent from much more violent films such as Ma 6-T va crack-er. Although we do not actually see the police and young people interacting in Tavernier’s documentary, the film provides reason to be more optimistic about their relations in France’s banlieues. Tavernier reinforces this message towards the end of the first part of De l’autre côté du périph’ by showing community, sports and educational projects that bring together people of different ages and backgrounds, and argues that it would be wrong to reduce life in areas like La Cité des Grands Pêchers to conflicts between young people and the police. By thus refusing clichéd images of young people from suburban housing estates, Tavernier challenges the way that French politicians sometimes seek to make electoral gain from portraying France’s banlieues as areas that are out of control. In the second part of De l’autre côté du périph’, he uses editing techniques to discredit negative representations of ethnic minority residents by parties such as the Front National. This is a strategy that is much less evident during Histoires de vies brisées, and a prime example occurs when we see a customer in a bar complain about black people who ‘make a right mess, eat sitting on the floor and bring in drugs’.13 As if to respond to these accusations, we then see Tavernier visit an African community centre where he is well received and discovers a soup kitchen staffed by volunteers. Whereas Tavernier often responded to the written words of Raoult’s letter with the spoken words of his off-screen narration in the first part of the film, the second part also shows him using editing techniques and the words of others in order to challenge assertions. Tavernier continues this process by showing an unemployed white French interviewee, François Fontaine, explain how people in the African community centre are polite and well integrated, and that he feels at home when he visits its soup kitchen. The fact that it is a person who is white, French and unemployed who says this is significant as such people form a key part of the target electorate for the Front National. This sequence thus challenges discourses that would stereotype white French residents of the banlieues as racists. This process of demystifying various forms of stereotypes is mirrored by the way that Tavernier pursues his exploration of relations between young residents of the Cité des Grands Pêchers and

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the police by refusing to portray the police simply as violent aggressors. He implies that there is a difference between deliberate and calculated aggression and ineffectiveness or a lack of training. In the second part of De l’autre côté du périph’ a youth worker named Bouba Sangaré says that the police ‘are not trained how to speak to young people’.14 This is supported by Jean-Pierre Brard (mayor of Montreuil) who questions why the police so frequently carry out identity checks on people known to them. It is also made clear that the police are not the only state representatives in the area who have a role to play in addressing problems. Bouba Sangaré argues that schools do not do enough to deal with children who need extra help and that this is why young people loiter in stairwells. The power relations issues that are discussed in the film are a feature of daily life in many suburban areas in France, which means that the pertinence of De l’autre côté du périph’ extends far beyond the Cité des Grands Pêchers in Montreuil. This is reinforced by Tavernier’s focus on both local and universal issues as the second part of the film draws to a close. Tavernier’s left-wing sympathies do not prevent him from criticising the political left in France. He tells of how the new left-wing government’s interior minister, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, effectively endorsed Raoult’s hostile approach by describing film-makers who signed the petition against the Debré law as irresponsible. This also demonstrates that a change in government did not make his film any less relevant and is symptomatic of how contemporary politically engaged film-makers in France often express their frustration at the action (and inaction) of both rightand left-wing governments concerning law and order. It is interesting to note that Tavernier’s later documentary Histoires de vies brisées was released in 2001, by which time Chevènement had ceased to be inter­ior minister. Indeed, this may explain why there is a greater tone of hope at a time when the members of the national campaign against the double peine 2001–3 felt that they were lobbying a government that would be sensitive to their reasons for opposing the law. Despite the negativity surrounding the way in which certain dec­larations of the left-wing Chevènement appeared to suggest that he would adopt a similar stance regarding law and order to that of the right-wing Raoult, Tavernier seeks to provide a more uplifting ending to De l’autre côté du périph’. He does so by showing the residents of La Cité des Grands Pêchers talking about their hopes and aspirations. Although he also refers back to Raoult’s initial letter as

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the second part concludes, the residents’ visions of their future reduces the extent to which it is structured around responding to Raoult. When Tavernier mentions Raoult’s letter within the closing moments of De l’autre côté du périph’, he expresses much less animosity and vitriol than at the start of either part of the documentary. He mentions that the letter actually had some positive effects despite the negative feelings it provoked among residents of the Montreuil estate. He concludes by thanking Raoult for sending him to the Cité des Grands Pêchers, and giving him the possibility to meet a wide range of people to whom he pays tribute. After several panoramic shots of the estate, and footage of Tavernier’s initial meeting with its residents, the final phrase of the film is a question that one of the residents asked at this initial meeting: ‘when the film is finished, what is going to be done?’15 This is an acknowledgement by Tavernier that, as a film-maker, he can encourage people to look at situations in a certain manner, but that ultimately people such as politicians also need to take action. This ending is similar to that of Histoires de vies brisées and, indeed, those of films by several other directors whose work is studied here.

Christophe Nick’s Les Mauvais Garçons (The Bad Boys, 2005) Les Mauvais Garçons is a documentary inspired by a desire to comprehend the true complexity of urban violence in France. Like Tavernier’s De l’autre côté du périph’, Christophe Nick’s film sets out to examine life in the banlieues in a manner that avoids stereotypes and sensationalism. Despite this similarity, there are also significant differences between the two directors’ methods. Whilst Tavernier’s film was a direct response to a specific event (receiving Éric Raoult’s letter), Nick’s film was part of a wider project with more general objectives. His documentary is less determined by stereotypes that he wishes to challenge and explores wider issues about violence in urban and suburban France; it also provides greater historical contextualisation. These differences stem in part from the fact that Tavernier and Nick are quite different types of directors. Tavernier is primarily a maker of fictional films, who has made documentaries such as De l’autre côté du périph’ and Histoires de vies brisées between larger projects working on fictional films. Contrastingly, Nick is a journalist and documentary film-maker whose work frequently deals with socio-political issues, such as the workings of the French media.

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Les Mauvais Garçons was part of the Chroniques de la violence ordinaire (Accounts of Ordinary Violence) series, which was the result of six months of research and two years of filming in the Creil area between 2001 and 2003. Given that it was filmed and edited over a much longer period than Tavernier’s De l’autre côté du périph’, it is reasonable to assume that Nick’s documentary had a larger budget. Whilst the location in which Tavernier filmed De l’autre côté du périph’ was effectively determined by a political opponent, Nick himself chose to shoot his documentary in Creil. He has explained this choice in the following terms: We wanted to understand, not to judge; to stay for a long time so as to see stories and personalities evolve. We had chosen a part of France with which everyone can identify. Neither too large nor too remote: a rural environment in a regional conurbation, with outlying estates.16

This demonstrates Nick’s desire to provide more in-depth analysis of life in the banlieues than is often seen in television reports. His decision not to film in a banlieue that corresponded to negative stereo­types means that he avoided restricting himself to exploring clichés and was able to delve deeper. In an interview on the France 2 website, Nick explained that his approach made it possible to explore the root causes of why people turn to violence.17 Similarly, he stated that he wanted the Chroniques de la violence ordinaire series of films to be ‘not just another TV show’ and that he hoped that they would lead to reflection and debate, adding that ‘these films have been planned and produced in order to be useful’ and that ‘it is up to everyone to make use of them’.18 This has echoes of the end of De l’autre côté du périph’ where Tavernier speculates about what will happen once his film has finished. Nick appears to hope that the end of his film will be a starting point in a process leading to greater understanding of the issues facing many of France’s banlieues and not merely the end product of his time spent in Creil. His comments also suggest that he sees his film primarily as a social resource rather than a cultural artefact. The quest to achieve greater understanding of such issues leads to the important issue of how Nick gives residents of the La Commanderie estate an opportunity to express themselves. The importance of how to film life in the banlieues, and consequently represent their inhabitants, is evoked in the opening phrase of the

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film: ‘you do not just go onto a housing estate with a camera any way you fancy’.19 In an interview on the France 2 website, a member of the gang ‘Les Scoots’ described their suspicion towards journalists by stating that ‘when journalists come and hang around here, we always wonder what they want, what they want from us, what they can do for us’.20 Nick refers to journalists’ negative representations of the banlieues at the start of Les Mauvais Garçons when he ironically says ‘welcome to the worst of the worst’ as the camera zooms in on the La Commanderie estate.21 The quotations above help to explain the climate of distrust that exists between many banlieue and journalists. The consequent need to create a bond of trust was taken into account during the making of Les Mauvais Garçons. One of the film crew, David Carr-Brown, lived in La Commanderie during the filming in order to gain the trust of its residents and to get to know them. This is similar to what Tavernier did when making De l’autre côté du périph’ and how Mathieu Kassovitz and several of his actors prepared for the shooting of La Haine. A closeness between Nick and those he films is evident in his narration of Les Mauvais Garçons, which is generally in the first person plural and the imperfect, and gives the documentary ‘the feel of a travel diary’.22 This is also reflected by the way the footage is generally filmed with a hand-held or shoulder-mounted camera that is easy to use whilst people walk around the estate. The lack of captions giving interviewees’ names or job titles helps to differentiate the footage from what is often seen in television news reports. The refusal to label or categorise interviewees allows them a fuller reign to express their opinions without creating distinctions that might make some people’s views seem more worthy than those of others. Anticipating potential criticism of his approach, Nick argued that ‘speaking about violence does not mean showing it in a complicit manner but, rather, understanding where it comes from’.23 The way that Nick seeks to understand the sources of urban violence in places like La Commanderie is indicative of how Les Mauvais Garçons seeks to give credence to the views expressed by locals who highlight socio-political issues that have affected the estate. The history of the estate is placed within the context of postwar urban development in France. Nick comments on archive footage that illustrates how problems such as social exclusion, poverty, unemployment and poor living conditions are the

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consequences of a series of events rather than a purely recent phenomenon. For example, news reports from the 1960s show that gangs and the concept of juvenile delinquency can be traced back half a century to a time that precedes the arrival of many immigrants in France and the advent of immigration as such a heavily politicised issue. Footage of the construction of La Commanderie is also particularly striking as it highlights how the estate was intended to symbolise development and progress, providing new flats for people wishing to move out of overcrowded central Paris. The publicity encouraging people to move to an idyllic newly constructed estate is in stark contrast to the footage that we see of slums and temporary settlements. Nick’s commentary explains that La Commanderie rapidly declined as a result of developers’ running away with the money that they had received from residents, which created financial problems for many people and resulted in the estate’s going into liquidation. Later on, he mentions that politicians have repeatedly justified their lack of intervention to tackle the problems in La Commanderie on the grounds that it was a private housing project and not the state’s responsibility. However, the inclusion of several pieces of archive footage shows that the French state has at times demonstrated awareness of the need to intervene. First, a 1980s report shows François Mitterrand visiting Creil to inspect projects aiming to change the image of certain banlieues. In addition, footage from 1995 shows Jacques Chirac promising to do his best to prevent factory closures in the area, which he was ultimately unable to do. These images help to place the history of La Commanderie within a regional, national and international context. This approach helps to redress frequent oversimplifications whereby problems associated with France’s banlieues are often evoked without taking into account the importance of a range of local factors.24 Despite the estate’s progressive deterioration, Nick’s film identifies signs of solidarity and social interaction in the area in a similar manner to Tavernier’s De l’autre côté du périph’. This is often achieved via his focus on the key figure of Marylou Chevillo, a caretaker and former nurse who appears able to understand and get along with most of the residents of the estate, including the young members of gangs such as Les Scoots. Footage of her going about her daily tasks punctuates the film, illustrating the important role she plays in maintaining relative decorum on the estate. The presence of

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solidarity is also poignantly evoked by a mechanic and squatter called Sam who explains that people look out for each other in his block. He is filmed in close-up when describing how this solidarity contrasts with the way he was abandoned by his own family. This accentuates the personal and affective dimension of solidarity rather than merely alluding to it as an abstract political concept. Thematically, it is also in keeping with the way that many films set in the banlieues show support for central characters that comes from groups outside traditional family structures (for example, gangs, clubs or community projects), and that act as a surrogate family. Although some residents of La Commanderie hold the members of the gang Les Scoots responsible for the estate’s problems, it is clear that the gang members become reflective as they describe their life on the estate. This is reminiscent of the way that Éric Pittard’s Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles demonstrates young banlieue residents’ potential for thoughtfulness rather than thoughtlessness. One example in Nick’s film involves a gang member known as I.B. expressing regret at not having paid more attention whilst at school. In a newspaper interview, another gang member (Claude) mentions that seeing Nick’s film made him, and his fellow gang members, aware of ‘the sad reality of the life we were leading’.25 In other words, watching the end product increased the sense of empowerment created by participating in the film. Les Mauvais Garçons challenges stereotypes by showing gangs such as Les Scoots to be at the centre of peaceful and legal activities aimed at improving life in and around La Commanderie, and these are precisely the sorts of events that the French media often ignores when talking about the banlieues. This point is made by Nick when he describes how rival gangs in the area called a truce following the death of a gang member named Moby. This is followed by footage of a march organised in his memory – that we are told did not receive any media coverage – and then a rap event organised in homage to Moby. Involvement in rap music becomes a form of escapism for Les Scoots and leads them to reflect on what they want from life. Again, this is in part a consequence of the presence of Nick and his production team, who helped them to hire material in order to record a rap single and shoot a video. When discussing this approach, Nick commented that his team’s approach to filming was different to the way that social workers go about their work as they had not sought to maintain a distance between themselves and the

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people that they were filming.26 In other words, Nick and his team did not set out to be distanced neutral observers. This is similar to Tavernier’s approach in De l’autre côté du périph’, which is evident when he pays tribute to the residents of La Cité des Grands Pêchers at the end of his film. Comparing Tavernier and Nick’s films teases out both similarities and subtle differences. Although Nick’s Les Mauvais Garçons does not set out to criticise an individual in the same way as Tavernier’s De l’autre côté du périph’, Nick’s film nevertheless questions the actions and inaction of politicians and the French state. In his narration, Nick argues that the emergence of gangs and partial ghettoisation of areas such as La Commanderie is a consequence of the departure of state representatives such as doctors and social workers. This has left the police among the rare state representatives in the area and led to a sense of abandonment. It is somewhat apt that we see a fire engine come to put out a fire near the end. The engine acts as a metaphor for the way that politicians often become interested in areas such as La Commanderie when something goes wrong, but generally appear less interested in introducing projects aimed at preventing problems from arising. When politicians appear in Les Mauvais Garçons they seem isolated from the reality of life in La Commanderie, particularly on one occasion near the beginning of the film when a group of them arrive on the estate on foot rather than in a motorcade due to fears about the reactions such an arrival would provoke. The breadth of the shot and distance from which they are filmed demonstrates that their arrival generates no evident reaction. The conclusion of Nick’s film questions the actions and inaction of politicians over a long period, as well as poor urban planning. Footage of a tower block’s being demolished is accompanied by Nick asking how many generations will be forced to bear the costs of this poor planning. He describes members of gangs such as Les Scoots as symptoms rather than causes of the problems that have become associated with the banlieues. As the screen goes blank, Nick announces that Marylou Chevillo, the popular caretaker who appeared to be playing a major role in holding the estate together, died during the 2003 heat wave in France. As the end of the film is marked by the destruction of tower blocks and the death of Marylou, one is led to wonder how and when problems in areas such as La Commanderie will be resolved. Footage of tower blocks

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being knocked down provides a visual metaphor for Nick’s hope that his film would accelerate ‘a social process of reconstruction’.27 As with Tavernier’s conclusion to De l’autre côté du périph’, spectators are encouraged to think beyond the film about what the future holds for such areas. However, Nick’s more discreet approach to being a narrator provides greater space for the residents of the estate to talk about their own experiences. The fact that Nick spent a much longer period filming in Creil than Tavernier did in Montreuil – two years as opposed to two months – also provided him with more footage from which to construct a story that follows identifiable characters over a longer period. In this way, the former is in many ways more effective as a political film, and also more engaging. It provides more of a narrative hook for spectators to seize and negotiates a clearer path for itself by concentrating more closely on a smaller number of main characters.

Hugues Demeude’s 93: L’Effervescence (Effervescence, 2008) Hugues Demeude’s 2008 documentary 93: L’Effervescence acknow­ ledges the challenges facing certain banlieues following the autumn 2005 riots, but also moves beyond the riots to examine positive developments in the Seine-Saint-Denis area. Seine-Saint-Denis is département number ninety-three in France and the mere evocation of this number in French is a frequent shorthand for the district, and often a range of socio-political problems associated with France’s banlieues. In this fifty-four-minute-long documentary that was shown on the television channel France Ô, Demeude set out to ‘provide another perspective on the area’ and ‘do away with its bad image without being overly idealistic’.28 France Ô is part of the France Télévisions network and is associated with programmes that focus on France’s overseas territories and their inhabitants and describes itself as ‘a channel of all cultures and of openness on all worlds’.29 The fact that the France Télévisions group of channels includes a channel with such a remit creates a window of opportunity for film directors who are interested in subjects such as immigration and diversity. However, channels such as France Ô generally attract much smaller viewing figures than older mainstream counterparts within the France Télévisions network such as France 2 and France 3.

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Demeude’s film was released within months of Yamina Benguigui’s documentary 9/3, Mémoire d’un territoire (9/3, Memoir of a Territory), but had a subtly different approach. Benguigui’s film seeks to place the predicament of present-day Seine-Saint-Denis within a historical context and analyses the evolution of the area over several decades. Whilst this is something that Demeude does to a certain extent in 93: L’Effervescence, he maintains a greater focus on the present and the future and also concentrates more specifically on cultural and community projects. Consequently, it better compliments films such as Tavernier’s De l’autre côté du périph’ and Nick’s Les Mauvais Garçons that also primarily examine the present and the future. When talking about his film, Demeude has described Seine-SaintDenis as a ‘multicultural territory full of effervescence’.30 The use of the adjective ‘multicultural’ is significant as multiculturalism is incompatible with the notion of a single and indivisible republic that theoretically does not acknowledge differences between individual citizens. What it potentially suggests is that the difference-­ denying thrust of republicanism obscures the rich and diverse composition of areas such as Seine-Saint-Denis. Within his film, Demeude adopts a different approach to that of Tavernier and Nick by not taking on the role of a narrator, and explains that this was geared towards ‘giving a voice to the inhabitants [and] describing the area without judging’.31 However, he does include both archive footage about Seine-Saint-Denis and views expressed by several French academics who are experts about the banlieues. At the same time as challenging the frequently negative way that Seine-Saint-Denis is represented in the media, Demeude acknow­ ledges that the area has experienced, and continues to experience, certain challenges or problems. As with Del Debbio’s, Banlieues: sous le feu des médias, the starting point is some of the sounds of the 2005 rioting that are accompanied by a black screen so as to avoid reusing highly familiar images. This is followed by a short extract from a television documentary that refers to the tension in the area. The inclusion, albeit brief, of these images could be seen as detracting from Demeude’s aims of encouraging people to view Seine-SaintDenis differently, but they are swiftly contextualised. This is initially done by the academic Hugues Lagrange, who argues that the French authorities and media generally failed to understand the diversity of reasons why young people rioted in 2005. Rioting is also

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described as futile by the former tennis player Yannick Noah, who states that there are other ways of expressing oneself. He is filmed at a tennis scheme in La Courneuve, which allows Demeude’s film to move on from referring back to the riots by considering more positive aspects of life in the area in the years since those events. A recurring theme in the film is the notion that, whilst the autumn 2005 riots caused a lot of damage, they also heralded the start of new aspirations for young people in Seine-Saint-Denis. This is frequently demonstrated via its preoccupation with employment (as opposed to unemployment) and young people’s involvement in cultural and community initiatives. In order to challenge the stigmatisation of the area, Demeude presents Seine-Saint-Denis’s diversity as an asset. This idea is voiced by local politicians and business people who enthuse about the dynamism that this generates in socio-economic terms. As if to reinforce this point, many of these speakers are filmed at outdoor community events such as festivals. However, the situation is also made tangible when business people discuss the area when sitting in their offices. Jean-Luc Petithuguenin, the managing director of a recycling company, tells of how his business has grown from forty-five to over two hundred employees in a decade and a half. He argues that this success disproves those who doubted the business potential of his project’s important focus on employing a diverse workforce in order to tackle inequalities and promote regeneration. Although diversity is frequently celebrated in Demeude’s film, some interviewees seek to downplay it as a mundane feature of daily life. Cristina Lopes, artistic director of a performing arts venue, is a prime example: I always have difficulty when I am asked the question about the cultural diversity that we feel, the richness of this multi-ethnic area. We experience it so naturally today that we no longer ask the question. We are the second, third generation of children of immigrants in the area so I do not conceptualise it at all, it is part of my daily life.32

Lopes’s description of life in Seine-Saint-Denis is similar to the notion of conviviality that Gilroy sees as ‘refer[ring] to the pro­cesses of cohabitation and interaction that have made multiculture an ordinary feature of social life in Britain’s urban areas and in postcolonial cities everywhere’.33 Despite this suggestion that diversity is

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the norm rather than the exception, its presence in Seine-SaintDenis is still celebrated by many of those interviewed. Whilst downplaying the significance of Seine-Saint-Denis’s diversity could be negatively interpreted as a refusal to celebrate an attribute of note, it could also be seen in another manner. It can be placed within the context of the many ways that Demeude’s film challenges the ‘othering’ of French banlieues that represents them as deviant, distant or different in comparison with the rest of French society. By concentrating on the arts, sport and community projects, 93: L’Effervescence examines issues that generally receive little media coverage compared to stories that confirm negative stereotypes. Demeude effectively takes certain subjects associated with suburban France and turns them on their head. For example, he evokes employment a lot more than unemployment and his focus on companies who have relocated to Seine-Saint-Denis challenges the notion that banlieues are areas of relegation. The construction of the Stade de France and Pleyel Pianos’s relocation to Saint-Denis are both held up as signs of the area’s economic dynamism. Some employers specifically mention that the reality of what they see around them on a daily basis is in stark contrast to what is often shown in television news reports. The evocation of dynamism brought by employment adds another layer on top of the cultural dynamism that Demeude uncovers. This cultural contains interactions between art forms associated with urban culture (for example, rap, break dance, graffiti, beatboxing) and elements such as theatre, classical music and sculpture. This helps to reduce the extent to which Seine-Saint-Denis appears a poor relation to Paris. The local Member of Parliament, Patrick Braouezec, emphasises this on several occasions. Due to SaintDenis’s being one of the first places in France where elements of hip-hop culture such as rap and slam emerged, he argues that: There is a real sort of osmosis between what happens on a national level and in this territory, as if this territory were actually conveying modernity, conveying its very contemporary side, [which is] very current since it is really at the heart of social issues.34

This declaration challenges the notion that suburban areas such as Seine-Saint-Denis are on the margins of French society by asserting their centrality and importance to French life and culture. Here, it

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is important to note that the ‘social issues’ that he evokes are positive and consequently very different from the array of negative clichés that inform dominant representations of France’s banlieues. In visual terms, this sense of dynamism and movement is conveyed in the sequences between different interviews or scenes in the film. These short transitions often feature moving trains or cars and people walking about, as if to highlight social mobility. This contrasts with the way that some characters in banlieue films appear immobile and passive.35 What Demeude’s film provides is precisely the sort of rearticulation that Chalcraft and Noorani see as a key means of challenging hegemonic discourse.36 Indeed, an architect at one stage evokes the need to ‘rewrite the city using another vocabulary’.37 The notion that it is necessary to establish another vocabulary suggests that challenges remain when it comes to establishing and promoting the largely positive image of Seine-Saint-Denis that is evident in Demeude’s film. This is acknowledged by the academic Emmanuel Bellanger, who observes that areas such as Roissy have seen a lot of investment but others such as Clichy-sous-Bois and Sevran remain very poor. Members of a group called Qui fait la France also evoke the concept of equality and argue that true social equality is something that Seine-Saint-Denis needs more than superficial government initiatives.38 They suggest that lasting change depends on providing the area with the same level of spending on schools, transport and cultural initiatives as more well-off areas of Paris. This notion is re-emphasised just before the end of the film by Emmanuel Bellanger and two local councillors. However, the film ends on an upbeat note when local Member of Parliament Patrick Braouezec again challenges hegemonies by stating that ‘it is not because the banlieues are doing badly that society is doing badly; it is because society is doing badly that the banlieues are doing badly’.39 This is followed by the closing scene from a play that evokes the need to welcome difference and whose closing song celebrates diverse neighbourhoods. Despite this generally uplifting tone, it is worth assessing to what extent 93: L’Effervescence creates a convincing argument and works well as a film. When analysing the way in which Seine-Saint-Denis is presented, one might ask whether the film overdoes its celebration of diversity. In general terms, John Hutnyk is one of several people who have criticised celebrations of multiculturalism for often being politically vacuous or doing little to address wider issues such as

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existing hegemonies.40 Even if one accepts this as a weakness of the film, it is important to note that Demeude also provides more concrete examples of the dynamic nature of Seine-Saint-Denis by paying attention to employment as well as cultural and community groups. However, Télérama critic Florence Broizat felt that the film’s form detracted from its message as it was somewhat ‘muddled’ and there were overlaps between the views expressed by several interviewees.41 In addition, a largely positive review of 93: L’Effervescence by Ndembo Boueya of the Bondy Blog suggested that it would have been good to see more young people expressing their opinions in the film.42 Given the complexities of the conflicting aspects of life in different parts of Seine-Saint-Denis, Demeude largely succeeds in creating a nuanced and much needed documentary that provides many examples of ways to challenge stereotypical negative representations of France’s banlieues. Whilst the presence of several academics who act as experts within 93: L’Effervescene arguably draws some attention away from the residents, it does help to place personal experiences within a socio-historical context. Although the inclusion of experts contrasts with strategies adopted by other directors discussed in this book (such as Carole Sionnet and Jean-Pierre Thorn), Demeude nevertheless manages to create a structure for his film by using images of daily life in Seine-Saint-Denis and does not act as a narrator. Although it may have certain flaws, the film helps to empower the residents of Seine-Saint-Denis by allowing them to describe aspects of their lives that rarely feature in most French media coverage of the banlieues and that are generally not overly dictated by pre-existing stereotypes.

Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’Esquive (Games of Love and Chance, 2003) Hugues Demeude’s 93: L’Effervescence shares with Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’Esquive the fact that it shows how young banlieue residents’ involvement in the performing arts can broaden their horizons and help to challenge stereotypes about the banlieues. However, Kechiche did not make this his prime objective and has insisted that he did not act like a youth worker or social worker. For him, the priority was instead to make ‘a pleasurable and entertaining film’ rather than to use his film primarily as a means of making

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a socio-political point.43 Nevertheless, its title hints at a desire to challenge stereotypes at least indirectly. As Rosello notes, esquiver was a term discussed by Barthes in analysing how language can provide a powerful means of battling with an opponent in a way that favours ‘a nonviolent response that requests swift and adroit movements rather than confrontation’.44 This sort of eluding and evading provides a potential means of avoiding pitfalls associated with tackling stereotypes head on.45 Furthermore, it is in keeping with the theatrical masquerading and quid pro quos that are a feature of the Marivaux play Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (Games of Love and Chance) performed by the schoolchildren in Kechiche’s film. The positioning of a well-known piece of French theatre at the centre of a film set on a suburban housing estate constitutes an important way in which Kechiche sought to challenge negative images associated with the banlieues.46 This placing of a recognised art form (theatre) in an unconventional setting is a key way in which the film challenges received ideas about the banlieues and their young inhabitants, and this is furthered by the way in which Kechiche went about casting and producing this film. As well as questioning the frontier between city centres and banlieues, the film also blurs the boundaries between fiction and documentary, and those between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture. Kechiche’s novel approach appears to be one of the reasons why he struggled to obtain financial support when wanting to make L’Esquive. He argued that producers’ initial lack of interest was because ‘the subject is not seen as one that sells . . . and in addition there are no stars’.47 This meant that L’Esquive ultimately came out over a decade after Kechiche had written the original script. In other words, Kechiche’s project suffered due to the extent to which it departed from conventional representations of the banlieues. L’Esquive rarely depicts subjects such as violence, crime and drugs that are frequently present in press coverage of France’s banlieues. The casting for the film illustrated the way that residents of the banlieues come to expect to be represented in a way dictated by these sorts of stereotypes. Sabrina Ouazani, who plays Frida, stated: ‘when I went to the casting, I was expecting the usual waffle: gang rapes, the big brothers who hound female family members, delinquency’.48 Within the film, the idea of performing in a play appears alien to some of the young residents of the housing estate. When Krimo

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(the central character) decides to perform in his class’s production of Marivaux’s Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard, one of his friends reacts by saying ‘you’re doing theatre like a queer!’49 This suggests that performing in a play is not compatible with the way that his friends perceive (heterosexual) masculinity, and makes his desire to participate in the play all the more significant. Kechiche, who was born in Tunisia, feels that his Maghrebi origins have led to him suffering from such prejudices in his own acting career.50 This shows that cultural activities can sometimes reproduce social and racial prejudices rather than act as a means of tackling them. Shohat and Stam see this tendency as being particularly pertinent to minority filmmakers. They argue that ‘to a certain extent, a film inevitably mirrors its own process of production as well as larger social processes’ and point to the fact that ‘at times, many minoritarian film-makers directing films about police harassment have themselves been harassed by police’.51 This latter point is applicable to several of the films analysed in this book, including L’Esquive. L’Esquive features a scene where a group of children are treated aggressively by police who check their papers, and some of the cast members were also stopped by police for identity checks during the time that they spent working on the film. The way that Kechiche went about not just making a film about a Marivaux play set in the banlieues, but also with a cast featuring many young people with no prior acting experience further challenges prejudices that associated specific cultural forms with people of certain origins. These elements create an interesting parallel between L’Esquive as a film and the Marivaux play within the film as a key element of both is the question as to who can or cannot take on certain roles. Distinctions between characters in the film make this clear. For example, the central character in the school play, Lisette, is played by a character named Lydia. Lydia, along with Rachid (who plays Arlequin), is the most natural of the members of the class involved in the play. It is notable that Lydia is played by Sara Forestier, who is the only young member of the cast with significant acting experience prior to L’Esquive. Furthermore, Forestier gained this experience in theatre. She also differs from many of the other cast members because she comes from central Paris rather than the banlieues and apparently not from an ethnic minority background. Her status as a potential ‘odd one out’ raises questions about how and why people are cast in leading roles. Although

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Arlequin is played by a character named Rachid who is of North African descent, Rachid does not possess certain characteristics (such as dark hair or a tanned complexion) that would be likely to lead to a French audience instantly identifying him as being of Maghrebi descent. These aspects of the casting of L’Esquive illustrate how it blurs the boundaries between fiction and documentary, and demonstrates a deliberate attempt by Kechiche to construct his film in a way that contributes to its challenging of stereotypes. A sense of proximity is created from the beginning of the film where we see a discussion in a group of teenagers. It is filmed using a hand-held camera and frequent close-ups mean that it is not always possible to see the whole face of the person talking. The scene, which takes place outside a block of flats, looks unstaged due to the lack of scenesetting and the way the camera remains close to those talking, occasionally moving slightly within a small space. This method of filming helps to position the spectator among the group. High tower blocks are often visible in L’Esquive and are the backdrop against which the pupils rehearse the play. These buildings are visible both through the window of the classroom where the pupils rehearse in school and also when the pupils rehearse outside after school. These buildings provide a reminder of where the play is being rehearsed and take on a theatrical dimension as the film begins and ends with someone shouting up to a person at a flat window, which is reminiscent of scenes in plays such as Romeo and Juliet or Cyrano de Bergerac. Near the start of L’Esquive, it is Krimo who goes to call on Magalie and near the end Lydia goes to call on Krimo. The play within L’Esquive resonates with the young people precisely due to its parallels with issues of difference and exclusion in their own lives, and there is something theatrical about the interactions and exchanges that are part of their daily lives. The parallels between Marivaux’s Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard and the lives of the children performing it are in part teased out by the teacher organising the rehearsals. She tells the students that Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard is a play in which the rich act as if they were poor and the poor act as if they were rich. She also explains that the play involves characters who struggle to escape from or hide their origins as the rich fall in love with the rich and the poor fall in love with the poor. The teacher identifies language as one of the main elements that exposes differences between the characters. In

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L’Esquive, there is a clear difference between the formal literary French of the play and the modern (sub)urban French used by the young people when they are talking to each other. However, what unites both is that they differ from the sort of French that cinemagoing audiences in France would be used to hearing in most films. In addition to the language of the Marivaux play being rich and poetic, it is important to note that Kechiche has described the language spoken by the young people on the housing estate as also being ‘very rich in terms of images, cultural mixtures . . . a language of liberty, inventiveness, pleasure, sensuality’.52 Thus, the spectator is invited to appreciate both forms of language as well as the contrasts and interactions between them. This helps to establish a counter-discourse that challenges high-brow attitudes that would represent young people from the banlieues as being inarticulate and unable to express themselves. Although the language of Marivaux’s play contrasts with that of the young residents of the housing estate, this does not obscure the many parallels between the play and their daily lives. Shortly after splitting up with his girlfriend Magalie, Krimo is attracted to Lydia after seeing her try on a dress for the play. He then uses the play in order to try to get close to Lydia by persuading Rachid to give up the role of Arlequin. But when Krimo gets involved in the play, he clearly lacks the presence, conviction and acting skills of Rachid. During one after-school rehearsal, Krimo tries to kiss Lydia but she moves in order to avoid his somewhat clumsy advances; in French one could say ‘elle l’esquive’ (‘she dodges him’). Thus, even though Krimo convinces Rachid to give up the role of Arlequin, he is not able to achieve his objective as it is clear that Lydia does not want to go out with him. Lydia’s reluctance to get together with Krimo is largely due to a series of theatrical misunderstandings about whether Magalie is still trying to get back with him, and whether it was Krimo or Magalie who initiated their split. One of Krimo’s friends, Fahti, takes on the theatrical role of the intermediary in real life by trying to get Krimo and Magalie back together and encouraging them to discuss their feelings. In both cases, his efforts are clumsy and ineffective. Krimo’s and Lydia’s failure to get together and Rachid’s reassuming the role of Arlequin mirror the sense of destiny that the schoolteacher evoked in her explanation of Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard. As the film concludes with the performance of the play at

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the school’s end-of-year celebrations, a short play performed by a group of younger children dressed as birds provides a metaphor for Krimo’s predicament. One of the youngest children in this play is called Abdelkrim (Krimo’s full name) and needs to be coaxed by a teacher during the performance in much the same way as Krimo had to be prompted by his teacher at rehearsals when he took over the role of Arlequin. At the end of the young children’s play, some of the birds talk of having been on a long voyage whilst others say that it was just a dream and that they are still exactly where they were before. This has parallels with the way Krimo’s attempt to participate in his class’s play did not get him where he wanted and adds a pessimistic note to the end of the film by suggesting that it is difficult to escape one’s roots. Nevertheless, the film as a whole skilfully challenges stereotypes by associating themes from a work of high culture with the lives of young people who are sometimes seen as antithetical to elite culture, effectively calling into question the notion that there is a clear boundary between high and popular culture. However, it is unclear whether being involved in a school production of Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard will have the same effect on the lives of all the children. For example, Krimo remains unable to express his feelings and engage with what he is being taught in school. Nevertheless, discussions between other class members in the film demonstrate that involvement in the play allows them to discover a new interest that they are keen to pursue. L’Esquive’s status as a fiction rather than a documentary helps to explain why it does not ask questions about the future as explicitly as the documentary films analysed in this chapter, although its similarly open-ended conclusion leaves spectators wondering what the future will hold for the pupils who perform the play. Although Krimo’s failures could be seen as rendering the ending pessimistic, the importance of the lengthy sequence in which the children perform their play creates cause for optimism. A variety of types of shots of the audience – including tracking shots and close-ups – reveal their pride in the play and provide a sense of warmth and community that contrasts with the way that banlieue films often feature isolated young people who do not enjoy such support or encouragement.

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Conclusion: side-stepping banlieue stereotypes? The four films that I have analysed here demonstrate different, but nevertheless similar, ways of counteracting stereotypes about France’s banlieues. The first two can be more clearly defined as direct responses to challenges or specific elements of hegemonic discourse on France’s banlieues even though the extent to which they evoke existing stereotypes varies. Whereas Tavernier’s film owes its existence to its director’s anger at the attitude of Éric Raoult towards suburban housing estates, Nick gives himself more freedom by not letting pre-existing stereotypes define his film’s role to the same extent. Nick thus delves deeper by analysing the roots of at times violent exchanges on suburban housing estates and take a reflective approach that contrasts with the sensationalism present in certain elements of the French media. However, despite the fact that Nicolas Sarkozy is not mentioned in the film, one could see Nick’s film as a reaction to his actions as interior minister.53 In this role, Sarkozy often evoked the theme of insécurité (security problems) and the need to adopt a tough stance when dealing with perceived problems in the banlieues and immigration. By not mentioning Sarkozy, Nick maintains a broader perspective on socio-political issues affecting the banlieues. In so doing, he avoids entering into the sort of confrontation that Tavernier has with Éric Raoult in De l’autre côté du périph’. Nick’s greater sense of detachment means that he does not draw as much attention away from the people he films as Tavernier does in De l’autre côté du périph’. Whilst 93: L’Effervescence demonstrates awareness of negative images associated with the banlieues, it does not seek to involve itself in debates about the stigmatisation of the banlieues to the same extent. Instead, its cultural focus demonstrates that the banlieues are places where young people are engaged in positive and lawful activities. Manuel Boucher argues that hip-hop is an art form that makes it possible to ‘think “positively” about disadvantaged areas, to transform the overflowing energy of young people from housing estates into cultural dynamism’, and Demeude shows that other cultural forms are also capable of achieving a similar effect.54 In addition, his interest in employment rather than unemployment also contributes to his film’s attempt to rearticulate a vision of France’s banlieues. Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’Esquive provides an image of daily life in suburban France that is arguably further removed from negative

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stereotypes and clichés than any of the three documentaries. In so doing he eschews cultural forms traditionally associated with French banlieues by concentrating on the power of theatre. Despite being written almost two and half centuries before the appearance of Kechiche’s film, Marivaux’s Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard is highly relevant to the cast in the school play. Both Kechiche’s L’Esquive and Demeude’s 93: L’Effervescence illustrate the ways in which cultural activities can provide the means for young people in suburban France to express themselves and broaden their horizons. This accentuation of the positive, rather than challenging the negative, facilitates the creation of counter-hegemonic discourse that is not overly determined by the dominant power relations that it seeks to challenge. However, the problems that Kechiche encountered in financing and producing his film suggest that failing to engage with recognisable stereotypes can make mainstream distributors worry about a film’s marketability. In other words, at least referring to some recognisable stereotypes can be perceived as making a film more accessible even if it does not provide an in-depth problematisation of such issues. However, appealing to universal values can also be a means of grounding one’s point of view within a recognisable framework without being as constrained by responding directly to the agendas of others. Although not all of the films studied in this chapter evoke the importance of France’s republican political traditions, their accentuation of positive aspects of life in suburban France provide much evidence of the third element of the republican trinity of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Although certain key principles of republicanism provide a means of drawing together key elements of the four films analysed in this chapter, there are also subtle differences as to the visibility and portrayal of representatives of the republican nation state. In the first two films (by Tavernier and Nick), political representatives at the heart of the French state are criticised by more local representatives (including members of the police) who appear to be more aware of the realities of suburban France. Taken together, the two films that are based more closely on young people’s involvement in cultural activities show representatives of the state who enable young people to express themselves in positive ways that provide a potential means of escaping from the negativity associated with the stigmatisation of France’s banlieues. This is true of the

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local politicians in 93: L’Effervescence, who are shown in a much more positive light than those in Les Mauvais Garçons. In L’Esquive, it is an inspirational teacher who broadens the horizons of many of the members of one class by involving them in a production of a Marivaux play and showing them how it is relevant to their lives. This element of L’Esquive exemplifies the way that all four films identify sources of hope by showing that not all French suburban housing estates are areas where young people’s lives are defined by crime, violence and clashes with the police. Nevertheless, all of the films conclude with reasonably open endings that point towards an uncertain future for those who live in France’s banlieues, indicating that they are not merely replacing clichéd negative representations of suburban France with equally simplistic positive perspectives.55 As previously mentioned, the extent to which the respective films refer to existing stereotypes, or set out to tackle them head on, varies. In this chapter, each film appears to be less concerned with responding directly to stereotypes than the previous one and gradually moves further away from an agenda determined by ideas it opposes. This should not be taken to mean that fictional films are necessarily more counter-hegemonic than documentaries, but indicates, rather, that concentrating on less familiar subject matter can go hand in hand with a quest to establish a thematic or political approach that is similarly unconstrained by directly responding to existing socio-political stereotypes.

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Conclusion

The films on which I have concentrated here demonstrate the diversity that exists among works made since 1995 that explore how and why immigrants and banlieue residents often appear to be living on the margins in contemporary France. The fact that the films lack a common overarching ideology is in keeping with O’Shaughnessy’s characterisation of post-1995 political filmmaking in France and mirrored by their lack of a shared cinematic vision as to how such subjects should be represented in an effective political film.1 However, most of them are united by three key elements. The first of these is an at least tacit acknowledgement of the importance of France’s republican political culture and its status as a potential means of framing or resolving issues that have posed problems. Whilst it is hard to argue that any of the films constitutes a frontal attack on republicanism, the second main strand that emerges is that the films collectively challenge the republican model of citizenship. Finally, the majority of the works seek to play a role in empowering the disenfranchised and correct ways in which hegemonic discourse represents immigrants and banlieue residents.

Republicanism: theory and practice Leaving aside Vinz’s derogatory evocation of liberté, égalité, fraternité in La Haine, none of the films analysed here provide an outright rejection of republicanism. Although there are some films where immigrants and banlieue residents do not explicitly appeal to republican values, this is probably due to a sense of detachment from politicians and political processes in general terms rather a rejection of republicanism on an ideological level. Although they are frequently subjects of political debate, immigrants and banlieue residents are not always active participants in such discussions. The films analysed here do not suggest that republicanism is irrelevant

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to the lives of immigrants and banlieue residents but instead point towards the need for it to be made more relevant to them. This process involves two key stages. The first is one of repairing and reasserting and the second is one of reformulation. This section will deal with the former and the latter will be examined in the following section. Although chapter one illustrated that there are critics of republicanism who see it as a source of inequality and discrimination, this is largely not a point that the directors and protagonists of the films analysed here seek to make. Instead, those who evoke republicanism often do so by characterising it as a theoretical model that can help to resolve inequalities and injustices if its principles are properly followed. Several of them argue that representatives of the French state need to pay attention to adhering to such values much more closely. Republicanism informs the debates explored in this book in several different ways, and these vary from one chapter to another. When it comes to the sans-papiers, the very need to produce documentary proof of nationality in many ways stems from the strict dichotomy between nationals and non-nationals that is inherent in republican ideology. However, the films about sans-papiers expose the arbitrary nature of a system that often involves discretion as to the carrying out of identity checks and implementation of expulsion orders. Both La Ballade des sans-papiers and Parmi Nous show sans-papiers who have been able to remain in France by virtue of deportation orders not being executed. In turn, L’Afrance and Code inconnu feature characters who are subjected to either an arbitrary identity check or a potentially life-changing arbitrary decision. Maria in Code inconnu is asked for papers after a paper bag thrown at her provokes a dispute between Amadou and Jean; El Hadji in L’Afrance literally feels the full force of the law after his trying to renew his student visa a day late results in his being pushed to the ground and handcuffed by two policemen. By depicting a diverse range of different sorts of sans-papiers and, indeed, people who have become sans-papiers in different ways, the films in chapter two implicitly challenge a process of homogenisation that stems from republican ideology. Due to its universalistic ethos and attribution of citizenship rights on the basis of the crucial binary divide between nationals and non-nationals, republicanism can be said to create conditions that obscure the diversity and nuances that exist among the categories constituted by nationals and non-nationals.

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The four films in chapter three also demonstrate the importance of possessing valid residency documents and again question the relationship between principles and practices in republican France. Although the double peine is a law that is theoretically applicable to all non-nationals, the films suggest that it is used with particular vigour in order to discipline men of North African origin who live in France’s banlieues. In other words, its targeting of specific cat­egories of non-nationals is at odds with republican universalism as it involves differential treatment that goes beyond the legitimate national/non-national distinction. This division is itself called into question by the films as they suggest that many of those who are sanctioned by the double peine are punished by virtue of a nonFrench legal identity that contrasts with their lived identity and sense of attachment to France. The overall system is criticised by these films as are state representatives responsible for implementing it at local level, and this is made particularly clear by the criticisms of Judge Finidori in Lyon that are voiced in Histoires de vies brisées. The notion that state representatives hold prejudices that contradict republican universalism or abuse their power is suggested by several of the films in chapter four that explore relations between young people and the police in France’s banlieues. The victims of police violence are almost invariably black or of North African descent and the use by police of firearms to maintain law and order is called into question. Ma 6-T va crack-er and Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles largely suggest that problems exist at a micro level, that is, it is the actions of overly trigger-happy police officers that is to blame. However, L’Embrasement and Banlieues: sous le feu des médias explore the macro level by examining the wider processes involved. The former suggests that national policing strategy is a source of problems that in part explain why bavures occur. The latter suggests that simplistic and inaccurate media reporting helps to create a sense of stigmatisation that is responsible for the othering of France’s banlieues, a process that goes against the notion of a single and indivisible nation. The chronology of the films examined in this chapter, and others that evoke similar issues, suggests that there has been a shift in how policing of the banlieues has been represented in French cinema. Whilst individual explosions of violence and clashes were a feature of mid-1990s films such as La Haine and Ma 6-T va crack-er, more recent works have sought to delve deeper

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and explore the processes that underpin relationships between young people and the police in suburban France. Understanding processes of exclusion or stigmatisation is important to the films in chapter five even though these issues are not always as explicitly referenced. Their focus on daily life in suburban housing estates helps to demystify stereotypical representations of the banlieues that primarily associate these areas with high levels of crime and violence. Rather than portraying these locations as being on the margins of French society or as places where the Republic is becoming undone, they foreground positive aspects such as community spirit and cultural dynamism. Even though liberté and égalité may at times be lacking when it comes to political and media discourses concerning the banlieues, the films’ focus on sociocultural activities uncovers plenty of evidence of fraternité. Across the four chapters that examine films united by a common theme, the ways that individual stories are contextualised varies. For example, there are differences concerning the extent to which the films about the double peine examine individuals’ interactions with the French state and wider issues about the legitimacy of the law. As mentioned above, a similar point can be made about the works that examine the policing of France’s banlieues. There are benefits of both concentrating on specific cases and exploring wider issues. For example, the individual stories about sans-papiers in La Ballade des sans-papiers and Parmi Nous are at times quite moving and likely to influence people’s views on this matter. Although L’Afrance and Code inconnu are less closely concerned with individual characters’ interactions with the state, their broader focus permits greater examination of existential issues to do with identity, belonging and communication in an increasingly globalised world. The images of protests and rioting in several different countries that feature in the prologue and epilogue of Ma 6-T va crack-er could be interpreted as an appeal to go beyond considering the issues at stake purely through a republican lens. Indeed, they could be perceived as an appeal to also concentrate on more universal issues such as class that O’Shaughnessy sees as being less prevalent in contemporary socio-political film-making in France.2 The use of these images to frame Ma 6-T va crack-er does, however, largely constitute an exception compared to the other films and, indeed, the political consciousness that frames Ma 6-T va crack-er is in stark contrast to that of its protagonists. Nevertheless, several other films seek to

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portray contemporary realities as part of a longer trajectory. This is true of how the experiences of sans-papiers are situated in many of the films in chapter two and also of how directors such as Christophe Nick and Hugues Demeude portray Creil and Seine-Saint-Denis in chapter five.

Remodelling citizenship and accepting hybridity The most important criticisms of republican ideology that unite films across all chapters concern the way that its model of citizenship is based so strongly on the national/non-national distinction and the difference-denying aspects of republican universalism. In all chapters, we see people who feel that citizenship should be more closely linked to socio-political and socio-cultural participation rather than nationality. It is not their place of birth or nationality that many of them evoke but, rather, a sense of belonging based on residency or involvement in social, cultural or political activities. This is true of many of the immigrants who feature in the films of the first two chapters and also the banlieue residents who reflect on their lives in those of the last two chapters. It is precisely republicanism’s refusal to acknowledge differences between theoretically unmarked citizens that is partially to blame for the processes of homogenisation that obscures the diversity of immigrant experiences and the range of different types of areas that are often grouped under the heading banlieue. Many of those who appear in the films analysed discuss multilayered identities that involve links to the local and the national, or that acknowledge foreign roots at the same time as foregrounding a sense of attachment to France. The strictness of republican concepts of nationality and citizenship effectively imposes a straitjacket on those who seek to represent themselves in such a manner. This inflexibility has been criticised by Amin Maalouf, who argues that people ‘will [n]ever be on the side of the fanatics if they succeed in living peacefully in the context of their own complex identity’.3 In other words, a system that maps out a range of possibilities instead of establishing a strict dichotomy can help to favour inclusion rather than division. Futhermore, such an approach could reduce feelings of resentment and lessen the likelihood of people pursuing extreme ways of expressing their beliefs. The challenge to republican models of citizenship that is present in many of the films analysed here stems from the way that identities

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defined by the national/non-national dichotomy fail to acknow­ ledge what many people see as the realities of their daily existence. Immigrants in many of the films seek to represent themselves as French, and it should be remembered that it is perfectly possible simultaneously to be both an immigrant and French. This fact is at times obscured by the imprecise and inaccurate way in which the term ‘immigrant’ is used in France, and this in itself can be seen as a consequence of the strictness of the dichotomy between nationals and non-nationals.4 When immigrants evoke roots in many of the films studied here, it is generally ties with France rather than the country of their birth that they mention. Whilst some banlieue residents talk about their suburban roots, they often seek to downplay negative aspects of these areas and assert a sense of pride. It is clear that the labels ‘immigrant’ and ‘banlieue resident’ are often imposed from the outside and not what people who fall into such categories would necessarily choose as the main way of describing their own sense of identity. However, a nuanced analysis of people who fall into one or both of these categories remains a valid way to assess important socio-political issues in contemporary France. By not playing up immigrant or banlieue roots, many of the people in the films analysed here appear to be effectively representing themselves as unmarked individuals in a way that could help to facili­tate their participation in the workings of the Republic. This can also be interpreted as a demand for equality and justice in the face of elements of the same system that are at times shown to be problematic. The way that the films studied here challenge ethnic and racial hegemonies exemplifies an important process in French cinema that has been identified by Rosello: Since the beginning of the 1980s, films have not only participated in the representation of ethnic communities, they have also increasingly reflected an evolution in the hegemonic imaging of different races. Black and white binary oppositions are slowly losing their obvious relevance. They are being replaced by more up-to-date representations of complex, hybrid, and multi-faceted identities.5

The vocabulary used here recalls that of Chalcraft and Noorani who see challenging hegemonies as involving ‘a gradual process of disarticulation and rearticulation’.6 Although this process is ongoing

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and at times problematic, it is one of great socio-political and cinematic importance. The way that varied and hybrid identities emerge when analysing recent French films about social and racial exclusion is mirrored by the cinematic forms adopted by their directors. O’Shaughnessy sees ‘an absence of explicit politics and social connectivity’ as a defining feature of post-1995 political cinema in France and identifies the concept of the fragment as being applicable to both the subject matter and cinematic form of many films.7 The inclusion of footage of real events in several of the fictional films analysed here and creative artistic elements evident in several of the documentaries adds weight to Austin’s argument that recent French cinema has seen ‘a blurring of boundaries between the documentary, the first person narrative and the fiction’.8 In addition, it has also seen the emergence of creative and novel hybrid genres. Jean-Pierre Thorn’s documentary On n’est pas des marques de vélo emerged from a plan to make a hip-hop musical and Éric Pittard has said that Zebda’s presence in Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles makes the film an ‘opera-documentary’.9 Within both the fictional and documentary films studied here, there are many examples of people for whom involvement in the creative arts provides a means of contextualising issues that they face in their own life. This is true of the school children in L’Esquive, the break dancers in On n’est pas des marques de vélo and the young people involved in the musical that features at the beginning and end of 93: L’Effervescence. Several of these films involve cultural forms becoming popular in what might be seen as unlikely locations, such as when the Marivaux play strikes a chord with the pupils in L’Esquive. In addition, others feature cultural forms that are regularly associated with hybridity and reappropriation. This is particularly relevant to the sampling that is a feature of the hip-hop music that provides the backing to the break-dance routines in On n’est pas des marques de vélo and also the interactions between modern urban hip-hop culture and theatre, classical music and sculpture in 93: L’Effervescence. However, certain problems emerge within this myriad of approaches. On occasion, issues to do with cinematic form have been at the heart of criticisms of the visual and cinematic appeal of several films. For example, the rawness of the footage of La Ballade des sans-papiers, Histoires de vies brisées and De l’autre côté du périph’ may be in keeping with a desire to foreground the mundane or brutal

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reality of the issues that their protagonists face, but arguably also makes them less watchable. At the other end of the spectrum, Michael Haneke’s interweaving of several narrative strands in Code inconnu has been seen by some as self-indulgent and as detracting from its content and story.10 This is somewhat paradoxical as Haneke is a director who utilises cinematic forms that involve the spectator in the film as a crucial actor who completes the work by seeking to piece it together.11 This type of strategy does not appeal to people such as Mogniss Abdallah, founder of IM’média, who is opposed to the idea of creating ‘a contestatory form for the sake of being contestatory’ as this can involve a process whereby directors ‘engage in a formal exercise without the explicit agreement of the people that they film’.12 However, Jean-Pierre Thorn believes that A revolutionary art cannot do without a reflection on form. The form must correspond to the message that one wants to put across for a film to provoke people. A film that is about a subject that raises questions about our society must be provocative in terms of its form.13

This demonstrates that Thorn clearly believes that radical politics need to be accompanied by radical aesthetics. Whilst this topic has provoked much debate over the years, it would be wrong to assume that all the directors whose films have been examined here hold equally trenchant views. For example, Carole Sionnet’s pragmatic response to the question of whether radical politics necessitate radical aesthetics is simply that it is important to ‘reflect on the form that is most appropriate in terms of the point that is being put across’.14 Despite these apparent differences, both Thorn and Sionnet are directors whose films seek to maximise their appeal by being political without being seen as overly militant. For Thorn, the term ‘militant’ evokes an outdated mode of political film-making that adopts a conventional formal approach due its focus on serious subjects.15 This stance is consistent with Ezra and Harris’s view that ‘the traditional base-superstructure model of art as a perfunctory and transparent medium for a political message has been replaced by a more interactive relation between art and politics’.16 However, this has not prevented directors such as Thorn and Sionnet from promoting their films at events organised in collaboration with campaigning groups rather than exclusively at events with a more explicitly cultural or cinematic focus. Indeed, several other

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directors whose films have been analysed here have more explicitly set out to produce works that more directly serve political objectives or constitute a practical campaign resource.17 One of the most significant elements that unites the diverse range of directors whose films have been studied here is a desire to empower people who are often stigmatised by political or media discourse. Indeed, O’Shaughnessy argues that responding ‘to the relegation of the voices of the oppressed to the domain of the meaningless’ is one of the defining characteristics of contemporary political cinema in France.18 This often involves negotiating a careful path between challenging existing stereotypes and indirectly giving stereotypes a degree of credibility by feeling the need to repeat them or allowing them to dictate the way that an argument is constructed. As Gramsci argued, the normalisation of processes of exclusion can create a particular obstacle in this regard.19 However, some directors appear to negotiate a path round this challenge by characterising their films as being about subjects that are generally ignored by the media rather than by stating that they explicitly set out to challenge stereotypes. This is true of Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Pierre Thorn, Christophe-Emmanuel Del Debbio and Hugues Demeude, although there are moments within some of their films where pre-existing stereotypes overly dictate the structure and lines of argument. Although O’Shaughnessy argues that the task of contemporary film-makers is often complicated by the lack of ‘a universalizing language available to take struggles in hand or give the dominant a voice’, a language of sorts is emerging.20 Based on the evidence of the films analysed here, it is one that does not wholeheartedly reject republicanism, but instead suggests that there are problems in the system as to how and when it identifies and acknow­ ledges difference. It is one that also questions the extent to which the French state’s treatment of immigrants and banlieue residents remains consistent with republican values and indirectly appeals for a new model of citizenship that is based more closely on participation than nationality.

The future: are the margins becoming mainstream? Analysing the present state of French cinema is a complicated issue. In general terms, the Oscars won by films such as the Édith Piaf biopic La Môme (known as La Vie en Rose in English) and more

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recently The Artist suggest a sense of prosperity, as does the fact that the number of French people going to cinemas in 2011 reached the highest level since 1966. However, in 2008 Jean-Michel Frodon described Sarkozy’s period as president of France as a ‘nightmare’ and argued that ‘every ten days or so there’s a new step backwards that reduces support for non-market-orientated cinema’.21 Sarkozy was also unafraid of using divisive rhetoric about France’s banlieues and immigration prior to and during his presidential election campaigns of 2007 and 2012. Although Sarkozy is no longer France’s president, the continued electoral strength of the Front National means that divisive and potentially inflammatory rhetoric concerning immigration and the banlieues is likely to continue to be heard loud and clear within political debates in France. This is particularly relevant since the Front National’s sustained level of support may make it an even greater force in French politics due to the potential fragmentation of the centre-right following its defeats in the 2012 presidential and legislative elections. Despite this context, and the controversy surrounding Sarkozy’s creation of a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity in 2007, there have been other contrasting trends. In the months following the suburban unrest of autumn 2005, French television appeared to start addressing the low levels of on-air representation of visible minorities and those from the banlieues. For example, the arrival of Harry Roselmack to present TF1’s week night 8 p.m. news bulletin in summer 2006 was seen as highly significant since he was the first black presenter of the flagship programme.22 In addition, the Canal+ stand-up comedy show Jamel Comedy Club (also launched in summer 2006) gave further media exposure to members of visible minorities and also many young artists from France’s banlieues. However, such initiatives doubtlessly constitute merely the start of a process aimed at correcting disparities that still exist and that are evoked in many of the films analysed here. Discourses surrounding what are now the two most successful films of all time at the French box office also present a picture of representations of difference on the big screen that is open to contrasting interpretations. Released in 2011 and watched by over 19 million spectators, Intouchables became the second most popular French film of all time, behind only Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (Welcome to the Sticks, 2008). Intouchables is based on a true story and sees a wayward black youngster from Paris’s banlieues form a friendship

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with a disabled white aristocrat from central Paris. The film’s triumphing of tolerance and acceptance was seen as significant by several reviewers writing in publications such as Le Monde and Le Nouvel Observateur.23 However, other journalists – especially those at Libération – were quick to criticise the film for its simplicity and failing to situate its narrative with a meaningful socio-political context.24 Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, which tells a light-hearted feel-good story of a post office bank worker who relocates from the south to the north of France, is also open to similar criticisms. Although it demonstrates France’s ability to laugh at difference – admittedly regional rather than class or racial difference – it presents these issues in a gentle and unthreatening manner similarly devoid of any meaningful socio-political context. The success of these two films could, on one hand, been seen as encouraging as it provides largely positive representations of characters from the often-stigmatised Parisian banlieues or the supposedly bleak north of France. However, there is also the danger that their referencing of so many recognisable clichés reinforces prejudices and falls well short of providing a meaningful exploration of social, racial or regional difference in France. The fact that the vast audiences of Intouchables and Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis so greatly exceeded those of any of the generally much more nuanced films analysed in this book suggests that French audiences are prepared to embrace difference when it is presented in a glossy, well-packaged and unthreatening manner. To use a term that Cristina Johnston employs when analysing the popular comedy Gazon Maudit (French Twist), it appears that ‘accessible subversion’ sells.25 On the other hand, the more gritty aspects of the ‘real’ (‘that which is normally unseen but hurts’) appear to be less appealing to wide numbers of spectators than ‘reality’ (‘that which we already know, a stabilised, normative and totalising social order’).26 Even though more challenging films that provide a more detailed and nuanced exploration of hybrid identities in contemporary France generally remain on the fringes of the mainstream at best, their recent increased presence is significant. They are symptomatic of a desire critically to interrogate the principles upon which the French Republic is based and to reform rather than disregard the political culture that has been a feature of French life since the Revolution. It is perhaps their attempts at re-articulation that are gradually starting to increasingly permeate mainstream popular

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culture in France. Such works may generally be made on low budgets and lack the resources to rival mainstream blockbusters at the box office, but modern technological developments have provided them with additional possibilities in their struggle for recognition. A decade after the appearance of Nous, sans-papiers de France, a film with a similar subject matter entitled Laissez-les grandir ici! (Let Them Grow Up Here!, 2007) appeared. Like its predecessor, it was a collective project that sought to increase awareness of sans-papiers in France and criticise their treatment by the French state. Rather than being restricted to mainstream distribution networks, it was primarily made available on the Internet via file-sharing and social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. Although large commercial distributors also use social media to promote their films, it provides an unprecedented means of generating publicity for all. The potential of the Internet to play a major role in transmitting information and shaping opinion has been encapsulated by Guardian journalist John Plunkett’s comments that ‘[t]he revolution will not be televised – it will be YouTubed’.27 As the boundaries between new and conventional media become increasingly less distinct, access to the mainstream is potentially made easier. However, the extent to which this will help the sorts of filmmakers analysed here remains to be seen. Many of the films discussed here have ended by asking what will happen next and by emphasising that important issues remain unresolved. Almost two decades on from the earliest films examined here, a lot of uncertainty remains as to what the future will hold for immigrants and banlieue residents who continue to seek to make their voices heard. Whilst this suggests that the road ahead may well be long and complicated, the range of cinematic and political approaches adopted should not detract from the fact that the films analysed here play a significant role in the re-presentation and re-articulation of the lives of immigrants and banlieue residents.

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Notes Introduction   1 Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘Post-1995 French cinema: return of the social, return of the political?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 11, 2 (2003), 189. The term sans-papiers means undocumented migrants.   2 Ibid., 192.   3 Ibid., 190.   4 Guy Austin, Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction (2nd edn, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 234; Martin O’Shaughnessy, The New Face of Political Cinema: Commitment in French Film since 1995 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), p. 172.   5 Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘French cinema and the political’, Studies in French Cinema, 10, 1 (2010), 189–203; Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘Reprise et nouvelles formes du cinéma politique’, in Graeme Hayes and Martin O’Shaughnessy (eds), Cinéma et engagement (Condé-sur-Noireau: Harmattan, 2005), pp. 83–98; O’Shaughnessy, The New Face of Political Cinema.   6 Beur is an initially self-referential term for descendants of North African immigrants in France, and is formed by inverting the syllables of arabe (the French word for ‘Arab’). Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).   7 Carrie Tarr, ‘Transnational identities, transnational spaces: West Africans in contemporary French cinema’, Modern and Contemporary France, 15, 1 (2007), 4.   8 Tarr, Reframing Difference, p. 84.   9 Will Higbee, ‘Locating the postcolonial in transnational cinema: the place of Algerian émigré directors in contemporary French film’, Modern and Contemporary France, 15, 1 (2007), 53. 10 Alec Hargreaves, Multi-ethnic France: Immigration, Politics, Culture and Society (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 3. 11 Ibid., pp. 53–4. 12 Quintin Hoar and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds and trans.), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p. 12. 13 Ibid., p. 79; John Chalcraft and Yaseen Noorani (eds), Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 3. 14 Chalcraft and Noorani, Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony, p. 11. 15 Laurent Mucchielli and Véronique Le Goaziou (eds), Quand les banlieues brûlent...: retour sur les émeutes de novembre 2005 (Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2006), pp. 9–10.

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16 Chalcraft and Noorani, Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony, p. 7. 17 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism: The New Critical Idiom (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 51. 18 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Charles Lemert (ed.), Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), p. 612. 19 Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean (eds), The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 287; Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, pp. 52, 235; Bart MooreGilbert, ‘Spivak and Bhabha’, in Henry Schwartz and Sangeeta Ray (eds), A Companion to Postcolonial Studies (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), p. 464. 20 Landry and MacLean (eds), The Spivak Reader, p. 5. 21 ‘Quand on veut que quelqu’un qui n’est pas un professionnel de la parole parvienne à dire des choses . . . il faut faire un travail d’assistance à la parole.’ Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la télévision (Paris: Raisons d’agir, 1996), p. 36. All translations from French are my own unless otherwise noted. 22 Chalcraft and Noorani, Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony, p. 1. 23 Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, trans. Barbara Bray (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 26. 24 ‘Politique désigne moins des contenus, des opinions, des mots d’ordre qu’une façon de tricoter et détricoter du réel, de traquer ce qui pourrait être dans ce qui est, d’anticiper le mouvement dans le statique.’ François Bégaudeau, ‘Vous avez dit film politique?’, Cahiers du cinéma, 604 (2005), 79. 25 Mike Wayne, Political Film: The Dialectics of Third Cinema (London: Pluto Press, 2001), p. 58. 26 Ibid., p. 10. 27 Elie Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994). 28 Wayne, Political Film, pp. 1, 5. 29 Ibid., p. 7. 30 Gérard Noiriel, État, nation et immigration: vers une histoire de pouvoir (Paris: Berlin, 2001); Gérard Noiriel, Le creuset français. Histoire de l’immigration XIXè-XXè siècle (Paris: Seuil, 1998); Maxim Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France (London: Routledge, 1992); Étienne Balibar, Les Frontières de la démocratie (Paris: La Découverte, 1992). 31 Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’; Bourdieu, Sur la télévision; Maalouf, In the Name of Identity. 32 Alec G. Hargreaves, ‘A deviant construction: the French media and the “banlieues”’, New Community, 22, 4 (1996), 607–18; Laurent Mucchielli, Violences et insécurité: fantasmes et réalités dans le débat français (Paris: La Découverte, 2002); Laurent Mucchielli, ‘Délinquance et immigration: le sociologue face au sens commun’, Hommes et

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migrations, 1241 (2003), 20–31; Mireille Rosello, Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998); Mireille Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Bourdieu, Sur la télévision.

Chapter One: Cinema and the Republic   1 Jeremy Jennings, ‘Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in contemporary France’, British Journal of Political Science, 30, 4 (2000), 597.   2 Régis Debray, ‘Êtes-vous démocrate ou républicain?’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 1308 (30 November–6 December 1989), 115–21.   3 Ibid., 118.   4 The term ‘minority’ is not often used in a French context because its appeal to notions of division and difference is incompatible with the republican ideal of a single and indivisible nation.   5 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism: The New Critical Idiom (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 231.   6 Max Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 37.   7 Jack Hayward, Governing France: The One and Indivisible Republic (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), p. xii; Jennings, ‘Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in contemporary France’, 575; Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright, The Politics and Government of France (4th edn, London: Routledge, 2001), p. 22.   8 Debray, ‘Êtes-vous démocrate ou républicain?’, 117.   9 Ibid., 115–16; see also Jennings, ‘Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in contemporary France’, 584, 589. 10 Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation, p. 2; Pierre Tévanian, Le Racisme républicain: réflexions sur le modèle français de discrimination (Paris: Esprit frappeur, 2001), p. 169. 11 Jennings, ‘Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in contemporary France’, 590. 12 See Saïd Bouamama, Dix ans de marche des Beurs: chronique d’un mouvement avorté (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1994); Étienne Balibar, Les Frontières de la démocratie (Paris: La Découverte, 1992); Balibar (ed.), Sans-papiers: l’archaïsme fatal (Paris: La Découverte, 1999); Sarah Waters, ‘New social movements in France: une nouvelle vague citoyenne?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 6, 4 (1998), 493–504. 13 Jennings, ‘Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in contemporary France’, 589. 14 Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation, p. 119. 15 Alana Lentin, Racism and Anti-racism in Europe (London: Pluto Press, 2004), p. 116. 16 Mireille Rosello, ‘Tactical universalism and new multiculturalist claims in postcolonial France’, in Charles Forsdick and David Murphy (eds), Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction (London: Arnold, 2003), pp. 135–44; Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation, p. 124.

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17 Nadia Kiwan, ‘Equal opportunities and republican revival: postmigrant politics in contemporary France (2002–2005)’, International Journal of Francophone Studies, 10, 1 and 2 (2007), 157–72. See also Peter Fysh, ‘The failure of anti-racist movements in France 1981–1995’, in Mairi Maclean (ed.), The Mitterrand Years: Legacy and Evaluation (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), p. 210. 18 Kiwan, ‘Equal opportunities and republican revival’, 158. 19 Knapp and Wright, The Politics and Government of France, p. 22. 20 Laurent Mucchielli, Violences et insécurité: fantasmes et réalités dans le débat français (Paris: La Découverte, 2002). 21 Jean-Pierre Jeancolas, Histoire du Cinéma français (Paris: Nathan, 2000), pp. 70–1. 22 Andrew Higson, ‘Limiting imagination of national cinema’, in Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 69. 23 Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 210. 24 Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘Post-1995 French cinema: return of the social, return of the political?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 11, 2 (2003), 194. 25 Susan Hayward, French National Cinema (1st edn, London: Routledge, 1993), p. 291. 26 O’Shaughnessy, ‘Post-1995 French cinema’, 201–2. 27 Jeancolas, Histoire du Cinéma français; Yann Darré, Histoire sociale du cinéma français (Paris: La Découverte, 2000). 28 ‘L’accès à ces circuits [UGC, Pathé, Gaumont] est de facto interdit aux petits films . . . tandis que les exploitants indépendants n’obtiennent pas les films commercialement importants.’ Darré, Histoire sociale du cinéma français, p. 103. 29 See ibid., p. 93. 30 Mike Wayne, Political Film: The Dialectics of Third Cinema (London: Pluto Press, 2001). 31 Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell and Jan Udris, Studying Film (London: Arnold, 2001), p. 145. 32 Jean-Michel Frodon, ‘Une Défaite’, Cahiers du cinéma, 591 (2004), 14–15. 33 Michael Witt, ‘The Godard interview: I, a man of the image’, Sight and Sound, 15, 6 (2005), 28–30. 34 Abrams, Bell and Udris, Studying Film, pp. 46–7. 35 Elie Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 350–1. 36 Debray, ‘Êtes-vous démocrate ou républicain?’, 121. 37 ‘L’afflux de Méditerranéens et Orientaux qui ont depuis un demisiècle profondément modifié la composition de la population française.’ Gérard Noiriel, Etat, nation et immigration: vers une histoire de pouvoir (Paris: Berlin, 2001), p. 223. 38 ‘[I]1 est certain que d’avoir des Espagnols, des Polonais et des Portugais travaillant chez nous, ça pose moins de problèmes que

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d’avoir des musulmans et des Noirs.’ Fanny Petit, ‘Le “Piège” du regroupement familial?’, Plein Droit, 69 (2006), http://www.gisti.org/ spip.php?article84, accessed 21 November 2012. 39 ‘Ceux qui vivent parmi nous et qui sont différents.’ Balibar, Les Frontières de la démocratie, p. 36. 40 Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation, p. 3. 41 Tévanian, Le Racisme républicain, p. 121. See also Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, nation, classe: les identités ambiguës (2nd edn, Paris: La Découverte, 1997), pp. 294, 296. 42 Noiriel, Etat, nation et immigration, pp. 224–5. See also Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation, pp. 107–8. 43 Loubard means hooligan or delinquent youth, bien pensants means selfrighteous. Hayward, French National Cinema, p. 291. 44 Tarr, Reframing Difference, p. 74. 45 Alec G. Hargreaves, ‘A deviant construction: the French media and the “banlieues”’, New Community, 22, 4 (1996), 610–11. 46 ‘En plus des véritables problèmes qui existent objectivement dans ces quartiers, les habitants doivent se défendre contre l’image publique d’eux-mêmes, très négative, qui est produite par les médias et qui peut être en fort décalage avec la réalité.’ Patrick Champagne, ‘La Construction médiatique des malaises sociaux’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 90 (1991), 64–75. 47 Mucchielli, Violences et insécurité. 48 Mathieu Rigouste, ‘Le Langage des médias sur “les cités”: représenter l’espace, légitimer le contrôle’, Hommes et migrations, 1252 (2004), 74–81. 49 Jennings, ‘Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in contemporary France’, 578. 50 ‘Ces grands ensembles où la République se défait peu à peu.’ Rigouste, ‘Le Langage des médias sur “les cités”’, 78–9. 51 ‘La représentation des banlieues comme un monde de désordre et d’anomie sert un discours particulier, celui de sa prise en charge.’ Ibid., 78. 52 Laurent Bonelli and Gilles Sainati (eds), La Machine à punir: pratiques et discours sécuritaires (Paris: Esprit Frappeur, 2004), p. 29. 53 Jennings, ‘Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in contemporary France’, 580. 54 See also Pierre Bourdieu, Contre-feux: propos pour servir à la résistance contre l’invasion néo-libérale (Paris: Raisons d’agir, 1998), pp. 9–17. 55 ‘Il faut nettoyer certaines cités. Et quand je dis qu’il faut les nettoyer au Kärcher, cela veut dire qu’il faut les nettoyer en profondeur.’ Kärcher is a company who make powerful cleaning products, including ones used to remove graffiti from walls. 56 Yvan Gastaut, ‘Cinéma de l’exclusion, cinéma de l’intégration: les représentations de l’immigré dans les films français (1970–1990)’, Hommes et migrations, 1231 (2001), 54–5. 57 Tarr, Reframing Difference, p. 137. 58 Jennings, ‘Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in contemporary France’, 582.

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59 Martin O’Shaughnessy, The New Face of Political Cinema: Commitment in French Film since 1995 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), pp. 56, 70. 60 Ibid., p. 177. 61 O’Shaughnessy, ‘Reprise et nouvelles formes du cinéma politique’, p. 83. 62 Hayward, French National Cinema, p. 14. 63 Tarr, Reframing Difference, p. 21. 64 Carrie Tarr (ed.), French Cinema: ‘Transnational’ Cinema?, special edition of Modern and Contemporary France, 15, 1 (2007), 4. 65 Farhad Khosrokhavar, L’Islam des jeunes (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), p. 312.

Chapter Two: The Sans-papiers on Screen – Contextualising Immigrant Experiences in Film   1 Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘Post-1995 French cinema: return of the social, return of the political?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 11, 2 (2003), 189.   2 Mireille Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 1.   3 Johanna Siméant, La Cause des sans-papiers (Paris: Presses des Sciences-Po, 1998), pp. 459–72.   4 Siméant, La Cause des sans-papiers, pp. 299–300.   5 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 45.   6 ‘Le film de sans-papiers: un genre en plein boom’, Première, 8 June 2010,http://fluctuat.premiere.fr/Cinema/News-Videos/Le-film-de-sans-papiersun-genre-en-plein-boom-3233916, accessed 6 June 2012.   7 ‘Au service d’un objectif plus explicitivement militant.’ Sylvie Agard, ‘Les Cinéastes et les “sans-papiers”: contester ou filmer’, in Graeme Hayes and Martin O’Shaughnessy (eds), Cinéma et engagement (Paris: Harmattan, 2005), p. 246.   8 Stany Grelet et al., ‘IM’Média: l’immigration par elle-même’, Vacarme, 17 (2001), http://www.vacarme.eu.org/article 204.html, accessed 15 March 2006.   9 ‘Il y a eu une mobilisation importante, et quand les télés ont débarqué, il a été décidé de refuser qu’elles filment en leur proposant, si elles voulaient des images, de passer les nôtres.’ 10 ‘La majorité des boîtes reproduisent les contraintes de la production télé et du CNC, notamment en matière de formatage (durée souvent déterminée par les plages publicitaires TV, angles d’attaque personnalisés pour accrocher le téléspectateur par l’affect etc.)’ Grelet et al., ‘IM’Média: l’immigration par elle-même’. CNC refers to the Centre national de la cinématographie, the public body in France whose responsibilities include regulating and promoting French cinema. 11 ‘Pendant l’occupation de Saint-Bernard, on demandait aux gens qui accouraient de partout caméra au poing de mettre les images dans un pot commun; on avait les capacités de faire le montage et produire tout de suite des documents qui servaient aux collectifs de sans-papiers pour expliquer la lutte . . . Pour moi, c’est une chronique, un

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vidéo-journal; cela n’a rien de mirifique au niveau de la réalisation, c’est surtout un document qui a été utile pour l’extension et l’explication de la lutte des sans-papiers.’ Grelet et al., ‘IM’Média: l’immigration par elle-même’. 12 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, pp. 5–6. 13 Baptême républicain literally means a ‘republican baptism’, this is a symbolic ceremony carried out in some town halls whereby someone is inducted into the republican community and its values. 14 One is not born a sans-papiers, but becomes one. 15 ‘Ils m’ont pris quatre tubes de sang et m’ont dit que j’étais obligé de manger. J’ai dit “non, je ne mange pas – si vous voulez que je mange, dites au gouvernement de régulariser les 300 personnes de SaintBernard et de leur donner des papiers. Alors, on arrêtera la grève de la faim. Mais on ne va pas arrêter comme ça”.’ 16 ‘L’affaire des sans-papiers ne fait que commencer.’ 17 The use of ballade in the title may also deliberately appeal to notions associated with the very similar word balade (meaning a walk or stroll) as many sans-papiers are seen in the film walking from one place to another to take part in demonstrations or seek shelter as part of what they hope is a journey which will conclude with their regularisation. 18 IM’média and REFLEX, Sans-papiers: chroniques d’un mouvement (Paris: Éditions REFLEX / IM’média, 1997), p. 64. 19 ‘Au départ, je n’avais pas de financement pour faire ce film, donc je me disais que j’allais faire quelque chose de beaucoup plus à “l’arraché”. Mais en fait, je me suis aperçue qu’il y a un minimum de règles à suivre aussi. Par exemple, si le son n’est pas bon et que l’on entend mal les gens, l’écoute ne sera pas du tout la même. Le public ne peut pas écouter quelqu’un si le son n’est pas soigné un minimum. Donc, tous les soins qui sont pris, je pense que cela renforce aussi toutes les idées que l’on peut véhiculer.’ Jonathan Ervine, ‘Interview with Carole Sionnet’ (unpublished, Angoulême, 2006), 7. 20 Ibid. 21 ‘Etre sans-papiers, c’est être sans autorisation de séjour, sans droit au travail, sans droit au logement, sans droit aux prestations sociales et expulsable à tout moment’. 22 Ervine, ‘Interview with Carole Sionnet’, 2. 23 Elie Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 189. 24 ‘En tant que groupe et non comme des personnes susceptibles d’exprimer des idées.’ Agard, ‘Les Cinéastes et les “sans-papiers”’, pp. 242–3. 25 Ervine, ‘Interview with Carole Sionnet’, 2–3. 26 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 240. 27 ‘C’est toujours des théoriciens ou des gens avec des voix-off qui vont nous expliquer comment vivent les sans-papiers.’ Ervine, ‘Interview with Carole Sionnet’, 2. 28 ‘Reste[r] toujours à assez de distance pour ne pas renforcer la douleur . . . c’était toujours difficile de garder la frontière entre le voyeurisme

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et le respect de ce que veulent montrer les gens.’ Ervine, ‘Interview with Carole Sionnet’, 6. 29 ‘Un vrai citoyen qui a des droits.’ 30 Rosello, ‘Tactical universalism and new multiculturalist claims in postcolonial  France’, in Charles Forsdick and David Murphy (eds), Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction (London: Arnold, 2003), pp. 135–44. 31 ‘Avoir des papiers, c’est pouvoir vivre, travailler, avoir un appartement, voyager. Sans papiers on ne vit pas; on est interdit de travailler, interdit d’avoir un appartement. Je n’ai pas d’aides financières, je ne mange pas à ma faim.’ 32 ‘Mort-vivant’. 33 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 210. 34 ‘Pour tenter de résister, partout en France des collectifs regroupés au sein de la coordination nationale des sans-papiers luttent depuis 1996.’ 35 ‘Dans la peur d’une arrestation, Aboubacar et sa famille se cachent. Eux et beaucoup d’autres attendent et espèrent des papiers.’ 36 Ervine, ‘Interview with Carole Sionnet’, 8. 37 ‘Le film ne traite pas que des problèmes d’identité ou d’exil. C’est avant tout l’histoire d’un homme confronté à ses convictions et qui se révèle un peu moins fort que ce qu’on imaginait. C’est un parcours de maturité et ça, tout le monde peut le comprendre.’ Maya Larguet, ‘Alain Gomis, attention talent!’, L’Afrik, 3 November 2001, http://www. afrik.com/article3565.html, accessed 17 March 2006. 38 ‘Celle des sous-sols et des centres de rétention.’ Ibid. 39 ‘Un territoire qui n’existe pas, mélange de souvenirs et d’espérances déçues, un monde “où l’on ne construit jamais, on ne s’installe jamais”, qui rime avec déchéance et désespérance.’ Annie Coppermann, ‘Ni Sénégalais ni français’, Les Echos, 18586, 4 February 2002, 69. 40 Jonathan Demme, ‘La’France [sic] – perspectives from the banlieu [sic]’, Black Media Congress Berlin 2004, http://www.cybernomads.net/cn/ home.cfm?p=1056, accessed 17 March 2006. 41 ‘Ceux qui le subissent peuvent se faire bouffer eux-mêmes, jouer le jeu sans faire gaffe.’ Michaël Melinard, ‘Alain Gomis: “La culpabilité me fatigue”’, L’Humanité, 29 January 2002, http://www.humanite.fr/ node/445347, accessed 15 December 2011. 42 ‘Il y a cinquante ans, on disait “les nègres sont des sauvages qui ne savent que jouer aux tam-tams”. Aujourd’hui, on dit “les blacks sont fantastiques, ils ont le rythme dans le sang”. J’en ai marre d’être black, je suis Sénégalais.’ 43 ‘La mise en scène du film correspond aux mouvements du personnage. On commence avec des mouvements posés et une image un peu saturée dans les couleurs, une sorte de mélange entre le passé et le présent. C’est très fictionnel. En avançant dans le film, la mise en scène devient de plus en plus heurtée, caméra à l’épaule.’ Melinard, ‘Alain Gomis: “La culpabilité me fatigue”’. 44 David Jays, ‘L’Afrance’, Sight and Sound, 12, 8 (2002), 36. 45 Ibid.

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46 ‘Ce qu’ils vont apprendre vaut-il ce qu’ils vont oublier?’ 47 Jays, ‘L’Afrance’, 36. 48 See Larguet, ‘Alain Gomis, attention talent!’. 49 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 47. 50 Holloway, Ron, ‘Code inconnu’, [2000( ?)], http://www.filmfestivals.com/ cannes_2000/official/code.htm, accessed 17 March 2006. 51 ‘La clandestine sans statut, sans droit, engloutie par l’anonymat . . . la mère de famille reconnue dans son village.’ Isabelle Potel, ‘Code inconnu’, Libération, 3 February 2003, 38. 52 ‘On n’entend pas que l’on crie sans fin.’ 53 Nicolas Renaud, ‘Hanté par Code inconnu’, Hors Champ, 30 September 2001, http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/cinema/sep2001/code-inconnu. html, accessed 17 March 2006. 54 ‘Pour moi, la fragmentation correspond à notre perception quotidienne, limitée. On ne perçoit presque rien de la réalité. Quand je rencontre quelqu’un, je vois très peu de choses de lui, juste un reflet. Le fragment, c’est un équivalent stylistique de notre situation réelle. Il sert aussi à empêcher d’interpréter: on peut soupçonner, mais on ne sait pas.’ Marie-Noëlle Tranchant, ‘Michael Haneke, images et fragments du hasard’, Le Figaro, 15 November 2000, in LexisNexis Executive online database, LEXIS/NEXIS, accessed 24 March 2006. 55 Martin O’Shaughnessy, The New Face of Political Cinema: Commitment in French Film since 1995 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), p. 99. 56 ‘De ne rien produire que du discours sur le cinéma, de la déduction, et de ne plus laisser le spectateur croire à rien.’ Olivier Seguret, ‘Le “Code” barbe: Haneke se lance dans un décryptage de cinéma, sans générosité’, Libération, 15 November 2000, 42. 57 Didier Peron, ‘Haneke pose des questions pertinentes, mais “Code inconnu” finit par se résumer à un oral de philo. Spectateur au tableau . . .’, Libération, 20 May 2000, 34. 58 Andrew James Horton, ‘Locked out! Michael Haneke’s Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages’, Central Europe Review, 3, 19 (2001), http://www.ce-review.org/01/19kinoeye19_horton.html, accessed 17 May 2006. 59 Gastaut, ‘Cinéma de l’exclusion, cinéma de l’intégration’, 54–5.

Chapter Three: Double peine: The Challenges of Mobilising Support for Foreign Criminals via Cinema   1 Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, trans. Barbara Bray (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 21.   2 Mireille Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 60.   3 Martin Farcy, ‘Les Débouchés politiques des Nouveaux Mouvements Contestataires: le cas de la Campagne contre la double peine’ (unpublished MA thesis, Paris I University, 2003), 5.   4 Ibid., 19.   5 Interdiction du territoire français.

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  6 Arrêté ministériel d’expulsion.   7 Farcy, ‘Les Débouchés politiques des Nouveaux Mouvements Contestataires’, 4–5.   8 Ibid., 5.   9 Ibid. 10 Anonymous, ‘Arguments’, Campagne contre la double peine [n.d.], http:// web.archive.org/web/20020206225637/http://www.unepeinepointbarre. org/campagne/arguments.html, accessed 28 June 2012. 11 In Preface to Michaël Faure, Voyage au pays de la double peine (Paris: Esprit Frappeur, 2000), pp. 7–8. 12 Farcy, ‘Les Débouchés politiques des Nouveaux Mouvements Contestataires’, 14–15. 13 Lilian Mathieu, ‘L’Opposition à la double peine’, in M. Faure (ed.), En Finir avec la Double peine (Paris: Esprit Frappeur, 2002), pp. 70–2. 14 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 1. 15 Cimade was initially founded as a Protestant aid agency in 1939 and stands for Inter-movement committee for evacuees. MRAP is an antiracist group, Movement against racism and for friendship between peoples. LDH stands for Human rights league. GISTI is the Immigrant information and support group. MIB is Immigration and banlieues movement. 16 Farcy, ‘Les Débouchés politiques des Nouveaux Mouvements Contestataires’, p. 9. 17 ‘L’accent qui est mis sur le réalisateur au détriment d’une analyse plus profonde des films, et . . . la capacité d’un film à se suffire lui-même en dehors de son contexte de genèse ou socio-politique.’ Isabelle Vanderschelden, ‘Les urgences de Bertrand Tavernier, cinéaste, militant et “emmerdeur”’, in Graeme Hayes and Martin O’Shaughnessy (eds), Cinéma et engagement (Condé-sur-Noireau: L’Harmattan, 2005), p. 300. 18 ‘[Tavernier] se voit avant tout comme un cinéaste qui part de l’observation du monde qui l’entoure, et son cinéma s’inspire souvent des événements dont il est témoin.’ Vanderschelden, ‘Les urgences de Bertrand Tavernier, cinéaste, militant et “emmerdeur”’, p. 291. 19 ‘J’ai voulu que l’on écoute ces hommes, ces femmes que l’on entend si rarement. Je n’ai pas souhaité dramatiser leurs discours, n’en retirer que les phrases les plus percutantes. On ressent dans certains reportages une telle peur du zapping que dès qu’un personnage commence à s’exprimer, on lui coupe la parole de peur qu’on ne puisse pas le suivre, et on perd l’essentiel. Une vraie écoute demande du temps, demande qu’on ne les interrompe pas à tout bout de champ.’ In Vincent Philippot, ‘Histoires de vies brisées’, GISTI website (Groupe d’information et de soutien aux immigrés), 2001, http://www.gisti.org/doc/ actions/ 2001/hvb/, accessed 27 May 2005. 20 Elie Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 303. 21 Bertrand Tavernier, ‘Ce sont des gens qui résistent’, Causes Communes,

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35 [Cimade newsletter], 2002, http://www.cimade.org/publications/cc35– 01.html, accessed 22 October 2004. 22 ‘Il faut que l’on voie ça.’ 23 See Marie-Christine Vernay, ‘Bouda: sa vie de vrilles’, Libération, 24 September 2003, 6 (film section). 24 ‘Moi je pensais effectivement que l’Algérie était mon pays. Quand je suis arrivé là-bas, j’ai regretté que ce n’était pas mon pays. C’est là où je me suis rendu compte que j’ai grandi avec Jacques Martin à la télé. Je ne comprenais pas la télévision, la radio, tout ce qui se passait là-bas . . .’ 25 ‘C’est là mon étoile: elle n’est pas jaune, elle est verte.’ 26 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 60. 27 ‘Jeune Maghrébin d’un milieu défavorisé.’ 28 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 45. 29 JALB stands for Jeunes Arabes de Lyon et sa banlieue (Young Arabs from Lyon and its suburbs). 30 ‘Normalement cela ne devrait pas se terminer comme cela devant un rideau de fer. Normalement dans un film normal, un personnage comme Lila – Lila la Lyonnaise, Lila de Vénissieux – ne devrait pas marcher toute seule dans la rue sans avoir rien gagné sinon un travail provisoire. Ni elle, ni ses dix camarades, ces dix Lyonnais de cœur et d’esprit. Normalement.’ 31 Mike Wayne, Political Film: The Dialectics of Third Cinema (London: Pluto Press, 2001), p. 58. 32 Jonathan Ervine, ‘Interview with Jean-Pierre Thorn’ (unpublished, Paris, 2005), 1–2. 33 ‘Mettre [sa] camera là où la parole des exclus n’[est] plus audible.’ Jean-Pierre Thorn, ‘Se Révolter, filmer!’, in Cinéssonne, Mars–Avril 2005, http://www.cinessonne.com/rev_edi.htm, accessed 26 May 2005. 34 ‘Le summum de la dévalorisation dans l’échelle des signes de promotion sociale.’ See ‘On n’est pas des marques de vélo: un film documentaire de Jean-Pierre Thorn (dossier de presse)’, 2003, p. 2, http://www.ldhfrance.org/media/actualites/velo.pdf, accessed 9 June 2005. 35 ‘Un vrai portrait de la danse hip-hop plus qu’un simple documentaire militant.’ Farcy, ‘Les Débouchés politiques des Nouveaux Mouvements Contestataires’, 14. 36 Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, p. 7. 37 ‘Le film le plus proche du vécu d’un quartier populaire.’ Ervine, ‘Interview with Jean-Pierre Thorn’, 8. 38 Ibid. The only exception is Stéphane Maugendre, Bouda’s lawyer (also vice-president of GISTI), who briefly comments on deportation arrangements involved in the double peine. 39 ‘Je suis comme un D.J. mixant samples de réel et images d’archives, documentaire et imaginaire chorégraphié, action et narration rap, scratchs d’images par des tags et graffs pour en interrompre le déroulement linéaire. Pour briser avec le naturalisme: réapprendre à voir le monde, laver son regard, découvrir comme étranges, poétiques, colorés, enchantés, des territoires trop souvent cachés sous des magmas de clichés, toute une imagerie d’Epinal de la banlieue

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destinée à faire peur aux électeurs.’ ‘On n’est pas des marques de vélo: un film documentaire de Jean-Pierre Thorn (dossier de presse)’, p. 5. 40 O’Shaughnessy cites Rancière, Ramone, Burdeau and Muray as four examples of critics who see post-1995 political cinema in France as artistically conservative. See Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘Post-1995 French cinema: return of the social, return of the political?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 11, 2 (2003), 199. 41 ‘Accoutumance, dépendance, toxicomanie, illusion, inconscience, juvénile délinquance, procédure policière et judiciaire: verdict de double peine . . .’ 42 Dick Hebdige, ‘(i) From culture to hegemony; (ii) Subculture: the unnatural break’, in M. G. Durham and D. M. Kellner (eds), Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), p. 207. 43 Mireille Rosello, Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998), pp. 13, 36. 44 Comments made after screening of the film at the Cinéma Méliès in Villeneuve d’Ascq on 18 November 2003. 45 Mousse: C’est un truc de bâtards, c’est un truc de fous. Comme si ce n’était pas suffisant que t’as fait cinq ans de prison en France. Il faut qu’ils t’expulsent deux ans. C’est un truc d’ouf! Friend: C’est ça la double peine, et encore s’il n’avait pas réussi à revenir, je te dis, il pourrait rester à vie là-bas. C’est ça. Il y a plein de mecs en prison qui ont ces problèmes-là. Des mecs qui sont même nés ici. On leur dit ‘il faut retourner dans votre pays d’origine.’ Mais quand t’es né en France . . . Mousse: Bien sûr! Quel pays d’origine? 46 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 1. 47 Martin O’Shaughnessy, The New Face of Political Cinema: Commitment in French Film since 1995 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), p. 173. 48 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 45. 49 Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 179. 50 ‘Toutes les victimes de la double peine . . . et à tous nos frères morts dans des crimes racistes et sécuritaires.’ 51 He mentions this in the interview included on the DVD of Wesh Wesh. 52 Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Seuil, 1952). 53 Jean-Luc Douin, ‘“Bled Number One”: Chronique d’un retour en Algérie’, Le Monde, 7 June 2006, http://www.lemonde.fr/web/imprimer_ element/0,40–0@2–3476,50–780104,0.html, accessed 2 July 2006. 54 Stéphane Delorme and Jean-Michel Frodon, ‘Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche: sous tension, avec amour’, Cahiers du cinéma, 612 (2006), 22–3. 55 Will Higbee, ‘Displaced audio: exploring soundscapes in MaghrebiFrench film-making’, Studies in French Cinema, 9, 3 (2009), 228. 56 Ibid., 241. Bled is an informal term often used by people of North African descent in France to refer to the Maghreb.

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57 Ibid. 58 Jean-Michel Frodon, ‘Cannes 2006: trois forces et une question’, Cahiers du cinéma, 612 (2006), 10. 59 Alison J. Murray Levine, ‘Mapping beur cinema in the new millennium’, Journal of Film and Video, 60, 3–4 (2008), 57. 60 Taina Tervonen, ‘‘‘En état de guerre contre les pauvres”: entretien avec Rabah Ameur-Zaïmèche [sic] à propos de Wesh Wesh. Qu’est-ce qui se passe’, Africultures, 52 (2002), http://www.africultures.com//pop_article. asp?no=2621&print=1, accessed 27 May 2005. 61 It should be remembered that Bled Number One was not as widely used as a campaign resource, in part due to its being released three years after the end of the 2001–3 national campaign against the double peine.

Chapter Four: Challenging or Perpetuating Clichés? Young People and the Police in France’s Banlieues   1 Mireille Rosello, Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998), p. 13.   2 Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la télévision (Paris: Raisons d’agir, 1996), p. 36.   3 ‘En première ligne face à tous les dysfonctionnements de la société.’ Michel Felkay, Les Interventions de la police dans les zones de cités urbaines (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), p. 19.   4 ‘L’emblème et la confirmation quotidienne du racisme fondamental de la société française.’ Laurent Mucchielli, Violences et insécurité: fantasmes et réalités dans le débat français (Paris: La Découverte, 2002), p. 105.   5 Saïd Bouamama, ‘Jeunesse, autorité et conflit’, Ville, Ecole et Intégration, 112 (1998), http://www.cndp.fr/revueVEI/bouamama.htm, accessed 27 September 2006.   6 Superior Council of Ethics and Security.   7 Practical Guide to Ethics in the National Police.   8 Ethical Code of the Police.   9 Maurice Rajsfus, Police et droits de l’homme (Paris: Esprit frappeur, 2000), pp. 138–9. 10 ‘La police n’est pas là pour organiser des tournois sportifs, mais pour arrêter des délinquants . . . vous n’êtes pas des travailleurs sociaux.’ Julie Saulnier, ‘Comment Nicolas Sarkozy s’est mis les policier à das’, L’Express, 10 May 2012, http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/ comment-nicolas-sarkozy-s-est-mis-les-policier-a-dos_1113256.html, accessed 21 November 2012. 11 Jacky Durand, ‘Le Sénat verbalise Nicolas Sarkozy’, Libération, 7 November 2006, 15; see Laurent Bonelli and Gilles Sainati (eds), La Machine à punir: pratiques et discours sécuritaires (Paris: Esprit Frappeur, 2004). 12 Hugues Lagrange and Marco Oberti (eds), Émeutes urbaines et protestations: une singularité française (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 2006), p. 205;  Laurent Mucchielli and

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Véronique Le Goaziou (eds), Quand les banlieues brûlent . . . : retour sur les émeutes de novembre 2005 (Paris: La Découverte, 2006), pp. 21–3. 13 Laurent Mucchielli, ‘Délinquance et immigration: le sociologue face au sens commun’, Hommes et migrations, 1241 (2003), 22. 14 Fabien Jobard, Bavures policières? La force publique et ses usages (Paris: La Découverte, 2002), pp. 131–2, 140. 15 Keith Reader, ‘After the riot’, Sight and Sound, 5, 11 (1995), 12–14. 16 Jill Forbes, ‘La Haine’, in J. Forbes and S. Street (eds), European Cinema: An Introduction (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 170–80; Katya Zisserman and Colin Nettelbeck, ‘Social exclusion and artistic inclusiveness: the quest for integrity in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine’, Nottingham French Studies, 36, 2 (1997), 83–98. 17 Myrto Konstantarakos, ‘Which mapping of the city? La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995) and the cinéma de banlieue’, in Phil Powrie (ed.), French Cinema in the 1990s: Continuity and Difference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 160–71. 18 ‘On est là pour défendre un film . . . pas pour remuer.’ This interview features on the documentary La Haine: dix ans après, included as a bonus feature on the French special edition DVD of the film that was released to mark its tenth anniversary in 2005. 19 These two points are also made in the documentary mentioned above. 20 Zisserman and Nettelbeck, ‘Social exclusion and artistic inclusiveness’, 88. 21 See Will Higbee, ‘The return of the political, or designer visions of exclusion? The case for Mathieu Kassovitz’s fracture sociale trilogy’, Studies in French Cinema, 5, 2 (2005), 123–36. 22 Figures from La Bibliothèque du film (BiFi) website: www.bifi.fr. 23 Reader, ‘After the riot’, 10. 24 Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 74. 25 In French, the number 6 followed by the letter ‘t’ sounds like ‘cité’, which means ‘estate’. 26 Martin O’Shaughnessy, The New Face of Political Cinema: Commitment in French Film since 1995 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), p. 177. 27 Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 50. 28 Will Higbee, ‘Screening the “other” Paris: cinematic representations of the French urban periphery in La Haine and Ma 6-T va crack-er’, Modern and Contemporary France, 9, 2 (2001), 204. 29 Article 35 de la Déclaration des droit de l’Homme et du citoyen: ‘Quand le gouvernement viole les droits du peuple, l’insurrection est, pour le peuple et pour chaque portion du peuple, le plus sacré des droits.’ 30 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism: The New Critical Idiom (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 239. 31 Tofe, ‘Ma 6-T va crack-er’ [interview with Jean-François Richet], Infosuds, 21 (1998), http://infosuds.free.fr/21/6T.htm, accessed 17 November 2006. 32 ‘Ils [presumably those in power] font ce qu’ils veulent de nous.’

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33 ‘Mon quartier est sur le point d’éclater . . . la police tue, ma cité prend feu, les keufs je les déteste.’ 34 ‘Rien et personne ne peut étouffer une révolte . . . l’explosion de toutes les cités approche . . . ma cité va craquer, une révolution complète.’ 35 ‘La police ne doit pas rentrer dans la cité . . . il ne faut pas que ça devienne un territoire occupé.’ 36 ‘Les cités où la police ne va plus.’ 37 Higbee, ‘Screening the “other” Paris’, pp. 199, 202. 38 See Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 50. 39 Stéphane Davet, ‘Le Concert de Ma 6-T va crack-er a été annulé’, Le Monde, 7 October 1997, LEXIS/NEXIS, accessed 22 November 2006. 40 ‘Le film “interdit” . . . “un film coup de poing” . . . découvrez en DVD le film choc retiré des salles!’ 41 Bourdieu, Sur la télévision, p. 36. See discussion of this process in the introduction to this book. See also Olivier Nahmias, ‘Le Bruit l’odeur et quelques étoiles d’Éric Pittard’, 2003, http://www.etecine.kyrnea.com/ films/f2003/bruit.html, accessed 21 July 2006; Mogniss H. Abdallah, ‘Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles’, Altérités: le web-magazine divers et ouvert, 24 November 2003, http://www.alterites.com/cache/center_media/ id_493.php, accessed 21 July 2006. 42 Abdallah, ‘Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles’. 43 Mireille Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 45. 44 ‘Trois garçons, la République, une bavure, tout va bien, tout va mal.’ 45 ‘On voulait être citoyen.’ 46 See Mireille Rosello, ‘Tactical universalism and new multiculturalist claims in postcolonial France’, in C. Forsdick and D. Murphy (eds), Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction (London: Arnold, 2003), pp. 135–44. 47 Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality, p. 41. 48 Max Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship in Modern France (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 124. 49 ‘La parole républicaine.’ 50 Jobard, Bavures policières?, p. 249. 51 Susan Hayward, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 334. 52 Sylvie Dauvilliers, ‘Entretien avec Philippe Triboit – réalisateur’, Arte website, 2006, http://www.arte.tv/fr/Making-of-Interviews/1393110,CmC= 1393086.html, accessed 6 August 2010. 53 ‘Largement diffusé par les médias qui vont aujourd’hui trop vite sans aucun contrôle.’ 54 Dauvilliers, ‘Entretien avec Philippe Triboit’; Macha Séry, ‘Banlieue en état de choc’, Le Monde, 7–8 January 2007, 2; Franck Salin, ‘L’Embrasement, au cœur du drame de Clichy-sous-Bois’, Afrik.com, 12 January 2007, http://www.afrik.com/article11016.html, accessed 6 August 2010. 55 Macha Séry, ‘Un film sur la colère et le désespoir’, ‘Banlieue en état de choc’, Le Monde, 7–8 January 2007, 3.

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56 ‘Les jeunes courent parce que la police les coursent et la police les coursent parce que les jeunes courent.’ 57 ‘La police se doit d’être irréprochable.’ 58 Dauvilliers, ‘Entretien avec Philippe Triboit’; Séry, ‘Banlieue en état de choc’, 2. 59 ‘Non-assistance à personne en danger [et] mise en danger délibérée de la vie d’autrui et faux.’ 60 ‘Ce film est une fiction inspirée de faits réels. Excepté les victimes, leurs familles et leurs avocats, tous les personnages sont imaginaires [et ceci est une façon d’] apporter un regard différent de celui du documentaire sur l’histoire contemporaine.’ Dauvilliers, ‘Entretien avec Philippe Triboit’; Salin, ‘L’Embrasement, au cœur du drame de Clichy-sous-Bois’. 61 Salin, ‘L’Embrasement, au cœur du drame de Clichy-sous-Bois’; Laurent Jullier, ‘Les Vicissitudes du naturalisme audiovisuel’, Télédoc, January 2007, http://www.sceren.fr/tice/teledoc/tele/tele_embrasement.htm, accessed 6 August 2010. 62 Dauvilliers, ‘Entretien avec Philippe Triboit’; Séry, ‘Un film sur la colère et le désespoir’. 63 ‘Une réaction de téléspectateur, mais de téléspectateur averti.’ Walid Mebarek, ‘Christophe Del Debbio, documentaliste’, El Watan, 20 November 2006, http://www.elwatan.com/?page=article_print&id_ article=54298, accessed 6 August 2010. 64 ‘Le film qui suit est à base concentré de télévision française.’ 65 ‘Des jeunes cambrioleurs à l’origine des émeutes?’ 66 ‘Ils auraient fui les policiers après une tentative de cambriolage.’ 67 ‘Électrocutés dans un transformateur après un contrôle de police.’ 68 ‘Les deux jeunes n’étaient pas des cambrioleurs, ils rentraient d’un match de foot.’ 69 ‘Un mineur sur deux interpellé.’ 70 ‘Il m’a fallu du temps pour instaurer le dialogue et qu’ils [the residents of the banlieues] me disent des choses intéressantes au-delà de la réaction épidermique “les journalistes, tous pourris”.’ 71 This website aimed to allow local residents to give their own views on life in Seine-Saint-Denis and sought to explore the root causes of the tensions that provoked the 2005 unrest; see http://yahoo.bondyblog.fr. 72 ‘Nous, on veut avoir un avenir.’ 73 ‘Répétition frénétique des mêmes images [qu’elle critique].’ Jade Lindgaard, ‘Banlieues: sous le feu des médias’, Les Inrockuptibles, 10 October 2006, 61. 74 Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 36. 75 Ibid. 76 T. J. Jackson Lears, ‘The concept of cultural hegemony: problems and possibilities’, American Historical Review, 90, 3 (1985), 569. 77 Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 13.

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Chapter Five: Challenging Stereotypes about France’s Banlieues by Shifting the Focus?   1 Mireille Rosello, Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998), pp. 13, 36.   2 John Chalcraft and Yaseen Noorani (eds), Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 1.   3 Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 2.   4 See ibid., p. 36.   5 Emmanuel Poncet, ‘“De l’autre côté du périph” selon Bertrand Tavernier’, Libération, 6 December 1997, http://www.liberation.fr/ evenement/0101233421-en-fevrier-le-ministre-de-la-ville-eric-raoult-avaitinvite-les-cineastes-anti-loi-debre-a-aller-dans-les-quartiers-sensibles-tavernier-areleve-le-defi-et-tourne-trois-mois-dans-une-cite-de-montreuil, accessed 29 June 2012.   6 Alison Smith, French Cinema in the 1970s: The Echoes of May (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 38.   7 ‘L’intégration n’est pas du cinéma.’   8 ‘Une sorte de film de commande’, ‘répondre rapidement à Éric Raoult’. Bertrand Tavernier, ‘Au-delà du périph’, Sociétés et représentations, 1, 17 (2004), 340.   9 Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 36. 10 In Barbara Zheutlin, ‘The politics of documentary: a symposium’, in Alan Rosenthal (ed.), New Challenges for Documentary (Berkley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 232. 11 Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 2. 12 ‘Encore une fois c’est le malaise social.’ 13 ‘Foutent le bordel, mangent par terre et ramènent de la came.’ 14 ‘Ils ne sont pas formés pour parler aux jeunes.’ 15 ‘Quand le film sera terminé, qu’est-ce que l’on va faire?’ 16 ‘Nous voulions comprendre, pas juger. Rester longtemps, pour voir évoluer les histoires, les personnalités. Nous avions choisi un coin de France où chacun puisse s’y reconnaître. Ni trop grand, ni trop paumé: un environnement rural dans une métropole régionale, avec des cités dortoirs.’ Christophe Nick, ‘Aux racines de la violence’, Sud-Ouest Dimanche, 23 January 2005, LEXIS/NEXIS, accessed 3 November 2005. 17 ‘Chroniques de la violence ordinaire: mot de l’auteur [interview with Christophe Nick]’, 2005, http://programmes.france2.fr/evenements/ 7059540-fr.php, accessed 7 December 2005. 18 ‘Autre chose qu’un spectacle de télé de plus . . . ces films ont été pensés et montés pour être utiles . . . il reste à chacun à s’en servir.’ Nick, ‘Aux racines de la violence’. 19 ‘On n’entre pas n’importe comment avec une caméra dans une cité.’ 20 ‘Quand des journalistes viennent traîner par ici, on se demande toujours ce qu’ils veulent, ce qu’ils nous veulent, ce qu’ils peuvent faire pour nous.’ ‘Chroniques de la violence ordinaire: interview des

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Scoots’, 2005, http://programmes.france2.fr/evenements/7100545-fr.php, accessed 7 December 2005. 21 ‘Bienvenue au pire du pire.’ 22 ‘Des allures de carnets de route.’ Anne Roy, ‘Plongée au cœur de la violence urbaine’, L’Humanité, 21 January 2005, LEXIS/NEXIS, accessed 3 November 2005. 23 ‘Parler de la violence, ce n’est pas la montrer avec complaisance mais comprendre d’où elle vient.’ Alain Dutasta, ‘Chroniques de la violence ordinaire: plongée au cœur d’une cité’, La Nouvelle République du Centre Ouest, 21 January 2005, LEXIS/NEXIS, accessed 3 November 2005. 24 Azouz Begag and Christian Delorme, Quartiers sensibles (Paris: Seuil, 1994), pp. 16–17. 25 ‘La triste réalité de ce qu’on vivait.’ Isabelle Nataf, ‘Le rap pour survivre aux cités ghettos’, Le Figaro, 7 February 2005, 22. 26 Roy, ‘Plongée au cœur de la violence urbaine’. 27 ‘Un processus social de reconstruction.’ Nataf, ‘Le rap pour survivre aux cités ghettos’. 28 ‘Porter un autre regarde sur le département [et] tordre le cou à sa mauvaise image sans angélisme.’ Hugues Demeude, ‘93: L’Effervescence, un film de Hugues Demeude’ [n.d.], www.demeude.net/93_effervescence. php, accessed 19 October 2010. 29 ‘[C]haîne de toutes les cultures et de l’ouverture sur tous les mondes.’ Description on France Ô’s official Facebook page (http://www.facebook. com/franceOtv/info), accessed 2 July 2012. 30 ‘Territoire multiculturel en pleine effervescence.’ Demeude, ‘93: L’Effervescence’. 31 ‘Donner la parole aux habitants [et] raconter le département sans le commenter.’ Ndembo Boueya, ‘“93 l’effervescence”, le film anti-faits divers’, Bondy Blog, 12 December 2008, http://yahoo.bondyblog. fr/200812121301/93-1-effervescence-le-film-anti-faits-divers/, accessed 19 October 2010. 32 ‘J’ai toujours du mal quand on me pose la question sur la diversité culturelle que l’on sent, la richesse de ce département multiethnique. On le vit tellement naturellement aujourd’hui que l’on ne se pose plus la question. On est la deuxième, troisième génération d’enfants d’immigrés sur le département donc je ne conceptualise pas du tout, je le vis au quotidien.’ 33 Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), p. xi. 34 ‘Il y a véritablement une sorte d’osmose entre ce qui se passe au niveau national et ce territoire comme si ce territoire était effectivement porteur d’une modernité, porteur de son côté très contemporain, [ce qui est] très actuel puisque finalement on est au cœur des enjeux de société.’ 35 Prime examples of such characters include the gang members in Ma 6-T va crack-er who wait at a bus stop where no bus appears and Kamel in Wesh Wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe whose movements are restricted due to his fear of being subjected to an identity check.

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36 Chalcraft and Noorani, Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony, p. 11. See discussion in this book’s introduction. 37 ‘Re-écrire la ville avec un autre vocabulaire.’ 38 This group’s name translates as ‘who makes France?’ and also sounds very similar to the phrase kiffer la France, a slang way of saying ‘loving France’. 39 ‘Ce n’est pas parce que la banlieue va mal que la société va mal; c’est parce que la société va mal que la banlieue va mal.’ 40 See John Hutnyk, Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics and the Cultural Industry (London: Pluto Press, 2000), pp. 19, 36, 119, 182; Virinder Kalra, Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk, Diaspora and Hybridity (London: Sage, 2005), p. 39. 41 Florence Broizat, ‘93, L’effervescence’, Télérama, 3071 (2006), consulted online at http://television.telerama.fr/television/93-1-effervescence,35995. php, accessed 19 October 2010. 42 Boueya, ‘“93 l’effervescence”, le film anti-faits divers’. 43 ‘Un film de plaisir et de spectacle.’ Florence Aubenas, ‘La Banlieue par la bande’, Libération, 9 March 2005, 6. 44 Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 129. 45 See discussion of Rosello’s analysis of this issue at the start of this chapter. 46 Sabine Gignoux, ‘Tchatchez-moi d’amour dans le “neuf cube”’, La Croix, 7 January 2004, LEXIS/NEXIS, accessed 11 November 2005. 47 ‘Le sujet n’est pas considéré comme vendeur et . . . en plus il n’y a pas de vedettes.’ In Maurice Ulrich, ‘Les Césars choisissent le cinéma indépendant,’ L’Humanité, 28 February 2005, 18. 48 ‘Quand je suis allée au casting, je m’attendais au blabla habituel: les tournantes, les grands frères acharnés sur les filles de la famille, la délinquance.’ Aubenas, ‘La Banlieue par la bande’. 49 ‘Tu fais du théâtre comme un pédé!’ 50 See Thierry Jobin, ‘L’Esquive, le film qui écoute les banlieues pour la première fois’, Le Temps (Switzerland), 3 April 2004, LEXIS/NEXIS, accessed 10 November 2005. 51 Elie Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 187. 52 ‘Très riche en images, en mélanges culturels . . . une langue de liberté, d’inventivité, de plaisir, de sensualité.’ Isabelle Regnier, ‘Les Tirades musicales et politiques de la banlieue’, Le Monde, 7 January 2004, 27 53 Sarkozy held this role from May 2002 to March 2004 and from June 2005 to April 2007. 54 ‘“Positiver” les quartiers sensibles, de transformer l’énergie débordante des jeunes des cités en dynamisme culturel.’ Manuel Boucher, ‘L’Espace hip-hop dans une société de gestion du risque’, Hommes et migrations, 1231 (2001), 47–53. 55 See Rosello, Declining the Stereotype, p. 2.

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Conclusion   1 Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘French cinema and the political’, Studies in French Cinema, 10, 1 (2010), 53.   2 Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘Post-1995 French cinema: return of the social, return of the political?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 11, 2 (2003), 201–2.   3 Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, trans. Barbara Bray (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 35.   4 The imprecise use of the term ‘immigrant’ in France is discussed in the third section of chapter one.   5 Mireille Rosello, Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998), p. 66.   6 John Chalcraft and Yaseen Noorani, Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 11. See discussion of these issues in the introduction to this book.   7 Martin O’Shaughnessy, The New Face of Political Cinema: Commitment in French Film since 1995 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), p. 99.   8 Guy Austin, Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction (2nd edn, Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 234.   9 See Mogniss H. Abdallah, ‘Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles’, Altérités: le web-magazine divers et ouvert, 24 November 2003, http://www.alterites. com/cache/center_media/id_493.php, accessed 21 July 2006. 10 See Olivier Seguret, ‘Le “Code” barbe: Haneke se lance dans un décryptage de cinéma, sans générosité’, Libération, 15 November 2000, 42; Didier Péron, ‘Haneke pose des questions pertinentes, mais “Code inconnu” finit par se résumer à un oral de philo. Spectateur au tableau . . . ’, Libération, 20 May 2000, 34. This issue is discussed in greater depth in chapter two. 11 Nicolas Renaud, ‘Hanté par Code inconnu’, Hors Champ, 30 September 2001, http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/cinema/sep2001/code-inconnu.html, accessed 17 March 2006. 12 ‘[Créer] une forme contestataire pour le principe d’être contestataire . . . [Certains réalisateurs] se livre[nt] à un exercice formel sans l’accord explicite des gens qu’ils filment’. Jonathan Ervine, ‘La Ballade des sans-papiers: dix ans après’, French Studies Bulletin, 104 (2007), 64–7. 13 ‘[U]n art révolutionnaire ne peut pas se passer d’une réflexion sur la forme. Il faut que la forme corresponde au message qu’on veut faire passer pour qu’un film dérange. Un film qui est sur un contenu qui interroge notre société doit déranger sur le terrain de la forme.’ Jonathan Ervine, ‘Interview with Jean-Pierre Thorn’ (unpublished, Paris, 2005), 12. 14 ‘Réfléchir à la forme qui peut s’approprier le plus par rapport au propos qui est défendu.’ Jonathan Ervine, ‘Interview with Carole Sionnet’ (unpublished, Angoulême, 2006), 7–8. 15 Ervine, ‘Interview with Jean-Pierre Thorn’, 12.

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16 Elizabeth Ezra and Sue Harris (eds), France in Focus: Film and National Identity (Oxford: Berg, 2000), pp. 2–3. 17 Examples include Samir Abdallah and Rafaele Ventura (directors of La Ballade des sans-papiers) and Christophe Nick (director of Les Mauvais Garçons). 18 O’Shaughnessy, The New Face of Political Cinema, p. 101. 19 See Chalcraft and Noorani, Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony, p. 7. This issue is also discussed in the introduction of this book. 20 O’Shaughnessy, ‘French cinema and the political’, 53. 21 Anonymous, ‘S&S asked a panel of six film-makers and critics three questions about the ongoing effects of May ’68 on the current state of French cinema’, Sight and Sound, 18, 5 (2008), 30–2. 22 Vitraulle Mboungou, ‘Harry Roselmack, premier journaliste noir au 20h de TF1’, Afrik.com, 8 March 2006, http://www.afrik.com/article9561. html, accessed 2 March 2012. 23 See Jacques Mandelbaum, ‘“Intouchables”: derrière la comédie populaire, une métaphore sociale généreuse’, Le Monde, 1 November 2011, http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2011/11/01/intouchables-derriere-la-comedie-populaire-une-metaphore-sociale-genereuse_1596827_3476. html, accessed 2 March 2012; Marie-Elisabeth Rouchy, ‘“Intouchables”: Omar Sy se la joue loubard sur grand écran’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 3 November 2011, http://teleobs.nouvelobs.com/articles/intouchables-omarsy-se-la-joue-loubard-sur-grand-ecran, accessed 2 March 2012. 24 See Gérard Lefort, Didier Péron, Bruno Icher, ‘“Intouchables”? Ben si . . .’, Libération, 14 November 2011, http://next.liberation.fr/cinema/ 01012371334-intouchables-ben-si, accessed 2 March 2012. 25 Cristina Johnston, French Minority Cinema (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010), p. 108. 26 Definitions of these terms are from O’Shaughnessy’s discussion of Le Perron in O’Shaughnessy, ‘Post-1995 French cinema’, 194. This is also covered in chapter one of this book. 27 John Plunkett, MediaGuardian 100, Guardian (media section), 9 July 2007, 5.

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Films 9/3, Mémoire d’un territoire, Yamina Benguigui, dir. (Elemiah/Canal Plus, 2008). 93: L’Effervescence, Hugues Demeude, dir. (C’est à Voir/Xavier Fréquent/ RFO, 2008). 93: La Belle Rebelle, Jean-Pierre Thorn, dir. (ADR Productions/Arte France Cinéma, 2011). Les 400 Coups, Francois Truffaut, dir. (SEDIF/Les Films du Carrosse, 1959). L’Afrance, Alain Gomis, dir. (Mille et Une Productions, 2001). La Ballade des sans-papiers, Samir Abdallah and Samir and Rafaele Ventura, dirs. (IM’Média/L’Yeux Ouverts, 1997). Banlieue 13, Pierre Morel, dir. (EuropaCorp/TF1 Films Productions, 2004). Banlieues: sous le feu des médias, Christophe-Emmanuel Del Debbio, dir. (CLAP 36, 2006). Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, Dany Boon, dir. (Hirsch Productions/Pathé Cinéma/TF1 Films Productions/Les Productions du Ch’timi, 2008). Bled Number One, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, dir. (Productions/Les Films du Losange, 2006). La Blessure, Nicolas Klotz, dir. (Arte France Cinéma/Tarantula/Petits et Grands Oiseaux, 2005). Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles, Éric Pittard, dir. (Les Films d’ici/Nota Bene/Les Films à Lou/La Tawa, 2002). Bye-bye, Karim Dridi, dir. (ADR Productions/Diaphana, 1995). Code inconnu, Michael Haneke, dir. (MK2 Productions/Les Films Alain Sarde/Arte France Cinéma/France 2 Cinéma/Bavaria Film/ZDF/ Filmex, 2000). De l’autre côté du périph’, Bertrand Tavernier, dir. (Little Bear Productions, 1997). Double Peine: les exclus de la loi, Valérie Casalta, dir. (Callysta Productions, 2000). D’une Brousse à l’autre, Jacques Kébadian, dir. (Ognon Pictures/Les Productions de la Lanterne/INA – Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, 1998). L’Embrasement, Philippe Triboit, dir. (Arte France, 2007). L’Esquive, Abdellatif Kechiche, dir. (Lola Films/Noé Productions, 2004).

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État des lieux, Jean-François Richet, dir. (Actes et Octobre, 1995). Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore, dir. (Dog Eat Dog Films/Miramax Films, 2004). Faire kifer les anges, Jean-Pierre Thorn, dir. (Agat Films, 1996). Gazon Maudit, Josiane Balasko, dir. (Renn Productions/TF1 Films Productions/Les Films Flam, 1995). Le Grand Voyage, Ismaël Ferroukhi, dir. (Ognon Pictures/Arte France Cinéma/Soread-2M (Casablanca)/Casablanca Films Productions/Les Films du Passage, 2004). La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz, dir. (Les Productions Lazennec, 1995). L’Hexagone, Malik Chibane, dir. (Alhambra Films/Idriss, 1994). Histoires de vies brisées: les ‘double peine’ de Lyon, Bertrand Tavernier, dir. (Little Bear Productions, 2001). Indigènes, Rachid Bouchareb, dir. (Tessalit Productions, 2006). Intouchables, Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, dir. (BBDA Quad Productions, 2011). Les Invités de mon père, Anne Le Ny, dir. (Move Movie (Paris)/TF1 International/France 2 Cinéma, 2010). Laissez-les grandir ici!, Collectif des cinéastes pour les sans-papiers, dir. (Collectif des cinéastes pour les sans-papiers/RESF, 2007). Ma 6-T va crack-er, Jean-François Richet, dir. (Why Not Productions/Actes Prolétariens, 1997). Les Mains en l’air, Romain Goupil, dir. (Les Films du Losange/France 3 Cinéma, 2010). Les Mauvais Garçons, Christophe Nick, dir. (NovaProd, 2005). Mémoires d’immigrés, Yamina Benguigui, dir. (Canal +/Bandits Productions, 1998). Nés quelque part, Malik Chibane, dir. (Alhambra Films/La Sept-Arte, 1997). Nous, sans-papiers de France, Nicolas Philibert, dir. (Collectif des sans-papiers, 1997). Nuit et brouillard, Alain Resnais, dir. (Cocinor/Como-Films/Argos Films, 1956). On n’est pas des marques de vélo, Jean-Pierre Thorn, dir. (MAT Films/ARTE France, 2002). Origine contrôlée, Ahmed Bouchaala and Zahia Bouchaala, dir. (Blue Films/ M6 Films/Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, 2001). Parmi Nous: Sans-papiers, sans visages, sans paroles, Carole Sionnet, dir. ([no production company – independently produced film], 2004). Raï, Thomas Gilou, dir. (Vertigo Productions/M6 Films/FCC, 1995). Le Thé au Harem d’Archimède, Mehdi Charef, dir. (KG Productions, 1984). Travaux, Brigitte Roüan, dir. (Ognon Pictures/Arte France Cinéma/ Augustine Pictures, 2005). Welcome, Philippe Loiret, dir. (Mars Films, 2009). Wesh Wesh qu’est-ce qui se passe?, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche dir. (Sarrazink Productions/Haut et Court, 2002). Zone franche, Paul Vecchiali, dir. (JLA – Jacques Le Glou Audiovisuel, 1996).

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Index 9/3, Mémoire d’un territoire (Benguigui) 113, 127 93: l’Effervescence (Demeude) 4, 13, 112–13, 126–31, 137, 138, 139, 146 93: la Belle Rebelle (Thorn) 113 1995 public sector strikes 1, 17 2005 banlieue unrest 7, 13, 14, 17, 87, 91, 101–2, 106, 110. Abdallah, Mogniss 35, 97, 147 Abdallah, Samir 3, 11, 34–9 L’Afrance (Gomis) 3, 11, 45–9, 50, 51, 56, 57, 81, 141, 143 agency 11, 31 Algeria 12, 43, 53, 65, 77–81 Algerian War 7, 31, 94 Algerians 39, 40, 41, 47, 53, 63, 65, 72, 73, 87 alternative distribution networks 21 Ameur-Zaïmeche, Rabah 3, 12, 61, 72–7, 77–81, 83 Angoulême 39, 40, 43, 45 anti-discrimination 18 L’Appel des 66 cinéastes (Appeal of the 66 directors), see Le Manifeste des 66 cinéastes art-house cinema 21–2, 83 Arte 4, 68, 69, 101 The Artist (Haznavicius) 149 Asylum 39, 40, 42, 44, 78 L’Aventure ambiguë (Kane) 48 La Ballade des sans-papiers (Abdallah and Ventura) 3, 11, 34–9, 40, 41, 44, 46, 55, 56, 57, 63, 141, 143, 146 Banlieue 13 (Morel) 91 banlieue cinema 5, 25, 89

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banlieue residents 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30, 68, 69, 77, 85–110, 116, 124, 131, 140, 141, 144, 145, 148, 151 banlieues 1, 2, 5, 12–14, 23, 25, 26–9, 56, 70–2, 73, 75, 77, 83, 84, 85–110, 111–39, 142–3, 149–50 Banlieues: sous le feu des médias (Del Debbio) 4, 13, 90, 105–8, 109–10, 127, 142 beur cinema 5, 81 Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (Boon) 149 Binoche, Juliette 55 Bled Number One (AmeurZaïmeche) 3, 12, 61, 77–81, 83 La Blessure (Klotz) 34 Bondy Blog 102, 107, 131 Bouamama, Saïd 86 Bourdieu, Pierre 8, 11, 12, 85, 96, 100 Braouezec, Patrick 129, 130 Brard, Jean-Pierre 119 break-dance 69, 71, 72, 146 le bruit et l’odeur (the noise and the smell, speech by Chirac) 24 Le Bruit, l’odeur et quelques étoiles (Pittard) 13, 96–100, 104, 109, 124, 146 Bye-Bye (Dridi) 62 Cannes Film Festival 33, 89, 90 Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC, National Centre for Cinematography) 19, 35 Chevènement, Jean-Pierre 33, 119 Chirac, Jacques 1, 24, 27, 33, 96, 123 Cimade 61, 66

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192

Index

cinéma de banlieue, see banlieue cinema cinematic aesthetics 9 cinéphiles 22 Cissé, Madjiguène 33, 38 citizenship 11, 17, 24, 30, 42, 56, 63, 65–6, 67, 79, 80, 81, 82, 98, 140, 141, 144–8 Clichy-sous-Bois 1, 13, 87, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110, 130 Code inconnu (Haneke) 3, 11, 49–55, 56, 57, 141, 143, 147 Colombes 37 colonial history 5 colonialism 11, 27, 45, 48, 51, 83 La Commanderie 121–5 counter-discourse 4, 28, 135 counter-hegemonic discourse 3, 14, 16, 20, 29, 138, 139 counter-hegemony 6, 10, 31, 33, 35, 69, 79, 95 La Courneuve 28, 70, 128 court 66, 82, 99, 104 Creil 121, 123, 126, 144 crime 12, 25, 26, 27, 28, 47, 58, 59, 70, 72, 73, 75, 77, 85, 86–7, 89, 91, 93, 97, 99, 109, 110, 111, 117, 132, 139, 143 De Gaulle, Charles 24 De l’autre côté du périph’ (Tavernier) 3, 13, 112, 113–20, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 137, 146 Debray, Régis 16, 17 Debré Law 33, 119 Del Debbio, ChristopheEmmanuel 4, 13, 105–8, 109–10, 127, 148 demonstrations 1, 11, 32, 33, 36, 37, 39, 57, 87 deportation 11, 40, 41, 44, 45, 47, 51, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 70, 71, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 141 discrimination 6, 16, 18, 19, 50, 86, 88, 141 documentary cinema 3, 4, 5, 11, 13, 22, 34, 39, 45, 46, 53, 57, 61–2, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 85,

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89, 96, 97, 104, 105, 109, 113, 114, 115, 118, 120–1, 131, 132, 134, 136, 141, 146 la double peine (Double penalty) 2, 11–12, 58–84, 114, 119, 142, 143 Double Peine: les exclus de la loi (Casalta) 61 Dugny 70, 71 D’une brousse à l’autre (Kébadian) 34 egalitarianism 15, 18 L’Église Saint-Ambroise 34 L’Église Saint-Bernard 34, 36, 38, 39 L’Embrasement (Triboit) 4, 13, 90, 100–5, 106, 109, 110, 142 empowerment 29, 100, 124 equal opportunities 18 L’Esquive (Kechiche) 3, 14, 112, 113, 131–6, 137–8, 139, 146 État des lieux (Richet) 90 EU 24 exclusion 2, 7, 14, 15, 27, 34, 37, 41, 56, 66, 68, 76, 99, 134, 143, 148 Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore) 22 Faire kifer les anges (Thorn) 113 far right 2, 23 Felkay, Michel 86 fictional films 3–4, 5, 11, 34, 46, 56–7, 62, 64, 70, 72–3, 85, 89, 90, 96, 97, 101, 104, 114, 120, 132, 134, 136, 139, 146 First Cinema 10 la fracture sociale (social disintegration) 1, 27, 89 France 2 114, 121, 122, 126 France 3 126 France Ô 126 French film industry 15, 19 French left 1, 2, 4, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23, 24, 27, 29, 32, 59, 60–1, 64, 86–7, 115, 119 French nation 18, 30 French national cinema 29 French Revolution 6, 16, 93, 98

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Index

French right 1, 2, 15, 16, 18, 23, 27, 32, 59, 60, 86–7, 119, 149 Frodon, Jean-Michel 22, 81, 149 Le Front National (National Front) 2, 23, 32, 118, 149 Gazon Maudit (Balasko) 150 gender 9, 17, 23, 87, 93 GISTI (Groupe d’information et de soutien des immigrés, Immigrant information and support group) 61 giving voice 8, 11, 67, 81 Godard, Jean-Luc 22, 23, 33 Gomis, Alain 3, 11, 45–9, 57, 81 Gramsci, Antonio 6, 7, 148 Le Grand Voyage (Ferroukhi) 62 Les Grands Pêchers 115–16, 118–20 La Haine (Kassovitz) 12, 85, 88–91, 92–3, 97, 102, 122, 140, 142 Haneke, Michael 3, 11, 49–55, 57, 147 hegemony 6–8, 10, 17, 20, 21, 28, 32, 41, 45, 82, 83, 96, 108, 109, 112, 114, 130, 137, 140, 145 hegemonic discourse, see hegemony hierarchies 10, 11, 19, 24 hip-hop 12, 68–70, 72, 73, 92, 113, 129, 137, 146 Histoires de vies brisées (Bertrand Tavernier) 3, 12, 61, 62–7, 68, 70, 71, 72, 80, 81, 114, 115, 115, 118, 119, 120, 142, 146 housing estates 1, 12, 13, 19, 28, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 107, 109, 110, 111, 113, 117, 118, 122, 132, 135, 137, 139, 143 hunger strikes 32, 38, 62–6, 71 hybrid identities, see hybridity hybridity 29, 45, 62, 79, 80, 97, 144–8, 150 IM’média 35, 147 immigrants 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23–6,

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193

28, 31, 32, 37, 43, 44, 46, 51, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 65, 66, 69, 82, 87, 96, 112, 123, 128, 140, 141, 144, 145, 148, 151 immigration 2, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 35, 36, 37, 46, 50, 51, 55, 56, 58–9, 60, 62, 66, 74, 77, 83, 84, 123, 126, 137, 149 inclusion 15, 17, 64, 67, 82, 144 identity checks 41, 74, 86, 119, 133, 141 identity papers 43, 47 independent films 21 Indigènes (Bouchareb) 42 inequality 6, 11, 16, 27, 99, 141 insécurité 59, 137 integration 5, 18, 24, 25, 54, 114, 117 Les Intouchables (Toledano and Nakache) 149 Les Invités de mon père (Le Ny) 34 JALB (Jeunes Arabes de Lyon et sa banlieue, Young Arabs from Lyon and its suburbs) 67 Jamel Comedy Club 149 journalists 100, 102, 103, 105–7, 120, 122, 150, 151 Joxe Law 32 judges 59, 60, 66, 77, 142 Juppé, Alan 1 Kassovitz, Mathieu 85, 88–91, 92–3, 97, 102, 122, 140, 142 Kechiche, Abdellatif 3, 14, 112, 131–6, 137–8 Laissez-les grandir ici! (Collectif des cinéastes pour les sans-papiers) 151 Lang, Jack 20 law and order 28, 109, 119, 142 LDH (Ligue des droits de l’homme, Human Rights League) 61 Ledoyen, Virginie 92 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 2, 23 Le Pen, Marine 2 Lille 37

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194

Index

M6 106 Ma 6-T va crack-er (Richet) 3, 13, 90, 91–6, 97, 102, 109, 110, 118, 142, 143 Maalouf, Amin 9, 11, 58, 144 Les Mains en l’air (Goupil) 34 Malians 50 Le Manifeste des 66 cinéastes 114 Le Manifeste des sans-papiers (The Manifesto of the Sans-papiers) 33, 114 marginalisation 5, 10, 38, 62 Les Mauvais Garçons (Nick) 3, 13, 112, 120–6, 127, 139 Meaux 91, 94 media discourses 9, 12, 26, 27 media, French 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 51, 55, 56, 57, 62, 63, 68, 70–1, 75, 83, 85, 86, 89, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 112, 116, 120, 124, 127, 129, 131, 137, 142, 143, 148, 149, 151 Mémoires d’immigrés (Benguigui) 62 MIB (Mouvement d’immigration et des banlieues, Immigration and banlieues movement) 61 Ministry of Culture 20 minority groups 7, 16, 18, 86, 87, 88, 149 Mitterrand, François 24, 43, 60, 123 Montreuil 115, 119, 120, 126 mouvement beur 17 MRAP 61 multiculturalism 17, 127, 130 Muslims 24, 96 Nanterre 37 nationality 17, 24, 30, 38, 40, 41, 56, 63, 81, 87, 141, 144, 148 nationhood 30 Nés quelque part (Chibane) 113 Noah, Yannick 128 Nous, sans-papiers de France (Philibert) 33, 34, 151 Nuit et brouillard 53

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On n’est pas des marques de vélo (Thorn) 3, 4, 12, 61, 68–72, 73, 75, 76, 113, 122, 146 Origine contrôlée (Bouchalaa) 62 Paris 6, 11, 13, 36, 37, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57, 62, 68, 88, 89, 91, 94, 112, 115, 116, 123, 130, 133, 149, 150 parkour 91 Parmi Nous (Sionnet) 3, 11, 39–45, 46, 54, 56, 57, 141, 143 Peau noire, masques blancs (Fanon) 78 Philibert, Nicolas 33 Pittard, Eric 13, 96–100, 104, 107, 109, 124, 146 Police 1, 2, 12, 13, 19, 35, 38, 43, 44, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 70, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 85–110, 111, 117, 118–19, 125, 133, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143 policing 2, 12, 13, 91, 101, 105, 108, 109, 142, 143 political cinema 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 26, 54, 67, 69, 91, 146, 148 political discourses 1, 9, 23, 25, 26, 95, 112 political films, see political cinema politicians (French) 5 post-1995 political cinema 3, 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 36, 51, 59, 60, 68, 70, 75, 82, 84, 99, 105, 118, 120, 123, 125, 128, 139, 140 postcolonial theory 5, 6, 7, 49 poverty 26, 45, 96, 122 power dynamics, see power relations power relations 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 26, 27, 31, 32, 42, 85, 89, 99, 108, 110, 112, 115, 116, 119, 138 protests 1, 11, 31–4, 40, 44, 56, 63, 87, 93, 95, 106–7, 143 racial exclusion 5, 8, 16, 28, 146 racism 18, 46–7, 86, 87

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Index

radical aesthetics 9, 22, 62, 68, 69, 72, 147 radical politics 9, 22, 68, 69, 72, 147 Raï (Gilou) 90 Raoult, Eric 114–16, 118, 119–120, 137 rap music 69, 70, 71–2, 73, 94, 124, 129 Rassemblement pour la République (RPR, Rally for the Republic) 18, 24 Republican values 3, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 29, 30, 37, 42, 56, 82, 138, 140, 148 Republican universalism 18, 19, 24, 66, 87, 142, 144 Republicanism 14, 15–19, 23, 27, 29, 30, 58, 59, 60, 81, 88–9, 91, 97, 98–9, 110, 113, 127, 138, 140, 141, 144, 148 residency documents 37, 39, 43, 49, 50, 56, 57, 65, 66, 74 residency status 38, 40, 41, 43, 48, retour au réel (return to the real) 20 La Reynerie 96, 97, 98 rioting 26, 92, 102, 103–4, 127, 143 Rock Against the Police 35 Romanians 11, 49, 50, 51 Roissy 130 Rosello, Mireille 12, 18, 31, 36, 41, 42, 44, 48, 58, 60, 66, 71, 74, 85, 91, 98, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 117, 132, 145 sans-papiers 1, 2, 11, 17, 31–57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 75, 97, 114, 141, 143, 144, 146, 151 Sarkozy, Nicolas 1, 2, 28, 84, 87, 103, 105, 109, 137, 149 scapegoating 24, 31, 60, 71, 74 Schengen Agreement 24 Second Cinema 10 Second World War 42 Seine-Saint-Denis 13, 69, 70, 72, 73, 102, 112, 113, 126–31, 144 self-representation 9 Senegal 11, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 sign language 39, 41, 54

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195

single and indivisible nation 16, 17, 27, 142 single and indivisible republic 6, 127 Sionnet, Carole 3, 11, 39–45, 54, 131, 147 social class 9, 21 social exclusion 6, 8, 28, 122 social networking 151 spectators 10, 22, 23, 41–2, 44, 50, 53, 54, 55, 57, 62, 79, 83, 104, 126, 136, 150 Spivak, Gayatri 6, 7, 8, 11, 16, 31, 116 state, French 2, 5, 7, 10, 15–19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36–8, 42, 44, 45, 47, 49, 52, 56, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75, 76, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 91, 94, 95, 97, 98–9, 101, 103, 109, 114, 115, 118, 119, 123, 125, 138, 141, 142, 143, 148, 151 stereotypes 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 25, 28, 29, 47, 51, 56, 71, 85–6, 89, 91, 95, 96, 97, 100, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111–39, 143, 148 stigmatisation 24, 25, 26, 66, 69, 128, 137, 138, 142, 143 subalterns 7, 8, 9, 17, 28–9, 31, 42, 93, 111 Sur la télévision (Bourdieu) 8, 96, 100 Tavernier, Bertrand 3, 4, 12, 13, 61, 62–7, 68, 70, 71, 72, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 112, 113–20, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 137, 138, 148 téléfilms 4 television, French 4, 13, 20, 35, 36, 37, 42, 63, 65, 68, 69, 75, 79, 89, 96, 97, 101, 105, 106–7, 108, 113–14, 116, 121, 122, 126, 127, 129, 149 TF1 95, 106, 149 Third Cinema 10 Thorn, Jean-Pierre 3, 4, 12, 61, 68–72, 73, 74–5, 77, 83, 113, 131, 146, 147, 148

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Index

Toulouse 13, 37, 87, 96, 98 Travaux (Roüan) 34 Triboit, Philippe 4, 13, 100–5, 106, 109 Truffaut, François 33 Tunisians 63, 71, 133

La Vie en rose (Dahan) 148 Violence 5, 12, 19, 25, 26, 28, 72, 75, 78, 85–97, 102, 103, 108–11, 117–22, 132, 137, 139, 142–3 Vitry 35 voting rights 21

UMP (Union pour un mouvement populaire, Union for a Popular Movement) 1, 2 unemployment 6, 25, 26, 28, 32, 95, 122, 128, 129, 137

Welcome (Loiret) 34 Wesh Wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? (Ameur-Zaïmeche) 3, 12, 61, 72–7, 77–81, 82, 83 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 30

Ventura, Rafaele 3, 11, 34–9 Versailles 37

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Zone franche (Vecchiali) 90

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