Migration Matters in Cinema and Literature: Francophone Authors Inside Out

Catalog description

The 20th Century has seen numerous prodigious cultural productions of French artists with living roots in the former French colonies (North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Indochina), and the 21st century has already seen even greater ones. Navigating critical challenges faced by our human condition such as making sense of the world around us, self-expression and representation, migration and mobility, identity negotiations and sense of multi-belonging, the contemporary French artists (writers, filmmakers, architects, rappers) have found themselves at the center of French and Francophone cultural life for quite a while. This course will explore luvres from Leila Slimani's Chanson douce to Rachid Bouchareb's Indigènes, taking side trips into the topsy-turvy world of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, the ingeniosity of Alain Mabanckou's Verre cassé, the poetic spleen of Stromae's Racine carrée, the unapologetic French vision of Fatou Diome's Marianne porte plainte!, the fierce narrative of Kim Lefèvre's Métisse blanche, and the inventive questioning of urban life in Djamel Klouche's architecture. We will consider the play of words, the strategies behind first-person narrative and compare it with the alternate third person and the "we" one in different art mediums. Why are so many authors and protagonists still obsessed with the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), 60 years after the end of the war? How does the move from an early almost exclusively male-dominated cultural scene to a more gender balanced one translate into their artistic productions ?