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French-language Road Cinema
Borders, Diasporas, Migration and 'New Europe'
by Michael Gott
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Book Presentation:
An examination of contemporary French-language road movies within the cultural and political context of ‘New Europe’
Over the past two decades road cinema has become an increasingly popular form of expression for European directors. Focusing on a corpus of films from France, Belgium and Switzerland, including works by Ismaël Ferroukhi, Bouli Lanners, Aki Kaurismäki and Jacqueline Audry amongst many others, French-language Road Cinema contends that nowhere is the impulse to remap the spaces and identities of ‘New Europe’ more evident than in French-language cinema. Drawing on mobility studies, cultural geography and film theory, this innovative work sketches out the flexible yet distinctive parameters of contemporary French-language road cinema, and argues for an understanding of the ‘road movie’ not as a genre but as a thematic and formal template that crosses cinematic categories to bring together a wide array of films that narrate the movements of migrants, tourists and business executives.
Key Features
• The first monograph to focus on transnational French-language (from or co-produced by France, Belgium and Switzerland) European road cinema
• Each chapter analyses key formal characteristics of a carefully chosen selection of films through the optic of a significant cultural or political issue facing ‘New Europe’
• Examines the unique formal and thematic qualities of French-language European road movies in relationship to American and European traditions
• Case studies examine well-known films, as well as those that have not yet received scholarly attention but are commercially available with English subtitles
• Compares and contrasts more positive vantage points on cinematic mobility with recent migrant cinema
Read the introduction for free
About the Author:
Michael Gott is Associate Professor of French and Film and Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches courses in European Studies, Film and Media Studies, and French-language culture and cinema. He is the author of French-language Road Cinema: Borders, Diasporas and ‘New Europe’ (EUP, 2016) and co-edited Cinéma-monde: Decentred Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French (EUP, 2018), Open Roads, Closed Borders: the Contemporary French-Language Road Movie (Intellect, 2013) and East, West and Centre: Reframing European Cinema Since 1989 (EUP, 2014).
Press Reviews:
Mapping French-language European road cinema through France, Switzerland and Belgium, its trajectories extending yet further afield in Europe and beyond, Gott’s book is at once a perceptive exploration of a broad but coherent filmic corpus, an astute reexamination of the road movie, and a novel contribution to transnational European film studies.– Laura Rascaroli, University College Cork
'French Language Road Cinema is a thoughtful, timely and exciting book. The wealth of European film analyses it offers is notable in its attention to underexplored women’s road cinema, Belgian and Swiss productions as well as in its care to delineate opposing meanings of mobility for different European residents. The book reveals a nuanced approach to road film as a form that makes its spectators consider the complexity of identity, mobility and borders in today’s Europe, offering an indispensable trans-disciplinary guide for researchers in European film and mobility studies.'– Ipek Celik Rappas, LSE Review of Books
An accessible and intuitive contribution to a thriving field of film studies that will appeal to those interested in the changing state of Europe, as well as cinema’s capacity to weigh in on related debates.– Ally Lee, Studies in European Cinema
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> From the same author:
The Films of Rachid Bouchareb (2022)
Dir. Michael Gott and Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp
Subject: Director > Rachid Bouchareb
Cinéma-monde (2018)
Decentred Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French
Dir. Michael Gott and Thibaut Schilt
Open Roads, Closed Borders (2013)
The Contemporary French-Language Road Movie
Dir. Michael Gott and Thibaut Schilt
Subject: Sociology
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