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                "title": "Readings/Godard Since 1968 and Claire Denis",
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                        "*": "=Constance Penley, \"''Les Enfants de la Patrie''\"=\n\nExcerpts from Constance Penley, \"''Les Enfants de la Patrie'',\" ''Camera Obscura'', 8-9-10, pp. 32-59.\n\n\"''Allons enfants de la Patrie''\" = \"Arise, children of the Fatherland\"\n:From the national anthem of France, \"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise La Marseillaise]\".\n\n==\"Writing\" television, page 40==\nIn ''Television: Technology and Cultural Form'' Raymond Williams reminds\nus that it is not always in the state's interest to teach us both\nreading and writing. At the beginning of the industrial revolution in\nBritain\n\n:when education had to be reorganized, the ruling class decided to teach working people to read but not to write. If they could read they could understand new kinds of instructions and, moreover, they could read the Bible for their moral improvement. They did not need writing, however, since they would have no orders or instructions or lessons to communicate.\n\n'''\"Writing\"''' rather than merely \"reading\" television comes through as\na constant theme in the Sonimage project. Producing local television-\nmaking something on video to show your neighbor \"without\nhaving to go through Paris,\" \"without a SECAM passport\" -is\npart of the solution. But writing television also involves writing,\nliterally. Godard has always written on and with the image and his\n\"print-out\" one-at-a-time letters were one of the most important\nrhetorical elements of ''Numero Deux''. In ''Six fois deux'' a video device\nthat allows instant script writing on the image is used lavishly. This\nanthropomorphization of title lettering gives the feeling of a personal\nand spontaneous response to the image, and takes many modes:\ndoodling, punning, musing, drawing. Both the writing on the image\nand the different voices over it question the image rather than anchoring\nits meaning as is usual in television.\n\n'''Writing television''' also means devising new fictions, new ways of\npresenting information, and new means of addressing the viewer.\nThe tentativeness and obscurity of some of the \"stories\" told by the\nnarrators in ''France/tour/d\u00e9tour/deux/enfants'', the interviewer's fear and\nhesitancy about beginning to question the children, the failure to get\nthe children to speak differently, all seem to say that this is not an\neasy project, that writing television cannot be accomplished by simply,\nfor example, instituting \"community access.\" Unless television\nis thought about in terms of its possible fictions, fantasies and forms\nof address, then what we will see, with the proliferation of channels\nthrough cable and satellite, will only be more of the same, the local\nproductions being disappointing amateur versions of \"real\" network\ntelevision.\n\n==Time and silence, page 43==\nAnother important difference of ''France/tour/d\u00e9tour/deux/enfants''\nfrom \"normal\" television lies in its '''notion of time'''. To mark that it\nhas another time than television time, each part of the series is called\na \"movement,\" rather than a \"program,\" taking its temporal term\nfrom music instead of television, and placing the emphasis on composition.\nTelevision time is the immediate, urgent present-Alexander\nHaig ''now'', Poland ''now'', television expansively celebrating its own instantaneous\nglobal responsiveness to every \"event.\" From the perspective\nof television time, these twelve \"movements\" depict dead\ntime: kids on the way to school, in school, on the way home, the\nfamily dinner, getting ready for bed-these activities are neither\nnewsworthy nor \"now.\" (\"And ''now''... \" is the most repeated\nphrase of television's regulated flow.) On Sonimage time, long '''silences'''\noccur-the radical opposite of the fullness of television. They\nare not silences which represent, for example, poignance or solemn\nimportance; rather, they occur when the interviewer has no questions,\nor the child is bored, or because there is, at that moment,\nsimply nothing to say.\n\n==Interviewing, pages 44-48==\n'''Interviewing''' is an extreme form of demand. The television interview\nis conducted under the pressure of television time. It must look as\nmuch like a conversation as possible even though spontaneity and\nsilences are not permitted inside that structure. Unlike what occurs\nin a conversation, the person interviewed is typically required to verify\nor refute a point introduced by the interviewer. From the way\nGodard sets up the positions of interviewer and interviewed, and\nfrom the manner in which he poses his questions, it is clear that he is\nnot trying to get across the optimistic fiction of '''the television interview''',\nthat an exchange of information, a communication, a dialogue,\nhas taken place between two persons. In the First Movement,\nthe male narrator says of the interviewer and Camille:\n\n:I don't believe he wants to get an image of her-whatever one might think-or a sound. He's simply sending out a signal and waiting to see what happens when the signal reaches her. Often it reaches her and conveys nothing.\n\nAnd, at another point:\n\n:Despite evidence to the contrary, the reporter is not asking real questions. Nor does the child give real answers.\n\nIf one doesn't start with pre-given questions and answers, and if a\nsituation is not set up in which \"communication\" is sure to take\nplace between, two carefully designated positions, then something\ndifferent is going to happen. Silences, yes, but also perhaps another\nkind of knowledge than that available to us through the usual forms\nof television rhetoric.\n\nInterviews never stand by themselves on television. They are introduced,\nprovided with a context, summarized afterwards, and\noften given an editorializing finish. The person interviewed furnishes\nthe \" raw information\" which is guided and shaped by the questions\nof the interviewer. The narrator, if there is one, supplies the final,\nrationalizing commentary. ln ''France/tour/d\u00e9tour/deux/enfants'', however,\nthis smooth narrative embedding does not occur; difficulties\narise among all of the designated positions of \" person interviewed,\"\n\"interviewer,\" and \" narrator.\" The children being interviewed do\nnot always understand the questions and do not have much co say.\nThe interviewer's questions are often obscure and seemingly inappropriate.\nThe narrators are frequently at a loss to \"make sense\" of\nthe interviews (or at least the spectator has difficulty understanding.\nthe pertinence of their comments to the interview preceding it), and\nare concerned chat the interviews are no\u00b7c being conducted properly.\nIn the Eighth Movement the female narrator says to \"Robert\" (the\ninterviewer) who has just played a trick on Arnaud:\n\n:No, No, Robert, you mustn't say that to him. It's obvious he no longer believes you when you say the money is from you. It isn't true anyway. It's the company's money.\n\nImmediately following this interjection, there is a complete breakdown:\n\n:He doesn't hear me. What's wrong with the mike? Robert! Robert! He doesn't hear me!\n\nThe usual narrative embedding of the interview, which functions to\ngive credence to the speech of each party (and the final truth to television\nitself), simply disintegrates here. \"Communication\" is not\ntaking place in any of the ways we usually imagine it occurring on\ntelevision.\n\nWhere are we as viewers in these interviews? Traditionally in television\ninterviews we are looking on at an oblique angle, sometimes\nseeing the interviewer partly in frame, or even cutting back and forth\nbetween the interviewer and the person interviewed. This is especially\nso when both are known \"personalities\"; everyone, however,\nin an interview situation is a \"personality\" even if only for the time\nof the interview. ('''When Dick Cavett interviews, for example, Jean-Luc Godard''', it is supposed to be as interesting to us that the interviewer is Cavett as that the person interviewed is Godard. The spectacle\nof the interview is just as much our interest in watching\nCavett's interviewing skills being challenged by a \"difficult\" personality\nas it is in listening to Godard.) In a typical interview we overhear\nand overlook an exchange. But in ''France/tour/d\u00e9tour/deux/enfants'' we aren't given the usual choreography of shot/reverse shot\nand the \"reaction shot,\" as we never see the interviewer. This arrangement\neffectively implicates the viewer in the scene far more\nthan having us look on and overhear the interviewer from a position\noutside it. We share the imaginary off-screen space of the interviewer\nand this is a distinctly uncomfortable place in which to be.\n\nSometimes the interviewer's questions simply appear to be mean;\nthe children, although amused at first with some of the tricky questions,\ngrow bored or annoyed as the series goes on. In the Twelfth\nand last Movement, Arnaud is sitting up and answering the questions\nas best he can, but is obviously getting sleepy. He lies down in\nbed, his eyelids droop, but the interviewer persists, even when it is\nplain that Arnaud can no longer fight off sleep. In an earlier Movement,\nthe interviewer embarrasses Arnaud by getting him to admit\non television that he received a bicycle as payment for being in the\nseries. Sometimes the interviewer is merely distracted: once he says\nsomething Arnaud cannot understand; Arnaud asks, \"What?\" and\nthe interviewer replies, \"I was talking to myself.\"\n\nAlthough the \"inappropriateness\" of the interviewer's questions to\nthe children serves to bring into relief our received ideas about childhood\nchildhood, it is also disconcerting in another, deeper sense. We have clear\nlinguistic and social conventions governing the way adults speak to\nchildren; we simply do not speak to them in the same manner that\nwe speak to other adults. Disrupting these linguistic conventions\nbrings ambiguity to the conventions regulating other forms of behavior,\nsuch as sexual, between adult and child. Refusing to speak to\nthe children as children suggests that there is at work here an unconscious\nfantasy of sexual equality and the possibility of a reciprocated\ndesire. It is for this reason that we feel particularly discomfited in the\nFirst Movement when the interviewer, in his very untypical adult-to-child tone, addresses Camille in her nightgown, on her bed. Prior\nto the interview we saw Camille undressing for bed. The male narrator's\nvoice-over, during the interview, comments on the vision and\ndesire of the interviewer:\n\n:He's still there, facing her, and the night is breaking. As she neglected to tell him earlier, at the beginning of the program, she didn't want to show her bottom, he didn't make a point of it, so that now he can only see part of her shoulders and a mass of thick blond hair.\n\nOur uneasiness about the interviewer's behavior is particularly\nstrong because we are not outside looking on, or merely overhearing.\nNormally exterior to the scene of the interview (watching the\nplay of shot/reverse-shot, looking at a two-shot or over the interviewer's\nshoulder), we are, here, implicated in the off-screen space of\nthe interviewer. This sometimes forces us to share his idiosyncratic\npoint of view, making that space palpable in a way that it usually is\nnot. The viewer has to ask, \"What is the demand being voiced here?\nWhat is he trying to say or trying to get the child-who is not being\ntreated as a child-to say? What does Godard want?\"\n\nAlthough we are sometimes uneasy (linguistically, sexually) about\nthe manner in which the interviewer addresses the children, it is too\nsimple to say that the interviewer's speech requires the children to\nrespond as adults. Godard said that in speaking to the children he did\nnot address them by saying, \"Oh you sweet little things,\" but neither\ndid he speak to them as adults: \"I saw them as beings from\nanother world to whom no one had ever spoken, until the moment I\ntalked to them .... \" Here, we are very close to seeing what\nGodard wants, at least consciously, from these children. He says that\nhe posed to the children a melange of eminently practical and deeply\nmetaphysical questions in order to get them to speak differently, so\nthat, \"Perhaps afterwards, when we are making fiction films again,\nwe can get men and women to speak a little differently, something\nwhich today no one yet knows how to do very well.\"\n\n==The woman's body, pages 50-51==\nIn addition to the casual, though incongruous, adoption of the\nfeminist strategy of a politics of representation based on personal experience\nas the site of truth, Sonimage also accepts too readily the\nfacile mirroring of Marxism and feminism found in the pun on\nsocial/economic \"reproduction\" and human biological \"reproduction.\"\nThe programs are structured around a lengthy series of puns\non \"copying,\" \"duplicating,\" and \"programming.\" Finally (in the\nFifth Movement), we see a pregnant, naked secretary being given\norders by her boss. The female narrator's voice tells us, \"One realizes\nthat men, by nature incapable of imagination, that most men\ncondemn the majority of women to dictation, to copy-typing, to\nreproduction.\" Leaving aside the essentialist assertion that inequality\nbetween the sexes results from something in the nature of men (incapable\nof imagination), there still remains the fundamental problem\nof conflating two critically different though interconnected realms:\nthe economic and the economy of sexuality.\n\nThe seduction of metaphor strikes again, in the Fourth Movement,\nwhen the narrator, over an image of waitresses at a lunch counter in\nslow/fast motion, says:\n\n:And someone you don't know is a \"what's-his-name.\" In French we say: ''machin'', And for a woman: ''machine''. With her body machine. Slowing down the machine. The machinery of state.\n\nIn Godard's work '''the woman's body''' has had to carry a heavy representational\nload: in ''Two or Three Things I Know about Her'', as a\nprostitute, she is Paris and consumer culture, in ''Numero Deux'', she is\na factory, in ''France/tour/d\u00e9tour/deux/enfants'', she is the embodiment of\n\"reproduction,\" the machinery of the state. It is not very effective to\noppose this metaphorical use of the woman's body with a demand\nfor Sonimage to give us \"real\" women, women engaged in productive\nlabor, in activities not metaphorically linked to their gender or\nsexuality (for example, women as factory workers rather than prostitutes).\nThis is because a non-metaphorical representation of the\nbody would be impossible for both women and men if one accepts\nthat sexual difference is a result not of biology but of the subject's\npositioning in language and culture. Thus, conceptions of bodies and\nsexes are necessarily metaphorical, that is, always seen in terms of\nsomething else. Historically, of course, women's bodies and men's\nbodies have accrued different representational values. Surprisingly,\nSonimage's acute reflexiveness about language and representation (in\nrelation to television, the family, the state) does not extend to questioning\ncertain received metaphorizations of the woman's body:\nwoman as state, as machine of reproduction, as sexuality itself. The\nrepeated use of these metaphors of the woman's body has always\nposed problems for feminists discussing Godard's work. Now, however,\nwith Sonimage's increasingly direct engagement with feminist\nconcerns, these questionable metaphors are thrown into even sharper\nrelief.\n\nAlso problematic is another aspect of the way Sonimage attempts\nto incorporate feminist questions. Godard-the-interviewer's voyeurism\nand manipulation is severely reprimanded in the \"Nanas\"\n(\"Chicks\") section of ''Six fois deux''. He is interviewing an elderly\nwoman and, just as he is asking her if she would mind talking about\nsex, a woman's voice explodes on the sound-track bitterly criticizing\nhim for the way he sets up the women in the interviews, more or\nless tells them how to reply, and then is always surprised when they\naren't as interesting as he'd hoped they'd be. The woman's-voice-as-super-ego is similar in function to the woman's voice that comes on over the image of the Palestinian woman in ''Ici et ailleurs'', accusing\nGodard of having chosen a young, beautiful woman for the scene\nand having said nothing about it: \"It's a small step from this kind of\nomission to fascism.\" To assign a censoring and denunciatory role to\na woman's voice that is narratively one step removed from the\ndiegesis is to make of feminism a superior, authoritative truth that\nstands as a corrective to the sexism of men. It is to make feminism\ninto a moral truth rather than a political theory and.set of strategies.\nEndowing feminism with such inordinate power presumes a masochistic\nrelation for men to that excessive potency. That a masochistic\nfantasy is at work here can be seen most conspicuously at the end of\n''Every Man for Himself'' when the mise-en-scene requires the \"Paul\nGodard\" character to die under (as a result of?) the disaffected gazes\nof the women in his life.\n\n='''Recommended, not required'''=\n\n=Claire Denis=\n<gallery mode=\"packed\" heights=400px>\nFile:Claire Denis 66\u00e8me Festival de Venise (Mostra) 2.jpg|alt=Denis at the 66th Venice International Film Festival|Denis at the 66th Venice International Film Festival\n</gallery>\n\n'''Claire Denis''' ({{IPA-fr|d\u0259ni|lang}}; born 21 April 1946<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lesgensducinema.com/affiche_acteur.php?mots=Claire+Denis&nom_acteur=DENIS%20Claire&ident=10587&debut=0&record=0&from=ok|title=Claire Denis|date= 9 July 2013|website=Les Gens du Cin\u00e9ma|accessdate=19 February 2014|language=fr}} This site uses Denis' birth certificate as its source of information.{{According to whom|date=November 2017}}</ref>) is a French film director and writer. Her feature ''[[Beau Travail]]'' (1999) has been called one of the greatest films of the decade.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.indiewire.com/2009/12/the-best-films-of-the-decade-2000-2009-9-beau-travail-35-shots-of-rum-227495/|title=The Best Films Of The Decade (2000-2009) {{!}} #9 Beau Travail/ 35 Shots Of Rum|last=twhalliii|date=2009-12-22|work=IndieWire|access-date=2018-04-28|language=en-US}}</ref> Other acclaimed works include ''[[Trouble Every Day (film)|Trouble Every Day]]'' (2001), ''[[35 Shots of Rum]]'' (2008), ''[[White Material]]'' (2009) and ''[[High Life (2018 film)|High Life]]'' (2018).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.indiewire.com/2016/06/best-movies-21st-century-carol-boyhood-12-years-a-slave-1201699418/|title=Indiewire best films 21st century}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160819-the-21st-centurys-100-greatest-films|title=BBC best films 21st century}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.metacritic.com/feature/best-women-film-directors-and-movies|title=Metacritics best female directors}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.raindance.org/the-25-best-films-directed-by-female-film-directors/|title=Radiance best female directors}}</ref> Her work has dealt with themes of colonial and post-colonial West Africa, as well as issues in modern France, and continues to influence European cinematic identity.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://filmmuseum.at/jart/prj3/filmmuseum/main.jart?rel=de&content-id=1216720898687&schienen_id=1491296807199|title=Film Museum - Claire Denis|last=|first=|date=|website=|access-date=}}</ref>\n\n==Early life==\nDenis was born in [[Paris]], but raised in colonial French Africa, where her father was a civil servant, living in [[Burkina Faso]], [[Cameroon]], [[French Somaliland]], and [[Senegal]].<ref>Hermione Eyre, \"Claire Denis on filmmaking and feminism,\" ''Prospect'', 21 June 2010, [http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/06/loving-the-lost-and-monstrous/]</ref> Her childhood spent living in West Africa with her parents and her younger sister would color her perspectives on certain political issues. It has been a strong influence on her films, which have dealt with themes of colonialism and post-colonialism in Africa.<ref>Beugnet, Martine (2004). ''Claire Denis'', p. 8. Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York. {{ISBN|0-7190-6481-3}}.</ref> Her father moved with the family every two years because he wanted the children to learn about geography. Growing up in West Africa, Denis used to watch the old and damaged copies of war films sent from the United States. As an adolescent she loved to read. Completing the required material while in school, at night she would sneak her mother's detective stories to read.<ref name=\"senses\">{{cite news\n |first=Aim\u00e9 \n |last=Ancian \n |url=http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/23/denis_interview/ \n |title=Claire Denis: An Interview \n |publisher=[[Senses of Cinema]] \n |pages= \n |page= \n |year=2002 \n |accessdate=26 November 2006 \n |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20061018081600/http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/23/denis_interview.html \n |archivedate=18 October 2006 \n |deadurl=yes \n |df=dmy \n}}</ref>\nWhen Denis was 14 years old, she moved with her mother and sister to a Parisian suburb in France, a country that she hardly knew at all.<ref>Beugnet (2004). ''Claire Denis'', p. 14.</ref> Her parents wanted their children to finish their education in France.\n\n==Career==\nDenis initially studied economics, but, she has said, \"It was completely suicidal. Everything pissed me off.\"<ref name=\"senses\" /> She studied at the [[IDHEC]], the French film school, with the encouragement of her husband. He told her she needed to figure out what she wanted to do.<ref name=\"senses\" /> She graduated from the IDHEC and, since 2002, has been a Professor of Film at the [[European Graduate School]] in [[Saas-Fee]], Switzerland.<ref name=\"egs\">{{cite web | url=http://www.egs.edu/faculty/claire-denis/biography/ | title=Claire Denis Faculty Page at European Graduate School (Biography, bibliography and video lectures) | publisher=[[European Graduate School]] | accessdate=27 October 2010 | deadurl=yes | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20101024172728/http://www.egs.edu/faculty/claire-denis/biography/ | archivedate=24 October 2010 | df=dmy-all }}</ref>\n\nHer debut feature film ''[[Chocolat (1988 film)|Chocolat]]'' (1988), a semi-autobiographical meditation on African [[colonialism]], won her critical acclaim.\nIt was selected for the [[Cannes Film Festival]] and was praised by critics and audiences alike as a remarkable first film.  With films such as ''[[US Go Home]]'' (1994), ''[[N\u00e9nette et Boni]]'' (1996), ''[[Beau Travail]]'' (1999),<ref name=\"salon-1\">{{cite news|url=http://www.salon.com/2000/03/31/beau_travail/|title=Beau Travail|last=Taylor|first=Charles|date=31 March 2000|work=|publisher=[[Salon.com]]|page=|pages=|accessdate=13 June 2006}}</ref> set in Africa; ''[[Trouble Every Day (film)|Trouble Every Day]]'' (2001), and ''[[Vendredi soir]]'' (2002), she established a reputation as a filmmaker who \"has been able to reconcile the lyricism of [[French cinema]] with the impulse to capture the often harsh face of contemporary France.\"<ref name=\"salon-1\"/> She returned to Africa again with ''[[White Material]]'' (2009), set in an unidentified country during a time of civil war.\n\nAccording to the Australian James Phillips, when making her films, Denis rejects the marketable conventions of Hollywood cinema and frees the viewers of her films from the expectations of clich\u00e9s.<ref>Phillips, James (2008). ''Cinematic Thinking: Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema'', p. 3. Stanford University Press, Stanford. {{ISBN|978-0-8047-5800-0}}.</ref>\nDenis is well known for the way that she combines history with personal history, giving her films an autobiographical element.<ref>Reis, Levilson (2013). \"An 'other' scene, an 'other' point of view: France's colonial family romance, Prot\u00e9e's postcolonial fantasy, and Claire Denis' 'screen' memories.\" Studies in European Cinema, 10, 2\u20133, pp. 119\u2013131, p. 122.</ref> This superimposition of the personal with the historical allows her films to be described as [[auteur]] cinema.<ref>Beugnet, Martine (2004). ''Claire Denis'', Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York. {{ISBN|0-7190-6481-3}}.</ref>\nShe is known to work within a large range of genres, spanning from the themes of horror seen in ''[[Trouble Every Day (film)|Trouble Every Day]]'' (2001) to the romance and drama found in ''[[Friday Night (2002 film)|Friday Night]]'' (2002).<ref>Beugnet, Martine (2004). ''Claire Denis'', p. 2. Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York. {{ISBN|0-7190-6481-3}}.</ref> While critics have noted recurring themes within her films, Denis says that she has no coherent vision of her career \"trajectory\".<ref>Beugnet (2004). ''Claire Denis'', p. 2</ref>\n\nDenis carefully chooses the titles of her films. No\u00eblle Rouxel-Cubberly argues that film titles are intended to force the viewer to rethink the imagery within a film and Denis cleverly uses titles to describe the raw reality found within her films. For example, the title of her film ''[[Chocolat (1988 film)|Chocolat]]'' (1988) simultaneously refers to the word as a racist term used during the period of the film, the [[Chocolate|cocoa]] exportation from Africa to Europe through a [[slave]] system, and the 1950s French expression ''\"\u00eatre chocolat\",'' meaning \"to be cheated.\"<ref>Block, Marcelline (2008). ''Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema'', Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne. {{ISBN|978-1-84718-664-5}}.</ref>{{page needed|date=October 2012}}\n\nAdditionally, Denis is recognized for her process of \"shooting fast, editing slowly,\" which she has developed. In general, she does a few takes on the set and spends most of her time in the editing room, creating the film there. This post-production process often involves rearranging scenes out of the order in the script. For example, she placed the dance in ''[[Beau Travail]]'' (1999) at the end of the film, although it was not at the end of the script. In reference to this process, Denis has said, \"I'm always insecure when I'm making a film. I have doubts about myself but rarely about the actors.\"<ref>Ratner, Megan (Winter 2010). \"Moving Toward the Unknown Other: An Interview with Claire Denis,\" ''Cineaste Magazine''</ref>\n\nDenis is a highly collaborative filmmaker, saying in an interview that \"the film becomes a relationship...and that is what's important, the relationship.\"<ref name=\"Ratner 2010\">Ratner (2010). \"Moving Toward the Unknown Other\"</ref> The importance of collaboration is seen throughout her body of work. She works with many of the same actors, such as [[Isaach de Bankole]], [[Vincent Gallo]], [[B\u00e9atrice Dalle]], [[Alex Descas]], and [[Gr\u00e9goire Colin]], and also collaborates often with the screenwriter [[Jean-Pol Fargeau]], composer [[Stuart Staples]], and cinematographer [[Agn\u00e8s Godard]], whom she met in the 1970s at the [[Institut des hautes \u00e9tudes cin\u00e9matographiques]].<ref name=\"Ratner 2010\"/> When asked in an interview about her screen writing process, Denis said, \"I often realize I have [[Isaach de Bankole|Isaach]] or [[Gr\u00e9goire Colin|Gr\u00e9goire]] or someone else in mind\" when writing scenes. She has also said that usually she \"hold[s] no auditions\" for casting in her films.<ref name=\"Ratner 2010\"/>\n\nHer collaboration goes beyond her own films, as she has appeared in other directors' films, such as [[Laetitia Masson]]'s ''[[En avoir (ou pas)|En avoir]]'' (1995) and [[Tonie Marshall]]'s ''[[V\u00e9nus beaut\u00e9 (institut)|V\u00e9nus beaut\u00e9]]'' (1999). She shares screenwriting credit with [[Yousry Nasrallah]] for his film ''[[El Medina (film)|El Medina]]'' (2000).<ref>Mayne, Judith (2005). ''Claire Denis'', p. 132. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago. {{ISBN|0-252-02991-7}}.</ref> She also worked as an assistant director with [[Wim Wenders]] on ''[[Paris, Texas (film)|Paris, Texas]]'' (1984) and ''[[Wings of Desire]]'' (1987), and with [[Jim Jarmusch]] on ''[[Down by Law (film)|Down by Law]]'' (1986).\n\nIn 2005 she was a member of the jury at the [[27th Moscow International Film Festival]].<ref name=\"Moscow2005\">{{cite web|url=http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/archives/?year=2005 |title=27th Moscow International Film Festival (2005) |accessdate=9 April 2013 |work=MIFF |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130403124619/http://moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/archives/?year=2005 |archivedate=3 April 2013 |df=dmy }}</ref>\n\nHer 2013 film ''[[Bastards (2013 film)|Bastards]]'' was screened in the [[Un Certain Regard]] section at the [[2013 Cannes Film Festival]].<ref name=\"Cannes2013\">{{cite web|url=http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/article/59652.html |title=2013 Official Selection|date=30 April 2013|accessdate=30 April 2013|work=Cannes}}</ref>\n\nIn 2013 she was awarded Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award at the Stockholm Film Festival.\n\nDenis announced in 2015 that she was partnering with [[Zadie Smith]] for her English-language debut film, ''[[High Life (2018 film)|High Life]]''. The film, released in 2018, was her first English-language spoken film, with [[Robert Pattinson]] cast as the lead.<ref>https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/10/high-life-review-robert-pattinson-claire-denis-sci-fi-drama-astronauts</ref>\n\n==Style==\nThe majority of Denis' oeuvre uses location work over studio work. She sometimes places her actors as if they were positioned for still photography. She uses longer takes with a stationary camera and frames things in long shot, resulting in fewer close ups.\nHowever, Denis' cinematic and topical focus always remains relentlessly on the faces and bodies of her protagonists. The subject's body in space, and how the particular terrain, weather, and color of the landscape influences and interacts with the human subjects of her films maintains cinematic dominance.\n\nTim Palmer explores Denis' work as a self-declared formalist and brilliant film stylist per se; an approach the filmmaker herself has declared many times in interview to be as much about sounds, textures, colors and compositions as broader thematic concerns or social commitments.<ref>Palmer, Tim (2011). ''Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema'', Wesleyan University Press, Middleton CT. {{ISBN|0-8195-6827-9}}.</ref>\n\n== References ==\n* Michael Omasta, Isabella Reicher (Ed.), ''Claire Denis. Trouble Every Day'', FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen, Vienna 2006, {{ISBN|3-901644-15-6}}\n* Levilson Reis, \"An 'other' scene, an 'other' point of view: France's colonial family romance, Prot\u00e9e's postcolonial fantasy, and Claire Denis' 'screen' memories.\" ''Studies in European Cinema'', vol. 10, nos. 2\u20133, 2013, pp.&nbsp;119\u2013131. [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/seci.10.2-3.119_1#.VPKojpU5Drd DOI: 10.1386/seci.10.2-3.119_1].\n* [https://web.archive.org/web/20101123031739/http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/35/claire_denis_interview.html ''\"L'intrus: An Interview with Claire Denis\"''] by Damon Smith (''Senses of Cinema'').\n* [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/50/claire-denis-interview/ ''\"Dancing Reveals So Much: An Interview with Claire Denis\"''] by Darren Hughes (''Senses of Cinema'').\n* [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/great-directors/claire-denis/ ''\"Great Directors: Claire Denis\"''] by Samantha Dinning (''Senses of Cinema'').\n* [[Martine Beugnet]], ''Claire Denis'', 2004, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York.\n* Judith Mayne, ''Claire Denis'', 2005, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.\n* [http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/spectacularly-intimate-an-interview-with-claire-denis Spectacularly Intimate: An Interview with Claire Denis], by Kevin Lee, (''MUBI'').\n* Marcelline Block, ''Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema'', 2008, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne.\n* James Phillips, ''Cinematic Thinking: Philosophical Approaches to the New Cinema'', 2008, Stanford University Press, Stanford.\n* [http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc54.2012/IanMurphyDenis/index.html \"Feeling and form in the films of Claire Denis\"] by Ian Murphy (''Jump Cut'')\n* [http://courses2.ecuad.ca/pluginfile.php/21845/mod_resource/content/1/Interview%20with%20Claire%20Denis.pdf \"Moving Toward the Unknown Other: An Interview with Claire Denis\"]{{Dead link|date=July 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} by Megan Ratner (''Cineaste'')\n* [https://archive.is/20121211175404/http://z3950.muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/lesprit_createur/v042/42.3.hayward.html Claire Denis's \"Post-colonial\" Films and Desiring Bodies] by Susan Hayward (''L'Esprit Cr\u00e9ateur'')\n* 'Enfolding Surfaces, Spaces and Materials: Claire Denis' Neo-Baroque Textures of Sensation' by Saige Walton (Screening the Past) [http://www.screeningthepast.com/2013/10/enfolding-surfaces-spaces-and-materials-claire-denis%e2%80%99-neo-baroque-textures-of-sensation/]\n*[http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/cteq/gestures-of-intimacy-claire-denis-i-cant-sleep/ \"Gestures of Intimacy: Claire Denis' I Can't Sleep\"] by Saige Walton (Senses of Cinema)\n* [http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/cteq/white-material/ \"White Material\"] by Marcin Wisniewski (Senses of Cinema)\n\n=History of Cameroon=\n==Colonization==\n[[Image:Cameroon boundary changes.PNG|thumb|right|'''Cameroon over time'''\n{{legend|darkorange|German [[Kamerun]]}}\n{{legend|red|British [[Cameroons]]}}\n{{legend|blue|French [[Cameroun]]}}\n{{legend|green|Republic of [[Cameroon]]}}\n]]\n[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 163-051, Kamerun, Weihnachten am Mungo.jpg|thumb|German Settlers celebrating [[Christmas]] in Kamerun]]\n\nBeginning on July 5, 1884, all of present-day Cameroon and parts of several of its neighbours became [[German colonial empire|a German colony]], [[Kamerun]], with a capital first at [[Buea]] and later at [[Yaound\u00e9]].\n\nThe imperial German government made substantial investments in the infrastructure of Cameroon, including the extensive [[railway]]s, such as the 160-metre [[Japoma Bridge|single-span railway bridge]] on the South [[Sanaga River]] branch. Hospitals were opened all over the colony, including two major hospitals at [[Douala]], one of which specialised in tropical diseases. However, the indigenous peoples proved reluctant to work on these projects, so the Germans instigated a harsh and unpopular system of [[unfree labour|forced labour]].<ref>DeLancey and DeLancey 125.</ref> In fact, [[Jesko von Puttkamer]] was relieved of duty as governor of the colony due to his untoward actions toward the native Cameroonians.<ref>DeLancey and DeLancey 226.</ref> In 1911 at the [[Treaty of Fez]] after the [[Agadir Crisis]], France ceded a nearly 300,000&nbsp;km\u00b2 portion of the territory of [[French Equatorial Africa]] to Kamerun which became [[Neukamerun]], while Germany ceded a smaller area in the north in present-day [[Chad]] to France.\n\nIn [[World War I]], the British invaded Cameroon from [[Nigeria]] in 1914 in the [[Kamerun campaign]], with the last German fort in the country [[Siege of Mora|surrendering]] in February 1916.  After the war, this colony was partitioned between the United Kingdom and France under June 28, 1919 [[League of Nations mandate#Class B mandates|League of Nations mandates (Class B)]]. France gained the larger geographical share, transferred Neukamerun back to neighboring French colonies, and ruled the rest from Yaound\u00e9 as [[French Cameroun|Cameroun]] (French Cameroons). Britain's territory, a strip bordering [[Nigeria]] from the sea to [[Lake Chad]], with an equal population was ruled from [[Lagos]] as [[Cameroons]] (British Cameroons). German administrators were allowed to once again run the plantations of the southwestern coastal area. A British parliamentary publication, ''Report on the British Sphere of the Cameroons'' (May 1922, p.&nbsp;62-8), reports that the German plantations there were \"as a whole . . . wonderful examples of industry, based on solid scientific knowledge. The natives have been taught discipline and have come to realize what can be achieved by industry. Large numbers who return to their villages take up cocoa or other cultivation on their own account, thus increasing the general prosperity of the country.\"        \n\n==Towards Independence (1955-1960)==\nOn 18 December 1956, the outlawed [[Union of the Peoples of Cameroon]] (UPC), based largely among the [[Bamileke]] and [[Bassa people (Cameroon)|Bassa]] ethnic groups, began an armed struggle for independence in French Cameroon. This rebellion continued, with diminishing intensity, even after independence until 1961.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://uca.edu/politicalscience/dadm-project/sub-saharan-africa-region/britishfrench-cameroon-1948-1961/|title=8.  British/French Cameroon (1948-1961)|publisher=}}</ref> Some tens of thousands died during this conflict.<ref>Eckhardt, William, in World Military and Social Expenditures 1987-88 (12th ed., 1987) by [[Ruth Leger Sivard]].</ref><ref>The Cambridge History of Africa (1986), ed. J. D. Fage and R. Oliver</ref>\n\n[[Cameroonian parliamentary election, 1956|Legislative elections]] were held on 23 December 1956 and the resulting Assembly passed a decree on 16 April 1957 which made French Cameroon a State. It took back its former status of associated territory as a member of the French Union. Its inhabitants became Cameroonian citizens, Cameroonian institutions were created under the sign of parliamentary democracy.  On 12 June 1958 the Legislative Assembly of French Cameroon asked the French government to: 'Accord independence to the State of Cameroon at the ends of their trusteeship. Transfer every competence related to the running of internal affairs of Cameroon to Cameroonians`. On 19 October 1958 France recognized the right of her United Nations trust territory of the Cameroons to choose independence.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1958/10/20/archives/cameroons-gets-freedom-pledge-paris-backs-independence-for-african.html?sq=Cameroon%2520independence&scp=1&st=p|title=CAMEROONS GETS FREEDOM PLEDGE; Paris Backs Independence for African Trust Territory After Interim Self-Rule|first=Thomas F.|last=Brady|date=20 October 1958|publisher=|via=NYTimes.com}}</ref> On 24 October 1958 the Legislative Assembly of French Cameroon solemnly proclaimed the desire of Cameroonians to see their country accede full independence on 1 January 1960. It enjoined the government of French Cameroon to ask France to inform the General Assembly of the United Nations, to abrogate the trusteeship accord concomitant with the independence of French Cameroon. On 12 November 1958 having accorded French Cameroon total internal autonomy and thinking that this transfer no longer permitted it to assume its responsibilities over the trust territory for an unspecified period, the government of France asked the United Nations to grant the wish of French Cameroonians. On 5 December 1958 the United Nations\u2019 General Assembly took note of the French government\u2019s declaration according to which French Cameroon, which was under French administration, would gain independence on 1 January 1960, thus marking an end to the trusteeship period.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cameroon50.cm/en/history-and-presentation/167-tutelle-a-independance.html |title=From trusteeship to independence (1946 \u2013 1960) |accessdate=2011-12-30 |deadurl=bot: unknown |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20121027131756/http://www.cameroon50.cm/en/history-and-presentation/167-tutelle-a-independance.html |archivedate=27 October 2012 |df= }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Question of the future of the Trust Territories of the Cameroons under French administration and the Cameroons under United Kingdom administration|id=A/RES/1282(XIII) |url=https://undocs.org/A/RES/1282(XIII)|website=undocs.org|publisher=United Nations|accessdate=17 March 2017|language=en}}</ref> On 13 March 1959 the United Nations\u2019 General Assembly resolved that the UN Trusteeship Agreement with France for French Cameroon would end when French Cameroon became independent on 1 January 1961.<ref>{{cite web|title=The future of the Trust Territories of the Cameroons under French administration|id=A/RES/1349(XIII) |url=https://undocs.org/A/RES/1349(XIII)|website=undocs.org|publisher=United Nations|accessdate=17 March 2017|language=en}}</ref>\n\n==Cameroon after independence==\n[[File:Flag of Cameroon (1961-1975).svg|thumbnail|1961\u20131975]]\n[[File:Monument Reunification.jpg|thumb|[[Reunification Monument (Cameroon)|Reunification Monument]] in [[Yaound\u00e9]]]]\n\nFrench Cameroon achieved independence on January 1, 1960 as '''La Republique du Cameroun'''. After Guinea, it was the second of France's colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa to become independent. On 21 February 1960, the new nation held a constitutional referendum. On 5 May 1960, [[Ahmadou Ahidjo]] became president. On 11 February 1961, a [[plebiscite]] organised by the United Nations was held in the British controlled part of Cameroon (British Northern and British Southern Cameroons). The pleibiscite was to choose between free association with an independent Nigerian state or re-unification with the independent Republic of Cameroun. On 12 February 1961,the results of the plebiscite were released and British Northern Cameroons attached itself to Nigeria, while the southern part voted for reunification with the Republic Of Cameroon. To negotiate the terms of this union, the [[Foumban Conference]] was held on 16\u201321 July 1961. [[John Ngu Foncha]], the leader of the [[Kamerun National Democratic Party]] . The British Southern Cameroons was to be referred to as West Cameroon and the French part as East Cameroon. Buea became the capital of the now West Cameroon while Yaounde doubled as the federal capital and East Cameroon. Ahidjo accepted the federation, thinking it was a step towards a unitary state. On 14 August 1961, the federal constitution was adopted, with Ahidjo as president. Foncha became the prime minister of west Cameroon and vice president of the Federal Republic of Cameroon. On 1 September 1966 the [[Cameroon National Union]] (CNU) was created by the union of political parties of East and West Cameroon. Most decisions about West Cameroon were taken without consultation, which led to widespread feelings  amongst the West Cameroonian public that although they voted for reunification, what they were getting is absorption or domination\".<ref>The Untold Story of Reunification: (1955-1961)</ref>\n\nOn October 1, 1961, the largely Muslim northern two-thirds of [[British Cameroons]] voted to join Nigeria; the largely Christian southern third, [[Southern Cameroons]], voted, in a referendum, to join with the Republic of Cameroon to form the '''Federal Republic of Cameroon'''. The formerly French and British regions each maintained substantial [[Self-governance|autonomy]]. Ahidjo was chosen president of the federation in 1961. In 1962, the Francs CFA became the official currency in Cameroon. \n\nAhidjo, relying on a pervasive internal security apparatus, outlawed all political parties but his own in 1966. He successfully suppressed the continuing UPC rebellion, capturing the last important rebel leader in 1970. On 28 March 1970 Ahidjo renewed his mandate as the supreme magistracy; [[Solomon Tandeng Muna]]  became Vice President. In 1972, a new constitution replaced the federation with a unitary state called the '''United Republic of Cameroon'''. \n\nOn 30 June 1975 [[Paul Biya]] was appointed vice president. Ahidjo resigned as president in 1982 and was constitutionally succeeded by his [[Prime Minister]], [[Paul Biya]], a career official. Ahidjo later regretted his choice of successors, but his supporters failed to overthrow Biya in a [[Cameroonian Palace Guard Revolt|1984 coup]]. Biya won single-candidate elections in 1983 and 1984 when the country was again named the '''Republic of Cameroon'''.  Biya has remained in power, winning flawed multiparty elections in 1992, 1997, 2004 and 2011. His [[Cameroon People's Democratic Movement]] (CPDM) party holds a sizeable majority in the legislature.\n\nBy April 6, 1984, the country witnessed its first coup d'\u00e9tat headed by col. Issa Adoum.\nAt about 3 am rebel forces mostly of the Republican guard under the orders of colonel Ibrahim Saleh, attempted to '''unseat Biya's government.''' The rebels took charge of the Yaounde airport, national radio station and announced the takeover of government. They attacked the presidency. The civilian northerner who was manager of FONADER '''Issa Adoum''' was expected to become the new interim president. Unfortunately, many reasons led to its failure.\nThe principal coup plotters had been arrested by April 10, 1984 and President Biya addressed the nation that calm had been restored.\n\nOn August 15, 1984, [[Lake Monoun]] exploded in a [[limnic eruption]] that released [[carbon dioxide]], [[Asphyxia|suffocating]] 37 people to death. On August 21, 1986, another limnic eruption at [[Lake Nyos]] killed as many as 1,800 people and 3,500 livestock.  The two disasters are the only recorded instances of limnic eruptions.\n\nIn May 2014, in the wake of the [[Chibok schoolgirl kidnapping]], Presidents [[Paul Biya]] of Cameroon and [[Idriss D\u00e9by]] of [[Chad]] announced they were waging war on [[Boko Haram]], and deployed troops to the Nigerian border.<ref>http://reliefweb.int/report/nigeria/cameroon-chad-deploy-troops-fight-boko-haram</ref>\n\n=May 1968 Events in France=\nThe volatile period of [[civil unrest]] in [[France]] during May 1968 was punctuated by demonstrations and massive [[general strike]]s as well as the [[Occupation (protest)|occupation]] of universities and [[Occupation of factories|factories]] across France. At the height of its fervor, it brought the entire [[economy of France]] to a virtual halt.<ref name=\"SitInt12\"/> The protests reached such a point that political leaders feared [[civil war]] or [[French Revolution (disambiguation)|revolution]]; the national government itself momentarily ceased to function after President [[Charles de Gaulle]] secretly fled France for a few hours. The protests spurred an artistic movement, with songs, imaginative graffiti, posters, and slogans.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.deljehier.levillage.org/mai_68.htm |title=Mai 68 - 40 ans d\u00e9j\u00e0 |publisher=}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/arts-theatre-culture/western-art/museum-establishment-and-contemporary-art-politics-artistic-display-france-after-1968?format=PB|title=The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art: The Politics of Artistic Display in France after 1968|last=DeRoo|first=Rebecca J.|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2014|isbn=9781107656918|location=|pages=}}</ref>\n\n\"May 68\" affected French society for decades afterward. It is considered to this day as a cultural, social and moral turning point in the history of the country. As Alain Geismar\u2014one of the leaders of the time\u2014later pointed out, the movement succeeded \"as a social revolution, not as a political one\".<ref name=\"Erlanger 2008\"/>\n\nThe unrest began with a series of [[Student protest|student occupation protests]] against [[anticapitalism|capitalism]], [[consumerism]], [[American imperialism]] and traditional institutions, values and order. It then spread to factories with [[Strike action|strikes]] involving 11 million workers, more than 22% of the total [[Demographics of France|population of France]] at the time, for two continuous weeks.<ref name=\"SitInt12\">{{cite web |url=http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/beginning.html |title=Situationist International Online |publisher=}}</ref> The movement was characterized by its spontaneous and [[Decentralization#Government decentralization|de-centralized]] [[wildcat strike action|wildcat]] disposition; this created contrast and sometimes even conflict between itself and the establishment, [[trade union]]s and workers' parties.<ref name=\"SitInt12\"/> It was the largest general strike ever attempted in France, and the first nationwide wildcat general strike.<ref name=\"SitInt12\"/>\n\nThe student occupations and wildcat general strikes initiated across France were met with forceful confrontation by university administrators and police. The de Gaulle administration's attempts to quell those strikes by [[Riot control|police action]] only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with the police in Paris's [[Latin Quarter]], followed by the spread of general strikes and occupations throughout France. De Gaulle fled to a French military base in Germany, and after returning dissolved the [[French National Assembly|National Assembly]], and called for [[French legislative election, 1968|new parliamentary elections]] for 23 June 1968. Violence evaporated almost as quickly as it arose. Workers went back to their jobs, and when the elections were finally held in June, the Gaullist party emerged even stronger than before.\n\n==Events before May==\nIn February 1968, the [[French Communist Party|French Communists]] and [[French Socialist Party|French Socialists]] formed an electoral alliance. Communists had long supported Socialist candidates in elections, but in the \"February Declaration\" the two parties agreed to attempt to form a joint government to replace [[President of France|President]] Charles de Gaulle and his [[Gaullist Party]].{{r|mendel196901}}\n\nOn 22 March far-left groups, a small number of prominent poets and musicians, and 150 students occupied an administration building at [[Paris X University Nanterre|Paris University at Nanterre]] and held a meeting in the university council room dealing with class discrimination in French society and the political bureaucracy that controlled the university's funding. The university's administration called the police, who surrounded the university. After the publication of their wishes, the students left the building without any trouble. After this first record some leaders of what was named the \"[[Movement of 22 March]]\" were called together by the disciplinary committee of the university.\n\n==Events of May==\n\n===Student strikes===\n<gallery mode=\"packed\" heights=400px>\nFile:SorbonneParis041130.JPG|alt=Public square of [[Sorbonne (building)|the Sorbonne]], in the Latin Quarter of Paris]]|Public square of [[Sorbonne (building)|the Sorbonne]], in the Latin Quarter of Paris]]\n</gallery>\n\nFollowing months of conflicts between students and authorities at the Nanterre campus of the [[University of Paris]] (now [[Paris Nanterre University]]), the administration shut down the university on 2 May 1968.<ref>Rotman, pp. 10&ndash;11; Damamme, Gobille, Matonti & Pudal, ed., p. 190.</ref> Students at the Sorbonne campus of the University of Paris (today [[Sorbonne University]]) in Paris met on 3 May to protest against the closure and the threatened expulsion of several students at Nanterre.<ref>Damamme, Gobille, Matonti & Pudal, ed., p. 190.</ref> On Monday, 6 May, the national student union, the [[Union Nationale des \u00c9tudiants de France]] (UNEF)\u2014still the largest student union in France today\u2014and the union of university teachers called a march to protest against the police invasion of Sorbonne. More than 20,000 students, teachers and supporters marched towards the Sorbonne, still sealed off by the police, who charged, wielding their batons, as soon as the marchers approached. While the crowd dispersed, some began to create barricades out of whatever was at hand, while others threw paving stones, forcing the police to retreat for a time. The police then responded with tear gas and charged the crowd again. Hundreds more students were arrested.\n\n<gallery mode=\"packed\" heights=400px>\nFile:Graffito_in_University_of_Lyon_classroom_during_student_revolt_of_1968.jpg|alt=Graffiti in a classroom|Graffiti in a classroom\nFile:University_of_Lyon_Law_School_with_graffiti_June_1968.jpg|alt=\"Vive De Gaulle\" is one of the graffiti on this Law School building.|\"Vive De Gaulle\" is one of the graffiti on this Law School building.\n</gallery>\n\nHigh school student unions spoke in support of the riots on 6 May. The next day, they joined the students, teachers and increasing numbers of young workers who gathered at the [[Arc de Triomphe]] to demand that:\n# All criminal charges against arrested students be dropped,\n# the police leave the university, and\n# the authorities reopen Nanterre and Sorbonne.\n\nNegotiations broke down, and students returned to their campuses after a false report that the government had agreed to reopen them, only to discover the police still occupying the schools. This led to a near revolutionary fervor among the students.\n\nOn Friday, 10 May, another huge crowd congregated on the [[Rive Gauche]]. When the [[Compagnies R\u00e9publicaines de S\u00e9curit\u00e9]] again blocked them from crossing the river, the crowd again threw up barricades, which the police then attacked at 2:15 in the morning after negotiations once again floundered. The confrontation, which produced hundreds of arrests and injuries, lasted until dawn of the following day. The events were broadcast on radio as they occurred and the aftermath was shown on television the following day. Allegations were made that the police had participated in the riots, through ''[[agents provocateurs]]'', by burning cars and throwing [[Molotov cocktail]]s.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3476,36-885493,0.html |title=Michel Rocard : |work=Le Monde.fr}}</ref>\n\nThe government's heavy-handed reaction brought on a wave of sympathy for the strikers. Many of the nation's more mainstream singers and poets joined after the police brutality came to light. American artists also began voicing support of the strikers. The major left union federations, the [[Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration G\u00e9n\u00e9rale du Travail]] (CGT) and the [[Force Ouvri\u00e8re]] (CGT-FO), called a one-day general strike and demonstration for Monday, 13 May.\n\nWell over a million people marched through Paris on that day; the police stayed largely out of sight. Prime Minister [[Georges Pompidou]] personally announced the release of the prisoners and the reopening of the Sorbonne. However, the surge of strikes did not recede. Instead, the protesters became even more active.\n\nWhen the Sorbonne reopened, students occupied it and declared it an autonomous \"people's university\". Public opinion at first supported the students, but quickly turned against them after their leaders, invited to appear on national television, \"behaved like irresponsible utopianists who wanted to destroy the 'consumer society.'\"{{r|dogan1984}} Nonetheless, in the weeks that followed, approximately 401 popular action committees were set up in Paris and elsewhere to take up grievances against the government and French society, including the [[Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne|Sorbonne Occupation Committee]].\n\n===Workers join the students===\nIn the following days, workers began occupying factories, starting with a sit-down strike at the [[Sud Aviation]] plant near the city of [[Nantes]] on 14 May, then another strike at a [[Renault]] parts plant near [[Rouen]], which spread to the Renault manufacturing complexes at Flins in the Seine Valley and the Paris suburb of [[Boulogne-Billancourt]]. Workers had occupied roughly fifty factories by 16 May, and 200,000 were on strike by 17 May. That figure snowballed to two million workers on strike the following day and then ten million, or roughly two-thirds of the French workforce, on strike the following week.\n\n[[File:French workers with placard during occupation of their factory 1968.jpg|thumb|left|Strikers in [[Southern France]] with a sign reading \"Factory Occupied by the Workers.\" Behind them is a list of demands, June 1968.]]\n\nThese strikes were not led by the union movement; on the contrary, the CGT tried to contain this spontaneous outbreak of militancy by channeling it into a struggle for higher wages and other economic demands. Workers put forward a broader, more political and more radical agenda, demanding the ousting of the government and President de Gaulle and attempting, in some cases, to run their factories. When the trade union leadership negotiated a 35% increase in the minimum wage, a 7% wage increase for other workers, and half normal pay for the time on strike with the major employers' associations, the workers occupying their factories refused to return to work and jeered their union leaders.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27424054|title=Enrag\u00e9s and situationists in the occupation movement, France, May '1968|last=1944-|first=Vi\u00e9net, Ren\u00e9,|date=1992|publisher=Autonomedia|year=|isbn=0936756799|location=New York|pages=91|oclc=27424054}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.de/books?id=6IjRojUCS8gC&pg=PA195|title=Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968|last=Singer|first=Daniel|date=2002|publisher=South End Press|year=|isbn=9780896086821|location=|pages=184\u2013185|language=en}}</ref> In fact, in the May '68 movement there was a lot of \"anti-unionist euphoria,\"<ref name=\"Derrida91MagLitEwald\">[[Derrida|Derrida, Jacques]] (1991) ''\"A 'Madness' Must Watch Over Thinking\"'', interview with [[Francois Ewald]] for ''Le Magazine Litteraire'', March 1991, republished in ''[[Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994]]'' (1995).pp.347-9</ref> against the mainstream unions, the CGT, FO and CFDT, that were more willing to compromise with the powers that be than enact the will of the base.<ref name=\"SitInt12\"/>\n\nOn 24 May two people died at the hands of the out of control rioters, in Lyon Police Inspector Rene Lacroix died when he crushed by a driverless truck sent careering into police lines by rioters and in Paris Phillipe Metherion, 26, was stabbed to death during an argument among demonstrators.<ref>https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3rNVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GOEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6508%2C6329247</ref>\n\nOn 25 May and 26 May, the [[Grenelle agreements]] were conducted at the [[Minister of Social Affairs (France)|Ministry of Social Affairs]]. They provided for an increase of the minimum wage by 25% and of average salaries by 10%. These offers were rejected, and the strike went on. The working class and top intellectuals were joining in solidarity for a major change in workers' rights.\n\nOn 27 May, the meeting of the UNEF, the most outstanding of the events of May 1968, proceeded and gathered 30,000 to 50,000 people in the [[Stade Sebastien Charlety]]. The meeting was extremely militant with speakers demanding the government be overthrown and elections held.\n\nThe Socialists saw an opportunity to act as a compromise between de Gaulle and the Communists. On 28 May, [[Fran\u00e7ois Mitterrand]] of the [[Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left]] declared that \"there is no more state\" and stated that he was ready to form a new government. He had received a surprisingly high 45% of the vote in the [[French presidential election, 1965|1965 presidential election]]. On 29 May, [[Pierre Mend\u00e8s France]] also stated that he was ready to form a new government; unlike Mitterrand he was willing to include the Communists. Although the Socialists did not have the Communists' ability to form large street demonstrations, they had more than 20% of the country's support.{{r|dogan1984}}{{r|mendel196901}}\n\n===De Gaulle flees===\n\nOn the morning of 29 May, de Gaulle postponed the meeting of the [[Council of Ministers of France|Council of Ministers]] scheduled for that day and secretly removed his personal papers from [[\u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace]]. He told his son-in-law [[Alain de Boissieu]], \"I do not want to give them a chance to attack the \u00c9lys\u00e9e. It would be regrettable if blood were shed in my personal defense. I have decided to leave: nobody attacks an empty palace.\" De Gaulle refused Pompidou's request that he dissolve the [[National Assembly of France|National Assembly]] as he believed that their party, the Gaullists, would lose the resulting election. At 11:00&nbsp;a.m., he told Pompidou, \"I am the past; you are the future; I embrace you.\"<ref name=\"dogan1984\">{{Cite journal |last=Dogan |first=Mattei |title=How Civil War Was Avoided in France |journal=International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique |year=1984 |volume=5 |issue=3 |pages=245\u2013277 |jstor=1600894|doi=10.1177/019251218400500304}}</ref>\n\nThe government announced that de Gaulle was going to his country home in [[Colombey-les-Deux-\u00c9glises]] before returning the next day, and rumors spread that he would prepare his resignation speech there. The presidential helicopter did not arrive in Colombey, however, and de Gaulle had told no one in the government where he was going. For more than six hours the world did not know where the French president was.<ref name=\"singer2002\">{{cite book |title=Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968 |publisher=South End Press |last=Singer |first=Daniel |year=2002 |url=https://books.google.com/?id=6IjRojUCS8gC&pg=PA195 |isbn=978-0-89608-682-1 |pages=195, 198\u2013201}}</ref> The canceling of the ministerial meeting, and the president's mysterious disappearance, stunned the French,{{r|dogan1984}} including Pompidou, who shouted, \"He has fled the country!\"<ref name=\"dogan2005\">{{cite book |title=Political Mistrust and the Discrediting of Politicians |publisher=Brill |author=Dogan, Matt\u00e9i |year=2005 |pages=218 |isbn=9004145303}}</ref>\n\nThe national government had effectively ceased to function. [[\u00c9douard Balladur]] later wrote that as prime minister, Pompidou \"by himself was the whole government\" as most officials were \"an incoherent group of confabulators\" who believed that revolution would soon occur. A friend of the prime minister offered him a weapon, saying, \"You will need it\"; Pompidou advised him to go home. One official reportedly began burning documents, while another asked an aide how far they could flee by automobile should revolutionaries seize fuel supplies. Withdrawing money from banks became difficult, gasoline for private automobiles was unavailable, and some people tried to obtain private planes or fake [[National identity card (France)|national identity card]]s.{{r|dogan1984}}\n\nPompidou unsuccessfully requested that military radar be used to follow de Gaulle's two helicopters, but soon learned that he had gone to the headquarters of the French military in Germany, in [[Baden-Baden]], to meet General [[Jacques Massu]]. Massu persuaded the discouraged de Gaulle to return to France; now knowing that he had the military's support, de Gaulle rescheduled the meeting of the Council of Ministers for the next day, 30 May,{{r|dogan1984}} and returned to Colombey by 6:00&nbsp;p.m.{{r|singer2002}} [[Yvonne de Gaulle|His wife Yvonne]] gave the family jewels to [[Philippe de Gaulle|their son and daughter-in-law]]\u2014who stayed in Baden for a few more days\u2014for safekeeping, however, indicating that the de Gaulles still considered Germany a possible refuge. Massu kept as a [[Classified information|state secret]] de Gaulle's loss of confidence until others disclosed it in 1982; until then most observers believed that his disappearance was intended to remind the French people of what they might lose. Although the disappearance was real and not intended as motivation, it indeed had such an effect on France.{{r|dogan1984}}\n\n[[File:Pierre Messmer01.JPG|thumb|upright|[[Pierre Messmer]]]]\n\nOn 30 May, 400,000 to 500,000 protesters (many more than the 50,000 the police were expecting) led by the CGT marched through Paris, chanting: \"''Adieu, de Gaulle!''\" (\"Farewell, de Gaulle!\"). [[Maurice Grimaud]], head of the [[Prefecture of Police|Paris police]], played a key role in avoiding revolution by both speaking to and spying on the revolutionaries, and by carefully avoiding the use of force. While Communist leaders later denied that they had planned an armed uprising, and extreme militants only comprised 2% of the populace, they had overestimated de Gaulle's strength as shown by his escape to Germany.{{r|dogan1984}} (One scholar, otherwise skeptical of the French Communists' willingness to maintain democracy after forming a government, has claimed that the \"moderate, nonviolent and essentially antirevolutionary\" Communists opposed revolution because they sincerely believed that the party must come to power through legal elections, not armed conflict that might provoke harsh repression from political opponents.)<ref name=\"mendel196901\">{{cite journal |jstor=1406452 |title=Why the French Communists Stopped the Revolution |last=Mendel |first=Arthur P. |journal=The Review of Politics |date=January 1969 |volume=31 |issue=1 |pages=3\u201327 |doi=10.1017/s0034670500008913}}</ref>\n\nThe movement was largely centered around the [[Paris metropolitan area]], and not elsewhere. Had the rebellion occupied key public buildings in Paris, the government would have had to use force to retake them. The resulting casualties could have incited a revolution, with the military moving from the provinces to retake Paris [[Paris Commune|as in 1871]]. [[Minister of Defence (France)|Minister of Defence]] Pierre Messmer and [[Chief of the Defence Staff (France)|Chief of the Defence Staff]] Michel Fourquet prepared for such an action, and Pompidou had ordered tanks to [[Issy-les-Moulineaux]].{{r|dogan1984}} While the military was free of revolutionary sentiment, using an army mostly of conscripts the same age as the revolutionaries would have been very dangerous for the government.{{r|mendel196901}}{{r|singer2002}} A survey taken immediately after the crisis found that 20% of Frenchmen would have supported a revolution, 23% would have opposed it, and 57% would have avoided physical participation in the conflict. 33% would have fought a military intervention, while only 5% would have supported it and a majority of the country would have avoided any action.{{r|dogan1984}}\n\nAt 2:30&nbsp;p.m. on 30 May, Pompidou persuaded de Gaulle to dissolve the National Assembly and call a new election by threatening to resign. At 4:30&nbsp;p.m., de Gaulle broadcast his own refusal to resign. He announced an election, scheduled for 23 June, and ordered workers to return to work, threatening to institute a [[state of emergency]] if they did not. The government had leaked to the media that the army was outside Paris. Immediately after the speech, about 800,000 supporters marched through the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es waving the [[Flag of France|national flag]]; the Gaullists had planned the rally for several days, which attracted a crowd of diverse ages, occupations, and politics. The Communists agreed to the election, and the threat of revolution was over.{{r|dogan1984}}{{r|singer2002}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://membres.lycos.fr/mai68/degaulle/degaulle30mai1968.htm |title=Lycos |publisher= |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090422060607/http://membres.lycos.fr/mai68/degaulle/degaulle30mai1968.htm |archivedate=22 April 2009 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>\n\n==Events of June and July==\n\nFrom that point, the revolutionary feeling of the students and workers faded away. Workers gradually returned to work or were ousted from their plants by the police. The national student union called off street demonstrations. The government banned a number of leftist organizations. The police retook the Sorbonne on 16 June. Contrary to de Gaulle's fears, his party won the greatest victory in French parliamentary history in the [[French legislative election, 1968|legislative election held in June]], taking 353 of 486 seats versus the Communists' 34 and the Socialists' 57.{{r|dogan1984}} The February Declaration and its promise to include Communists in government likely hurt the Socialists in the election. Their opponents cited the example of the [[National Front (Czechoslovakia)|Czechoslovak National Front]] government of 1945, which led to a [[Czechoslovak coup d'\u00e9tat of 1948|Communist takeover of the country]] in 1948. Socialist voters were divided; in a February 1968 survey a majority had favored allying with the Communists, but 44% believed that Communists would attempt to seize power once in government. (30% of Communist voters agreed.){{r|mendel196901}}\n\nOn [[Bastille Day]], there were resurgent street demonstrations in the Latin Quarter, led by socialist students, leftists and communists wearing red arm-bands and anarchists wearing black arm-bands. The Paris police and the Compagnies R\u00e9publicaines de S\u00e9curit\u00e9 harshly responded starting around 10 pm and continuing through the night, on the streets, in police vans, at police stations, and in hospitals where many wounded were taken. There was, as a result, much bloodshed among students and tourists there for the evening's festivities. No charges were filed against police or demonstrators, but the governments of Britain and [[West Germany]] filed formal protests, including for the indecent assault of two English schoolgirls by police in a police station.\n\nDespite the size of de Gaulle's triumph, it was not a personal one. The post-crisis survey showed that a majority of the country saw de Gaulle as too old, too self-centered, too authoritarian, too conservative, and too [[anti-Americanism|anti-American]]. As the [[French constitutional referendum, 1969|April 1969 referendum]] would show, the country was ready for \"Gaullism without de Gaulle\".{{r|dogan1984}}\n\n==Slogans and graffiti==\n[[File:Situationist.jpg|thumb|May 1968 slogan. Paris. \"It is forbidden to forbid.\"]]\n\nA few examples:<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bopsecrets.org/French/graffiti.htm |title=Graffiti de Mai 1968 |publisher=}}</ref>\n*''Il est interdit d'interdire'' (\"It is forbidden to forbid\").<ref name=\"larousse.fr\">{{cite web|url=http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/divers/%C3%A9v%C3%A9nements_de_mai_1968/131140|title=Encyclop\u00e9die Larousse en ligne - \u00e9v\u00e9nements de mai 1968|author=\u00c9ditions Larousse|publisher=|accessdate=29 September 2015}}</ref>\n*''Jouissez sans entraves'' (\"Enjoy without hindrance\").<ref name=\"larousse.fr\"/>\n*''\u00c9lections, pi\u00e8ge \u00e0 con'' (\"Elections, a trap for idiots\").<ref>{{cite web|url=http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/l-observateur-de-la-gauche-radicale/20120228.OBS2484/pour-la-gauche-radicale-elections-piege-a-cons.html|title=Pour la gauche radicale, \"\u00e9lections, pi\u00e8ge \u00e0 cons\" ?|author=Par Sylvain BoulouqueVoir tous ses articles|date=28 February 2012|work=L'Obs|accessdate=29 September 2015}}</ref>\n* ''[[Compagnies R\u00e9publicaines de S\u00e9curit\u00e9|CRS]] = [[Waffen-SS|SS]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lexpress.fr/informations/crs-ss_628697.html|title=CRS = SS|publisher=|accessdate=29 September 2015}}</ref>\n* ''Je suis Marxiste\u2014tendance Groucho''. (\"I'm a [[Marxism|Marxist]]\u2014of the [[Groucho Marx|Groucho]] tendency.\")<ref>{{cite book |title=The Concise Dictionary of Foreign Quotations |last=Lejeune |first=Anthony |year=2001 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=0953330001 |page=74 |url=https://books.google.com/?id=3KLz2QEdQaoC&pg=PA74 |accessdate=1 December 2010}}</ref>\n*''Marx, Mao, [[Herbert Marcuse|Marcuse]]!''<ref>{{cite book |title=Dialectical Imagination |url=https://books.google.com/?id=tTyHOxeCiG4C&pg=PR12&dq=%22Marx/Mao/Marcuse%22 |page=xii |year=1996 |author=Martin Jay}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=How Language, Ritual and Sacraments Work: According to John Austin, J\u00fcrgen Habermas and Louis-Marie Chauvet |url=https://books.google.com/?id=AJWTVXRnn00C&pg=PA80&dq=%22Marx,+Mao,+Marcuse%22 |page=80 |author=Mervyn Duffy |access-date=9 March 2015 |isbn=9788878390386 |year=2005 |publisher=Gregorian Biblical BookShop}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction |url=https://books.google.com/?id=ETnIAgAAQBAJ&pg=66&dq=%22Marx,+Mao+and+Marcuse%22 |page=66 |author=Anthony Elliott |access-date=9 March 2015 |year=2014}}</ref> Also known as \"3M\".<ref>{{cite journal |title=''Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of D\u00e9tente'' by Jeremi Suri |first=Roberto |last=Franzosi |journal=American Journal of Sociology |volume=111 |number=5 |page=1589 |date=March 2006 |jstor=10.1086/504653 |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |doi=10.1086/504653}}</ref>\n* ''Cela nous concerne tous.'' (\"This concerns all of us.\")\n* ''Soyez r\u00e9alistes, demandez l'impossible''. (\"Be realistic, ask the impossible.\")<ref>{{cite book |title=The Language of Change: Elements of Therapeutic Communication |last=Watzlawick |first=Paul |year=1993 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=9780393310207 |page=83 |url=https://books.google.com/?id=4U2ItyNGvecC&pg=PA83 |accessdate=1 December 2010}}</ref>\n* \"When the National Assembly becomes a bourgeois theater, all the bourgeois theaters should be turned into national assemblies.\" (Written above the entrance of the occupied [[Od\u00e9on-Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de l'Europe|Od\u00e9on]] Theater)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/154668230|title=Revolutionary rehearsals|last=|first=|date=2002|publisher=Haymarket Books|others=Barker, Colin, 1939-|year=|isbn=9781931859028|location=Chicago, Il.|page=|pages=23|oclc=154668230}}</ref>\n* ''Sous les pav\u00e9s, la plage!'' (\"Under the paving stones, the beach.\")\n* \"I love you!!! Oh, say it with paving stones!!!\"<ref name=\"Knabb\">{{cite book |title=Situationist International Anthology |editor=Ken Knabb |year=2006 |publisher=Bureau Of Public Secrets |isbn=9780939682041}}</ref>\n* \"Read [[Wilhelm Reich|Reich]] and act accordingly!\" (University of Frankfurt; similar Reichian slogans were scrawled on the walls of the Sorbonne, and in Berlin students threw copies of Reich's ''[[The Mass Psychology of Fascism]]'' (1933) at the police).<ref>Turner, Christopher (2011). ''Adventures in the Orgasmatron''. HarperCollins, pp. 13\u201314.</ref>\n* ''Travailleurs la lutte continue[;] constituez-vous en comit\u00e9 de base.'' (\"Workers the fight continues; form a basic committee.\")<ref>https://www.google.com/search?biw=1440&bih=738&ei=omA8W5HsGsaKjwT405foDg&q=travailleurs+la+lutte+continue&oq=travailleurs+la+lutte+continue&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160k1.429.7026.0.7316.34.33.1.0.0.0.146.3024.22j9.31.0..2..0...1.1.64.psy-ab..2.28.2649...0j0i131k1j0i131i67k1j0i10k1j0i19k1j0i22i30i19k1j0i22i30k1j33i22i29i30k1j33i21k1.0.f8JFzpzyQQI</ref><ref>https://www.gerrishfineart.com/mai-68,-%27travailleurs-la-lutte-continue%27,-screenprint,-1968~1795</ref>\n\n==Legacy==\nMay 1968 is an important reference point in French politics, representing for some the possibility of liberation and for others the dangers of anarchy.<ref name=\"Erlanger 2008\">{{cite news |last=Erlanger |first=Steven |title=May 1968 - a watershed in French life |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/world/europe/29iht-france.4.12440504.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all |accessdate=31 August 2012 |newspaper=New York Times |date=29 April 2008}}</ref> For some, May 1968 meant the end of traditional collective action and the beginning of a new era to be dominated mainly by the so-called [[new social movements]].<ref>Staricco, Juan Ignacio (2012) https://www.scribd.com/doc/112409042/The-French-May-and-the-Roots-of-Postmodern-Politics</ref> \n\nSomeone who took part in or supported this period of unrest is referred to as [[Wiktionary:soixante-huitard|soixante-huitard]] - a term, derived from the French for \"68\", which has also entered the English language.\n\n== In popular culture ==\n\n===Cinema===\n* The [[Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut]] film ''[[Baisers vol\u00e9s]]'' (1968) (in English: \"Stolen Kisses\"), takes place in Paris during the time of the riots and while not an overtly political film, there are passing references to and images of the demonstrations. The film captures the revolutionary feel of the time and makes perfectly understandable why Truffaut and [[Jean-Luc Godard]] would call for the cancellation of the Cannes Film Festival of 1968. Nothing could go on as it had in the past after May '68, and \"Stolen Kisses\" itself was a statement of that refusal.{{Citation needed|date=October 2018}}\n* The [[Andr\u00e9 Cayatte]] film ''[[:fr:Mourir d'aimer (film, 1971)|Mourir d'aimer]]'' (1971) (in English: \"To die of love\") is strongly based on the true story of [[:fr:Gabrielle Russier|Gabrielle Russier]] (1937-1969), a classics teacher (played by [[Annie Girardot]]) who committed suicide after being sentenced for having had an affair with one of her students during the events of May 68.\n* The [[Jean-Luc Godard]] film ''[[Tout Va Bien]]'' (1972) examines the continuing [[class struggle]] within French society in the aftermath of May '68.\n* [[Jean Eustache]]'s 1973 film ''[[The Mother and the Whore]]'', winner of the [[Grand Prix (Cannes Film Festival)|Cannes Grand Prix]], references the events of May 1968 and explores the aftermath of the social movement.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://sensesofcinema.com/2014/2014-melbourne-international-film-festival-dossier/the-mother-and-the-whore/ |title=The Mother and the Whore |last=Pierquin |first=Martine |date=July 2014 |accessdate=1 June 2017 |work=[[Senses of Cinema]]}}</ref>\n* The [[Claude Chabrol]] film ''[[Nada (1974 film)|Nada]]'' 1974 is based symbolically on the events of May 1968.\n* The [[Diane Kurys]] film ''Cocktail Molotov'' (1980) tells the story of a group of French friends heading towards Israel when they hear of the May events and decide to return to Paris.\n* The [[Louis Malle]] film ''[[May Fools]]'' (1990) is a satiric depiction of the effect of French revolutionary fervor of May 1968 on small-town bourgeoisie.\n* The [[Bernardo Bertolucci]] film ''[[The Dreamers (film)|The Dreamers]]'' (2003), based on the novel ''[[The Holy Innocents (Adair novel)|The Holy Innocents]]'' by [[Gilbert Adair]], tells the story of an American university student in Paris during the protests.\n* The [[Philippe Garrel]] film ''[[Regular Lovers]]'' (2005) is about a group of young people participating in the Latin Quarter of Paris barricades and how they continue their life one year after.\n* In the spy-spoof, ''[[OSS 117: Lost in Rio]]'', the lead character Hubert ironically chides the hippie students, saying, 'It's 1968. There will be no revolution. Get a haircut.' \n* The [[Olivier Assayas|Oliver Assayas]] film ''[[Something in the Air (2012 film)|Something in the Air]]'' (2012) tells the story of a young painter and his friends who bring the revolution to their local school and have to deal with the legal and existential consequences.\n* ''[[Redoubtable (film)|Le Redoutable]]'', 2017 - bio-pic of Jean-Luc Godard, covering the 1968 riots/Cannes festival etc.\n\n===Music===\n* Many writings of French [[anarchist]] [[singer-songwriter]] [[L\u00e9o Ferr\u00e9]] were inspired by those events. Songs directly related to May 1968 are: \"L'\u00c9t\u00e9 68\", \"Comme une fille\" (1969), \"[[Amour Anarchie|Paris je ne t'aime plus]]\" (1970), \"[[La Violence et l'Ennui]]\" (1971), \"[[Il n'y a plus rien]]\" (1973), \"La Nostalgie\" (1979). Many others Ferr\u00e9's songs share the libertarian feel of that time.\n* [[Claude Nougaro]]'s song \"Paris Mai\" (1969).<ref>{{Cite news|issn=0362-4331|last=Riding|first=Alan|title=Claude Nougaro, French Singer, Is Dead at 74|work=The New York Times|accessdate=2015-11-23|date=2004-03-22|url= https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/22/arts/claude-nougaro-french-singer-is-dead-at-74.html}}</ref>\n* The imaginary Italian clerk described by [[Fabrizio de Andr\u00e9]] in his album ''Storia di un impiegato'', is inspired to build a bomb set to explode in front of the Italian parliament by listening to reports of the May events in France, drawn by the perceived dullness and repetitivity of his life compared to the revolutionary developments unfolding in France.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Giannini|first1=Stefano|title=Storia di un impiegato di Fabrizio De Andr\u00e9|work=La Riflessione|date=2005|pages=11\u201316}}</ref>\n* The [[Refused]] song entitled \"Protest Song '68\" is about the May 1968 protests.<ref>{{Cite book|publisher=Lexington Books|isbn=978-0-7391-4276-9|last1=Kristiansen|first1=Lars J.|last2=Blaney|first2=Joseph R.|last3= Chidester|first3=Philip J.|last4=Simonds|first4=Brent K.|title=Screaming for Change: Articulating a Unifying Philosophy of Punk Rock| date = 2012-07-10}}</ref>\n* [[The Stone Roses]]'s song \"Bye Bye Badman\", from their [[The Stone Roses (album)|eponymous album]], is about the riots. The album's cover has the ''tricolore'' and lemons on the front (which were used to nullify the effects of tear gas).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.john-squire.com/art/gallery_byebyebadman.html |title=Bye Bye Badman |publisher=John Squire |author=John Squire |accessdate=3 November 2009}}</ref>\n* The music video for the [[David Holmes (musician)|David Holmes]] song \"I Heard Wonders\" is based entirely on the May 1968 protests and alludes to the influence of the [[Situationist International]] on the movement.<ref>{{Cite web| last = Cole| first = Brendan|title=David Holmes Interview|work=RTE.ie|format=Articles|accessdate=2015-11-23|date=2008-08-25|url=http://www.rte.ie/ten/features/2008/0825/414398-davidholmes/}}</ref>\n*[[The Rolling Stones]] wrote the lyrics to the song \"[[Street Fighting Man]]\" (set to music of an unreleased song they had already written which had different lyrics) in reference to the May 1968 protests from their perspective, living in a \"sleepy London town\". The melody of the song was inspired by French police car sirens.<ref>\"I wanted the [sings] to sound like a French police siren. That was the year that all that stuff was going on in Paris and in London. There were all these riots that the generation that I belonged to, for better or worse, was starting to get antsy. You could count on somebody in America to find something offensive about something \u2014 you still can. Bless their hearts. I love America for that very reason.\" {{Cite web|last=N.P.R.Staff|title=Keith Richards: 'These Riffs Were Built To Last A Lifetime'|work=NPR.org|accessdate=2015-11-23|url= https://www.npr.org/2012/11/13/165033885/keith-richards-these-riffs-were-built-to-last-a-lifetime}}</ref>\n*[[Vangelis]] released an album in France and Greece entitled ''[[Fais que ton r\u00eave soit plus long que la nuit]]'' (\"May you make your dreams longer than the night\"), which was about the Paris student riots in 1968.  The album contains sounds from the demonstrations, songs, and a news report.  Vangelis would later become famous for film scores for such films as Chariots of Fire and Bladerunner.<ref>{{Cite book|publisher=Lulu Press, Inc|isbn=978-1-4476-2728-9|last=Griffin|first=Mark J. T.|title=Vangelis: The Unknown Man|date=2013-03-13}}</ref>\n*[[Ismael Serrano]]'s song \"Pap\u00e1 cu\u00e9ntame otra vez\" (\"Papa, tell me again\") references the May 1968 events: \"Papa, tell me once again that beautiful story, of gendarmes and fascists and long-haired students; and sweet urban war in flared trousers, and songs of the Rolling stones, and girls in miniskirts.\"<ref>{{Cite web|last=Mucientes|first=Esther|title=MAYO DEL 68: La m\u00fasica de la revoluci\u00f3n|work=elmundo.es|accessdate=2015-11-23|url= http://www.elmundo.es/especiales/2008/04/internacional/mayo_68/canciones/cancion02.html}}</ref>\n*[[Caetano Veloso]]'s song \"\u00c9 Proibido Proibir\" takes its title from the May 1968 graffiti of the same name and was a protest song against the [[Brazilian military government|military regime]] that assumed power in Brazil in April 1964.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Brutality Garden: Tropicalia and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture|last=Christopher|first=Dunn|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2001|isbn=|location=|pages=135|quote=|via=}}</ref>\n*Many of the slogans from the May 1968 riots were included in [[Luciano Berio]]'s seminal work ''[[Sinfonia (Berio)|Sinfonia]]''.\n*The band [[Orchid (hardcore punk band)|Orchid]] references the events of May 68 as well as [[Guy Debord|Debord]] in their song \"Victory Is Ours\".\n*[[The 1975]]'s song \"[[Love It If We Made It]]\" makes reference to the Atelier Populaire's book made to support the events, '[[Beauty Is in the Street|Beauty Is In The Street]]'.\n\n===Literature===\n* The 1971 novel ''[[The Merry Month of May (novel)|The Merry Month of May]]'' by [[James Jones (author)|James Jones]] tells a story of (fictional) American expatriates caught up in Paris during the events.\n* ''[[The Holy Innocents (Adair novel)|The Holy Innocents]]'' is a 1988 novel by [[Gilbert Adair]] with a climactic finale on the streets of 1968 Paris.  The novel was adapted for the screen as ''[[The Dreamers (film)|The Dreamers]]'' (2003).\n\n===Art===\n*The painting [[May 1968 (Mir\u00f3)|''May 1968'']], by Spanish painter [[Joan Mir\u00f3]], was inspired by the events in May 1968 in France. \n\n===Video games===\n*The 2010 game ''Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker'' had a briefing file that described the May 1968 protests and their influence on the character C\u00e9cile Cosima Caminades, a Frenchwoman.\n\n==Further reading==\n*Abidor, Mitchell. ''May Made Me. An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France'' (interviews).\n*Adair, Gilbert. ''The Holy Innocents'' (novel).\n*[[Julian Bourg|Bourg, Julian]]. ''From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought''.\n*Casevecchie, Janine. ''MAI 68 en photos:'',Collection Roger-Viollet, Editions du Chene - Hachette Livre, 2008.\n*[[Cornelius Castoriadis|Castoriadis, Cornelius]] with [[Claude Lefort]] and [[Edgar Morin]]. ''Mai 1968: la br\u00e8che''.\n*[[Tony Cliff|Cliff, Tony]] and [[Ian Birchall]]. ''France&nbsp;\u2013 the struggle goes on''. [http://www.marx.org/archive/cliff/works/1968/france/index.htm Full text at marx.org]\n*[[Daniel Cohn-Bendit|Cohn-Bendit, Daniel]]. ''Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative''.\n*Dark Star Collective. ''Beneath the Paving Stones: Situationists and the Beach, May 68''.\n*DeRoo, Rebecca J. ''The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art: The Politics of Artistic Display in France after 1968''.\n*Feenberg, Andrew and Jim Freedman. ''When Poetry Ruled the Streets''.\n*[[Lawrence Ferlinghetti|Ferlinghetti, Lawrence]]. ''Love in the Days of Rage'' (novel).\n*Gregoire, Roger and [[Fredy Perlman|Perlman, Fredy]]. ''Worker-Student Action Committees: France May '68''. [https://libcom.org/files/Worker-student%20action%20committees,%20France%20May%20%2768%20-%20Roger%20Gregoire%20and%20Fredy%20Perlman.pdf PDF of the text]\n*[[Chris Harman|Harman, Chris]]. ''The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After''. London: Bookmarks, 1988.\n*Jones, James. ''The Merry Month of May'' (novel).\n*[[Ken Knabb|Knabb, Ken]]. ''[[Situationist International Anthology]]''.\n*[[Mark Kurlansky|Kurlansky, Mark]]. ''1968: The Year That Rocked The World''.\n*[[Greil Marcus|Marcus, Greil]]. ''[[Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century]]''.\n* Emile Perreau-Saussine, \"Liquider mai 68?\", in Les droites en France (1789\u20132008), CNRS Editions, 2008, p.&nbsp;61-68, [https://web.archive.org/web/20110719141447/http://www.polis.cam.ac.uk/contacts/staff/eperreausaussine/liquider_mai_68.pdf PDF]\n*[[Sadie Plant|Plant, Sadie]]. ''[[The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age]]''.\n*{{cite book |last1=Quattrochi |first1=Angelo |last2=Nairn |first2=Tom |title=The Beginning of the End |publisher=[[Verso Books]] |year=1998 |isbn=978-1859842904 }}\n*[[Kristin Ross|Ross, Kristin]]. ''May '68 and its Afterlives''.\n*Schwarz, Peter. [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/may1-m28.shtml '1968: The general strike and the student revolt in France']. 28 May 2008. Retrieved 12 June 1010. [[World Socialist Web Site]].\n*[[Patrick Seale|Seale, Patrick]] and Maureen McConville. ''Red Flag/Black Flag: French Revolution 1968''.\n*Seidman, Michael. ''The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968'' (Berghahn, 2004).\n*[[Daniel Singer (journalist)|Singer, Daniel]]. ''Prelude To Revolution: France In May 1968''.\n*Staricco, Juan Ignacio. ''[https://www.scribd.com/doc/94247008/The-French-May-and-the-Shift-of-Paradigm-of-Collective-Action The French May and the Shift of Paradigm of Collective Action]''.\n*[[Alain Touraine|Touraine, Alain]]. ''The May Movement: Revolt and Reform''.\n\n===Archival collections===\n*[http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt196nc927/ Guide to the Paris Student Revolt Collection.] Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.\n*[http://digitalcollections.vicu.utoronto.ca/RS/pages/search.php?search=special:paris%20posters Paris 1968 Posters] Digital Collections | Victoria University Library in the University of Toronto\n*[http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/collections/special_collections/paris_posters/ Paris, Posters of a Revolution Collection] Special Collections | Victoria University Library in the University of Toronto\n*[http://edocs.lib.sfu.ca/projects/mai68/ May Events Archive of Documents]\n*[https://www.marxists.org/history/france/may-1968/index.htm Paris May-June 1968 Archive] at [[marxists.org]]\n\n==References=="
                    }
                ]
            },
            "405": {
                "pageid": 405,
                "ns": 0,
                "title": "Readings/Representation of Women, Continued: Agn\u00e8s Varda",
                "revisions": [
                    {
                        "contentformat": "text/x-wiki",
                        "contentmodel": "wikitext",
                        "*": "Readings based on Wikipedia articles about the representation of women and the films of Agn\u00e8s Varda--particularly, ''Vagabond''.\n\n'''Red links indicate articles that may be found on Wikipedia.'''\n\n=Feminist film theory=\n\n'''Feminist film theory''' is a [[wikipedia:film theory|theoretical]] [[wikipedia:film criticism|film criticism]] derived from [[wikipedia:feminist|feminist]] politics and [[wikipedia:feminist theory|feminist theory]]. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analyzed and their theoretical underpinnings.\n\n==History==\nThe development of feminist film theory was influenced by [[second wave feminism]] and [[women's studies]] in the 1960s and 1970s. Initially in the United States in the early 1970s feminist film theory was generally based on [[sociological theory]] and focused on the function of female characters in film [[narrative]]s or [[genre]]s. Feminist film theory, such as Marjorie Rosen\u2019s ''Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream'' (1973) and [[Molly Haskell]]\u2019s ''From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in Movies'' (1974) analyze the ways in which women are portrayed in film, and how this relates to a broader historical context. Additionally, feminist critiques also examine common [[stereotype]]s depicted in film, the extent to which the women were shown as active or passive, and the amount of screen time given to women.<ref>Smelik, Anneke.  \"And The Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory.\"New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. Page 7-8.</ref>\n\nIn contrast, film theoreticians in England concerned themselves with [[critical theory]], [[psychoanalytic theory|psychoanalysis]], [[semiotics]], and [[Marxism]]. Eventually, these ideas gained hold within the American scholarly community in the 1980's. Analysis generally focused on the meaning within a film's text and the way in which the text constructs a viewing subject. It also examined how the process of cinematic production affects how women are represented and reinforces sexism.<ref>Erens, Patricia. \"Introduction\", ''Issues in Feminist Film Criticism.''  Patricia Erens, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. pp. xvii.</ref>\n\nBritish feminist film theorist, [[Laura Mulvey]], best known for her essay, ''Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'', written in 1973 and published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal, ''[[Screen (journal)|Screen]]''<ref name=\":0\">http://www.asu.edu/courses/fms504/total-readings/mulvey-visualpleasure.pdf</ref>  was influenced by the theories of [[Sigmund Freud]] and [[Jacques Lacan]]. ''Visual Pleasure'' is one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of [[film theory]] towards a [[Psychoanalytical film theory|psychoanalytic framework]]. Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry and [[Christian Metz (critic)|Christian Metz]] used [[psychoanalytic]] ideas in their theoretical accounts of cinema. Mulvey's contribution, however, initiated the intersection of [[film theory]], [[psychoanalysis]] and [[feminism]].<ref>Erens, Patricia. Issues in feminist film criticism, 1990, Indiana University Press</ref>\n\nOther key influences come from [[Christian Metz (critic)|Christian Metz]] in his essay ''The Imaginary Signifier'', \"Identification, Mirror,\" where he argues that viewing film is only possible through [[scopophilia]] (pleasure from looking, related to [[voyeurism]]), which is best exemplified in silent film.<ref>Braudy and Cohen, ''Film Theory and Criticism'', Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004, page 827</ref> Also, according to Cynthia A. Freeland in \"Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films,\" feminist studies of horror films have focused on psychodynamics where the chief interest is \"on viewers' motives and interests in watching horror films\".<ref>Braudy and Cohen, ''Film Theory and Criticism'', Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004</ref>\n\nBeginning in the early 1980s feminist film theory began to look at film through a more intersectional lens. The film journal ''Jump Cut'' published a special issue about titled ''Lesbians and Film'' in 1981 which examined the lack of lesbian identities in film. Jane Gaines's essay \"White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory\" examined the erasure of black women in cinema by white male filmmakers. While Lola Young argues that filmmakers of all races fail to break away from the use to tired stereotypes when depicting black women. Other theorists who wrote about feminist film theory and race include [[bell hooks]] and Michele Wallace.<ref>Smelik, Anneke.  \"And The Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory.\"New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. Page 20-23.</ref>\n\nRecently, scholars have expanded their work to include analysis of television and [[digital media]]. Additionally, they have begun to explore notions of difference, engaging in dialogue about the differences among women (part of movement away from [[essentialism]] in feminist work more generally), the various methodologies and perspectives contained under the umbrella of feminist film theory, and the multiplicity of methods and intended effects that influence the development of films. Scholars are also taking increasingly global perspectives, responding to [[postcolonialism|postcolonialist]] criticisms of perceived Anglo- and [[Eurocentrism]] in the academy more generally. Increased focus has been given to, \"disparate feminisms, nationalisms, and media in various locations and across class, racial, and ethnic groups throughout the world\".<ref>McHugh, Kathleen and Vivian Sobchack. \u201cIntroduction: Recent Approaches to Film Feminisms.\u201d ''Signs'' 30(1):1205\u20131207.</ref>\n\n==Key themes==\n===The gaze and the female spectator===\n\nConsidering the way that films are put together, many feminist film critics have pointed to what they argue is the \"[[wikipedia:male gaze|male gaze]]\" that predominates [[Classical Hollywood cinema|classical Hollywood]] filmmaking. [[Budd Boetticher]] summarizes the view:\n:\"What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself, the woman has not the slightest importance.\"<ref name=\"books.google.com\">{{cite book|title=Issues in Feminist Film Criticism|author=Erens, P.|date=1990|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=9780253319647|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q2U0wwTFVwgC|accessdate=October 27, 2014}}</ref>\n[[Laura Mulvey]] expands on this conception to argue that in cinema, women are typically depicted in a passive role that provides visual pleasure through scopophilia,<ref name=\"books.google.com\"/> and identification with the on-screen male actor.<ref name=\"books.google.com\"/>  She asserts: \"In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote '''''to-be-looked-at-ness''''',\"<ref name=\"books.google.com\"/> and as a result contends that in film a woman is the \"bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.\"<ref name=\"books.google.com\"/>  Mulvey argues that the psychoanalytic theory of [[Jacques Lacan]] is the key to understanding how film creates such a space for female sexual [[objectification]] and [[Exploitation of labour|exploitation]] through the combination of the [[patriarchal]] order of society, and 'looking' in itself as a pleasurable act of scopophilia, as \"the cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking.\"<ref name=\"books.google.com\"/>\n\nWhile Laura Mulvey's paper has a particular place in the feminist film theory, it is important to note that her ideas regarding ways of watching the cinema (from the voyeuristic element to the feelings of identification) are important to some feminist film theorists in terms of defining spectatorship from the psychoanalytic viewpoint.\n\nMulvey identifies three \"looks\" or perspectives that occur in film which, she argues, serve to sexually objectify women. The first is the perspective of the male character and how he perceives the female character. The second is the perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen. The third \"look\" joins the first two looks together: it is the male audience member's perspective of the male character in the film. This third perspective allows the male audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself, through looking, to the male character in the film.<ref name=\"books.google.com\"/>\n\nIn the paper, Mulvey calls for a destruction of modern film structure as the only way to free women from their sexual objectification in film. She argues for a removal of the voyeurism encoded into film by creating distance between the male spectator and the female character. The only way to do so, Mulvey argues, is by destroying the element of voyeurism and \"the invisible guest\". Mulvey also asserts that the dominance men embody is only so because women exist, as without a woman for comparison, a man and his supremacy as the controller of visual pleasure are insignificant. For Mulvey, it is the presence of the female that defines the patriarchal order of society as well as the male psychology of thought.<ref name=\"books.google.com\" />\n\nMulvey's argument is likely influenced by the time period in which she was writing. \"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema\" was composed during the period of [[second-wave feminism]], which was concerned with achieving equality for women in the workplace, and with exploring the psychological implications of sexual stereotypes. Mulvey calls for an eradication of female sexual objectivity, aligning herself with second-wave feminism. She argues that in order for women to be equally represented in the workplace, women must be portrayed as men are: as lacking sexual objectification.<ref name=\":0\" />\n\n===Realism and counter cinema===\n\nThe early work of Marjorie Rosen and Molly Haskell on the representation of women in film was part of a movement to depict women more realistically, both in documentaries and narrative cinema. The growing female presence in the film industry was seen as a positive step toward realizing this goal, by drawing attention to feminist issues and putting forth an alternative, true-to-life view of women. However, Rosen and Haskell argue that these images are still mediated by the same factors as traditional film, such as the \"moving camera, composition, editing, lighting, and all varieties of sound.\"  While acknowledging the value in inserting positive representations of women in film, some critics asserted that real change would only come about from reconsidering the role of film in society, often from a semiotic point of view.<ref>Erens, Patricia. \u201cIntroduction\u201d ''Issues in Feminist Film Criticism.''  Patricia Erens, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. pp. xviii.</ref>\n\n[[Claire Johnston]] put forth the idea that [[women's cinema]] can function as \"counter cinema.\" Through consciousness of the means of production and opposition of sexist ideologies, films made by women have the potential to posit an alternative to traditional Hollywood films.<ref>Johnston, Claire. \"Women\u2019s Cinema as Counter Cinema.\"  ''Sexual Stratagems: The World of Women in Film.'' Patricia Erens, ed. New York: Horizon Press, 1979, pp 133\u2013143.</ref> Initially, the attempt to show \"real\" women was praised, eventually critics such as Eileen McGarry claimed that the \"real\" women being shown on screen were still just contrived depictions.  In reaction to this article, many women filmmakers integrated \"alternative forms and experimental techniques\" to \"encourage audiences to critique the seemingly transparent images on the screen and to question the manipulative techniques of filming and editing\".<ref>Erens, Patricia. \u201cIntroduction\u201d ''Issues in Feminist Film Criticism.''  Patricia Erens, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. pp. xix.</ref>\n\n=== Additional theories ===\nComing from a black feminist perspective, American scholar, bell hooks, put forth the notion of the \u201coppositional gaze,\u201d encouraging black women not to accept stereotypical representations in film, but rather actively critique them. The \u201coppositional gaze\u201d is a response to Mulvey's \"visual pleasure\" and states that just as women do not identify with female characters that are not \"real,\" women of color should respond similarly to the one denominational caricatures of black women.<ref>hooks, bell. \u201cThe Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.\u201d  ''The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader.''  Amelia Jones, ed. London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 94\u2013105.</ref>\n\nJanet Bergstrom\u2019s article \"Enunciation and Sexual Difference\" (1979) uses Freud\u2019s ideas of bisexual responses, arguing that women are capable of identifying with male characters and men with women characters, either successively or simultaneously.<ref name=\"Erens, Patricia 1990\">Erens, Patricia. \u201cIntroduction\u201d ''Issues in Feminist Film Criticism.''  Patricia Erens, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. pp. xxi.</ref>  Miriam Hansen, in \"Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship\" (1984)  put forth the idea that women are also able to view male characters as erotic objects of desire.<ref name=\"Erens, Patricia 1990\"/>  In \"The Master's Dollhouse: Rear Window,\" Tania Modleski argues that Hitchcock's film, ''[[Rear Window]]'', is an example of the power of male gazer and the position of the female as a prisoner of the \"master's dollhouse\".<ref>Braudy and Cohen, ''Film Theory and Criticism'', Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004, page 861.</ref>\n\n[[Carol Clover]], in her popular and influential book, \"[[Men, Women, and Chainsaws]]: Gender in the Modern Horror Film\" (Princeton University Press, 1992), argues that young male viewers of the Horror Genre (young males being the primary demographic) are quite prepared to identify with the female-in-jeopardy, a key component of the horror narrative, and to identify on an unexpectedly profound level. Clover further argues that the \"[[Final Girl]]\" in the psychosexual subgenre of exploitation horror invariably triumphs through her own resourcefulness, and is not by any means a passive, or inevitable, victim. Laura Mulvey, in response to these and other criticisms, revisited the topic in \"Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' inspired by ''Duel in the Sun''\" (1981). In addressing the heterosexual female spectator, she revised her stance to argue that women can take two possible roles in relation to film: a masochistic identification with the female object of desire that is ultimately self-defeating or a transsexual identification with men as the active viewers of the text.<ref name=\"Erens, Patricia 1990\"/> A new version of the gaze was offered in the early 1990s by [[Bracha Ettinger]], who proposed the notion of the \"[[matrixial gaze]]\".\n\n=Agn\u00e8s Varda=\n'''Agn\u00e8s Varda''' ({{IPA-fr|a\u0272\u025bs va\u0281da|lang}}; 30 May 1928  \u2013 29 March 2019) is a Belgian-born French film director. Her films, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary with a distinctive experimental style. She has spent most of her working life in France.\n\nFilm historians have cited Varda's work as central to the development of the [[French New Wave]]; her employment of [[location shooting]] and non-professional actors were unconventional in the context of 1950s French cinema.<ref name=\"Criterion\">{{Cite news|url=https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/497-la-pointe-courte-how-agnes-varda-invented-the-new-wave|title=La Pointe Courte: How Agn\u00e8s Varda \"Invented\" the New Wave|last=Vincendeau|first=Ginette|authorlink=Ginette Vincendeau|work=[[The Criterion Collection]]|date=2008-01-28|access-date=2018-04-17}}</ref>\n\n== Biography ==\n\n=== Early life ===\nVarda was born '''Arlette Varda''' on 30 May 1928 in [[Ixelles]], Brussels, Belgium, the daughter of Christiane (n\u00e9e Pasquet) and Eug\u00e8ne Jean Varda, an engineer.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.filmreference.com/film/29/Agnes-Varda.html|title=Agnes Varda Biography (1928-)|publisher=Filmreference.com|date=1928-05-30|accessdate=2017-09-10}}</ref> Her mother was from [[S\u00e8te]], France and her father came from a family of Greek refugees from [[Asia Minor]]. She was the middle of five children. When she was 18 Varda legally changed her name to Agn\u00e8s. During [[World War II]] Varda lived on a boat in [[S\u00e8te]] with the rest of her family. Varda attended the Lyc\u00e9e Victor-Duroy and received a [[Bachelor's degree]] in literature and psychology from the [[Sorbonne]].<ref name=\"encyclopedia_com\">{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/film-and-television-biographies/agnes-varda|title=Agnes Varda facts, information, pictures {{!}} Encyclopedia.com articles about Agnes Varda|website=www.encyclopedia.com|language=en|access-date=2018-04-10}}</ref> She described her relocation to Paris as a \"truly excruciating\" one that gave her \"a frightful memory of my arrival in this grey, inhumane, sad city.\" She did not get along with her fellow students at the Sorbonne and described classes there as \"stupid, antiquated, abstract, [and] scandalously unsuited for the lofty needs one had at that age.\"\n\n=== Photography career ===\nVarda intended to become a museum curator and studied art history at the \u00c9cole du Louvre,<ref name=\"encyclopedia_com\" /> but decided to study photography at the Vaugirard school of photography instead.<ref name=\"Wakeman\">{{cite book|last=Wakeman|first=John|title=World Film Directors,Volume 2|publisher=The H. W. Wilson Company|location=New York,NY|date=1988|ISBN=978-0-824-20757-1|pages=1142\u20131148}}</ref> She studied art history and photography at the [[\u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts]].\n\nVarda began her career as a still photographer before becoming one of the major voices of the Left Bank Cinema and the French New Wave. She has since maintained a fluid interrelationship between photographic and cinematic forms: \"I take photographs or I make films. Or I put films in the photos, or photos in the films.\"<ref name=\"Darke\">Darke, Chris. \"Agnes Varda.\" ''Sight & Sound,'' vol. 25, no. 4, April 2015, pp. 46-50. ''Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text'', EBSCO''host.''</ref>\n\nVarda states of her beginnings with the medium, \"I started earning a living from photography straightaway, taking trivial photographs of families and weddings to make money. But I immediately wanted to make what I called 'compositions.' And it was with these that I had the impression I was doing something where I was asking questions with composition, form and meaning.\"<ref name=\"Darke\" />\n\nIn 1951 her friend (and fellow S\u00e8te transplant) Jean Vilar opened the [[Th\u00e9\u00e2tre National Populaire]] and hired Varda as its official photographer. Before accepting her position there, she worked as a stage photographer for the Theatre Festival of Avignon.<ref name=\"encyclopedia_com\" /> She worked at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre National Populaire for ten years from 1951-1961, during which time her reputation grew and she eventually got photo-journalist jobs throughout Europe.<ref name=\"Wakeman\" />\n\nVarda's photography would sometimes inspire her subsequent films. She recounts: \"When I made my first film, ''La Pointe Courte'' -- without experience, without having been an assistant before, without having gone to film school -- I took photographs of everything I wanted to film, photographs that are almost models for the shots. And I started making films with the sole experience of photography, that's to say, where to place the camera, at what distance, with which lens and what lights?\" Furthermore, she recalls another example:  \"I made a film in 1982 called ''Ulysse'', which is based on another photograph I took in 1954, one I'd made with the same bellows camera, and I started ''Ulysse'' with the words, \"I used to see the image upside down.\" There's an image of a goat on the ground, like a fallen constellation, and that was the origin of the photograph. With those cameras, you'd frame the image upside down, so I saw Brassa\u00ef through the camera with his head at the bottom of the image.\"<ref name=\"Darke\" />\n\n=== Mid-career ===\nIn 1958 while living in Paris, she met her husband, [[Jacques Demy]], also a French actor and director. They moved in together in 1959. She was married to Demy until his death in 1990. Varda has two children - a daughter, Rosalie Varda with [[Antoine Bourseiller]] and a son, Mathieu with Demy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/varda/|title=Agnes Varda|last1=Carter|first1=Helen|website=Sense of Cinema|accessdate=21 October 2014}}</ref> Varda worked on Academy nominated documentary ''Faces Places'' with her daughter.<ref name=\"RifeAV\" />\n\nVarda is the cousin of painter [[Jean Varda]]. In 1967 while living in [[California]] Varda met her father's cousin for the first time. He is the subject of her short documentary ''Uncle Yanco'', named after Jean Varda who referred to himself as Yanco and was affectionately called \"uncle\" by Varda due to the difference in age between them.\n\nIn 1971 Varda was one of the 343 women who signed the [[Manifesto of the 343]] admitting they had had an abortion despite the fact that it was illegal in France at the time and asking for abortions to be made legal.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://manifesto343.wordpress.com/|title=manifesto343|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160611012314/https://manifesto343.wordpress.com/|archivedate=11 June 2016|deadurl=yes|accessdate=29 June 2016|df=}}</ref>\n\n== Professional life ==\nVarda is a significant figure in modern French cinema. Her career pre-dates the start of the ''Nouvelle vague'' ([[French New Wave]]), and ''[[La Pointe Courte]]'' contains many elements specific to that movement.<ref name=\"Smith1998\"/> While working as a photographer, Varda became interested in making a film, although she stated that she knew little about the medium and had only seen around twenty films by the age of twenty-five. She later said she wrote her first screenplay \"just the way a person writes his first book. When I'd finished writing it, I thought to myself: 'I'd like to shoot that script,' and so some friends and I formed a cooperative to make it.\" She found the filmmaking process difficult because it didn't allow the same freedom as writing a novel; however she said that her approach was instinctive and feminine. In an interview with The Believer, Varda stated that she wanted to make films that related to her time (in reference to La Pointe Courte), rather than focusing on traditions or classical standards.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Heti|first1=Sheila|authorlink=Sheila Heti|title=Agn\u00e8s Varda [FILMMAKER]|url=http://www.believermag.com/issues/200910/?read=interview_varda|accessdate=29 October 2014}}</ref>\n\n=== Involvement in the French New Wave ===\nThe [[French New Wave]] movement was broken into two subgroups: the ''[[Cahiers du Cinema]]'' group and the [[Left Bank Cinema]] group.\n\nBecause of her literary influences, and because her work predates the French New Wave, Varda's films belong more precisely to the [[Left Bank Cinema#Left Bank|''Rive Gauche'' (Left Bank) cinema movement]], along with [[Chris Marker]], [[Alain Resnais]], [[Marguerite Duras]], [[Alain Robbe-Grillet]], [[Jean Cayrol]] and [[Henri Colpi]]. Categorically, the Left Bank side of the New Wave movement embraced a more experimental style than the Cahiers du Cinema group; however, this distinction is ironic considering the New Wave itself was considered experimental in its treatment of traditional methodologies and subjects.<ref>Darke, Chris. \"Agnes Varda.\" ''Sight & Sound,'' vol. 25, no. 4, April 2015, pp. 46-50. ''Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text'', EBSCO''host''</ref>\n\nLeft Bank Cinema was strongly tied to the ''nouveau roman'' movement in literature. The members of the group had in common a background in documentary filmmaking, a left wing political orientation, and a heightened interest in experimentation and the treatment of film as art. Varda and other Left Bank filmmakers crafted a mode of filmmaking that blends one of film's most socially motivated approaches, documentary, with one of its most formally experimental approaches, the avant-garde. Its members would often collaborate with each other. According to scholar Delphine B\u00e9n\u00e9zet, \"Varda has resisted norms of representation and diktats of production\u2026 She has elaborated a personal repertoire of images, characters, and settings, which all provide insight on their cultural and political contexts.\"<ref name=\"B\u00e9n\u00e9zet\">B\u00e9n\u00e9zet, Delphine. ''The Cinema of Agn\u00e8s Varda: Resistance and Eclecticism.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.</ref>\n\nStill, she is considered the godmother of the French New Wave. ''La Pointe Courte'' is unofficially but widely considered to be the first film of the movement.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.criterion.com/explore/178-agnes-varda|title=Agn\u00e8s Varda|work=The Criterion Collection|access-date=2018-04-10}}</ref> It was the first of many films she would make that focused on issues faced by ordinary people. She has said that she doesn't want to film people in power, she would rather film people who are fighting and struggling whose stories need to be seen and listened to.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://variety.com/2017/film/awards/agnes-varda-faces-places-governors-awards-2017-1202606838/|title=Agn\u00e8s Varda on Radical Filmmaking: 'I Never Thought I Didn't Have the Right'|last=Rizzo|first=Carita|date=2017-11-10|work=Variety|access-date=2018-04-10|language=en-US}}</ref>\n\n=== Style ===\nMany of Varda's films use protagonists that are marginalized or rejected members of society, and are documentarian in nature. She did two short films on the Black Panthers (''Huey'' and ''Black Panthers'') after seeing their leader was arrested for killing a policeman. Their focus was on the demonstrations that people lead in support of him and the #freehuey campaign.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Letort|first=Delphine|date=2014-12-15|title=Agn\u00e8s Varda: filming the Black Panthers's Struggle|url=http://journals.openedition.org/orda/1646|journal=L'Ordinaire des Am\u00e9riques|language=en|issue=217|doi=10.4000/orda.1646|issn=0997-0584}}</ref>\n\nLike many other French New Wave directors, Varda was likely influenced by [[auteur theory]], creating her own signature style by using the camera \"as a pen.\" Varda describes her method of filmmaking as ''cin\u00e9criture'' (cinematic writing or \"writing on film\"). The term was created by merging \"cinema\" and \"writing\" in French.<ref name=\"Smith1998\">{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39443910|title=Agn\u00e8s Varda|last=Smith|first=Smith|date=1998|publisher=Manchester University Press|year=|isbn=9780719050619|location=Manchester|pages=|oclc=39443910}}</ref> Rather than separating the fundamental roles that contribute to a film (cinematographer, screenwriter, director, etc.), Varda believes that all roles should be working together simultaneously to create a more cohesive film, and all elements of the film should contribute to its message. She claims to make most of her discoveries while editing, seeking the opportunity to find images or dialogue that create a motif.<ref>Gorbman, Claudia. Places and Play in Agn\u00e8s Varda's Cin\u00e9criture, https://www.pbs.org/pov/beachesofagnes/gorbman.php, accessdate=24 October 2014}}</ref>\n\nBecause of her photographic background, still images are often of significance in her films. Still images may serve symbolic or narrative purposes, and each element of them is important. There is sometimes conflict between still and moving images in her films, and she often mixes still images (snapshots) in with moving images.<ref name=\"Smith1998\" /> Varda pays very close attention to detail and is highly conscious of the implications of each cinematic choice she makes. Elements of the film are rarely just functional, each element has its own implications, both on its own and that it lends to the entire film's message.<ref name=\"Smith1998\" />\n\n=== Varda as a feminist filmmaker ===\nVarda's work is often considered feminist because of her use of female protagonists and creating a female cinematic voice.<ref name=\"senses\" /> Varda has been quoted stating, \"I'm not at all a theoretician of feminism, I did all that\u2014my photos, my craft, my film, my life\u2014on my terms, my own terms, and not to do it like a man.\"<ref name=\"Wakeman\" /> Though she was not actively involved in any strict agendas of the feminist movement, Varda often focused on women's issues thematically and never tried to change her craft to make it more conventional or masculine.\n\n== Notable films ==\n=== ''La Pointe Courte'' (1954) ===\nVarda liked photography but was interested in moving into film. After spending a few days filming the small French fishing town of ''[[La Pointe Courte]]'' for a terminally ill friend who could no longer visit on his own, Varda decided to shoot a feature film of her own. Thus in 1954, Varda's first film, ''[[La Pointe Courte]]'', about an unhappy couple working through their relationship in a small fishing town, was released. The film is a stylistic precursor to the [[French New Wave]].<ref name=\"Neupert\">Neupert, Richard. ''A History of the French New Wave Cinema'', University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. Pg. 57.</ref> At the time, Varda was influenced by the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard, under whom she once studied at the Sorbonne. \"She was particularly interested in his theory of 'l'imagination des mati\u00e8res,' in which certain personality traits were found to correspond to concrete elements in a kind of psychoanalysis of the material world.\" This idea arrives in ''La Pointe Courte'' as the characters' personality traits clash, shown through the opposition of objects such as wood and steel. To further her interest in character abstraction, Varda used two professional actors, [[Silvia Monfort]] and [[Philippe Noiret]], combined with the residents of [[La Pointe Courte]] to provide a realistic element that lends itself to a documentary aesthetic inspired by neorealism. Varda would continue to use this combination of fictional and documentary elements in her films.<ref name=\"Fitterman\">Fitterman-Lewis, ''To Desire Differently'', Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 215-245.</ref>\n\nIt was edited by friend and fellow [[French New Wave#Left Bank|Left Bank]] filmmaker [[Alain Resnais]], who was reluctant to work on the film because it was \"so nearly the film he wanted to make himself\" and its structure was very similar to his own ''[[Hiroshima mon amour]]'' (1959). While editing the film in Varda's apartment, Resnais kept annoying her by comparing the film to works by [[Luchino Visconti]], [[Michelangelo Antonioni]] and others that she was unfamiliar with \"until I got so fed up with it all that I went along to the [[Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que Fran\u00e7aise|Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que]] to find out what he was talking about.\" Resnais and Varda remained lifelong friends, with Resnais stating that they had nothing in common \"apart from cats.\"<ref name=\"Wakeman\" />\n\nThe film was immediately praised by ''[[Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma]]''. [[Andr\u00e9 Bazin]] called it \"a miraculous film. In its existence and in its style\" and [[Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut]] called it \"an experimental work, ambitious, honest and intelligent.\" Varda said that the film \"hit like a cannonball because I was a young woman, since before that, in order to become a director you had to spend years as an assistant.\" However the film was a financial failure and Varda only made short films for the next seven years.<ref name=\"Wakeman\" />\n\n=== ''Cl\u00e9o from 5 to 7'' (1961) ===\nFollowing ''La Pointe Courte'', Varda made several documentary short films; two were commissioned by the French tourist office. These shorts include one of Varda's favorites of her own works, ''L'op\u00e9ra-mouffe'', a film about the Rue Mouffetard street market which won Varda an award at the Brussels Experimental Film Festival in 1958.<ref name=\"Wakeman\" />\n\n''[[Cl\u00e9o from 5 to 7]]'' follows a pop singer through two extraordinary hours in which she awaits the results of a recent biopsy. At first glance, the film is about a woman coming to terms with her mortality, which is a common auteurist trait for Varda.<ref name=\"Wilson1999\">{{cite book|first=Wilson|last=Emma|authorlink=Emma Wilson|chapter=3. Mourning Films I.|title=French Cinema since 1950: Personal Histories.|location=[[Lanham, MD]]|publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]]|year=1999|pages=42\u201346|ISBN=0715628496}}</ref> On a deeper level, ''Cl\u00e9o from 5 to 7'' confronts the traditionally objectified woman by giving Cl\u00e9o her own vision. She is unable to be constructed through gaze of others which is often represented through a motif of reflections and Cleo's ability to strip her body of to-be-looked-at-ness attributes (clothing items, wigs, etc.). Stylistically, ''Cl\u00e9o from 5 to 7'' borders documentary and fiction as ''La Pointe Courte'' had. Although many believe that the ninety-minute film represents the diegetic action, which occurs between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., in real time, there is actually a half-hour difference.<ref name=\"Fitterman\" />\n\n=== ''Vagabond'' (1984) ===\nIn 1984, Varda made ''[[wikipedia:Vagabond (film)|Sans toit ni loi]]'' (known in most English-speaking countries as ''Vagabond''), which is a drama about the death of a young female drifter named Mona. The death is investigated by an unseen and unheard interviewer who focuses on the people who have last seen her. The story of ''Vagabond'' is told through nonlinear techniques, with the film being divided into forty-seven episodes, and each episode about Mona being told from a different person's perspective. ''[[wikipedia:Vagabond (film)|Vagabond]]'' is considered to be one of Agn\u00e8s Varda's greater feminist works in how the film deals with the de-fetishization of the female body from the male perspective.<ref name=\"Hayward\">Hayward, Susan. \"Beyond the Gaze and Into Femme-Film\u00e9criture.\" ''French Film: Texts and Contexts.'' By Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau. London: Routledge, 2000. 269-80. Print. 8-June-2012</ref>\n\n=== ''Jacquot de Nantes'' (1991) ===\nFrom 1962 until his death in 1990, Varda was married to the film director [[Jacques Demy]], with whom she had one son, Mathieu Demy. Jacques Demy also legally adopted Rosalie Varda, Varda's daughter from a previous union with actor Antoine Bourseiller, who starred in her early film ''[[Cl\u00e9o from 5 to 7]]''. In 1991, shortly after Jacques Demy's death, Varda created the film ''[[Jacquot de Nantes]]'', which is about his life and death. The film is structured at first as being a recreation of his early life, being obsessed with the various crafts used for filmmaking like animation and set design. But then Varda provides elements of documentary by inserting clips of Demy's films as well as footage of him dying. The film continues with Varda's common theme of accepting death, but at its heart it is considered to be Varda's tribute to her late husband and their work.<ref name=\"Wilson1999\" />\n\n=== ''The Gleaners and I'' (2000) ===\n''[[The Gleaners and I|Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse]]'', or ''The Gleaners and I'', is a documentary made in 2000 that focuses on Varda's interactions with [[Gleaning|gleaners]] (harvesters) who live in the French countryside, and also includes subjects who create art through recycled material, as well as an interview with psychoanalyst [[Jean Laplanche]]. ''The Gleaners and I'' is notable for its fragmented and free-form nature along with it being the first time Varda used digital cameras. This style of filmmaking is often interpreted as a statement that great things like art can still be created through scraps, yet modern economies encourage people to only use the finest product.<ref name=\"Cruickshank\">Cruickshank, Ruth \"The Work of Art in the Age of Global Consumption: Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse.\" ''L'esprit Cr\u00e9ateur'' 47.3, (2007): pg. 119-132 Project MUSE. Web. 8-June-2012</ref>\n\n===''Faces Places'' (2017)===\nIn 2017, Varda co-directed ''[[Faces Places (film)|Faces Places]]'' with the artist [[JR (artist)|JR]]. The film was screened out of competition at the [[2017 Cannes Film Festival]]<ref name=\"Cannes2017\">{{cite web|url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/actualites/articles/the-2017-official-selection|title=The 2017 Official Selection|work=Cannes|date=13 April 2017|accessdate=13 April 2017}}</ref><ref name=\"IW\">{{cite web|url=http://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/cannes-2017-lineup-list-film-festival-schedule-1201804813/|title=2017 Cannes Film Festival Announces Lineup: Todd Haynes, Sofia Coppola, \u2018Twin Peaks\u2019 and More|work=IndieWire|date=13 April 2017|accessdate=13 April 2017}}</ref> where it won the [[L'\u0152il d'or]] award.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-agnes-vardas-faces-places-takes-golden-eye-documentary-prize-1008246|title=Cannes: Agnes Varda's 'Faces Places' Takes Golden Eye Documentary Prize|work=[[The Hollywood Reporter]]|publisher=Prometheus Global Media, LLC|date=27 May 2017|accessdate=27 May 2017}}</ref> The film follows Varda and JR traveling around rural France, creating portraits of the people they come across.\n\n=Annette Kuhn, ''Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema''=\nExcerpts from Kuhn's book, which was published by Routledge & Kegan Paul (1982).\n\n==\"Real Women\" chapter, page 133: \"Documentariness\"==\nDocumentary film thus always makes implicit reference not only\nto its profilmic event, but also to the 'real world' in general. While\nthis visibility is constituted as 'truth' by the apparent naturalness of\nthe representation, this very 'naturalness' is itself an outcome of the\noperation of a certain set of cinematic codes. Cinematic signifiers\nsuch as monochrome image, apparently haphazard mobile framing\n(the mark of a hand-held camera), focus shifts, editing which is\nrather more 'free' than would be the case with fictional cinema, and\ndirect gaze at the camera by protagonists of the film, all currently\ntend to mark a film as a documentary. Further sets of codes relating\nto sound may also connote '''documentariness'''. Many documentary\nfilms have voice-over: a voice from a source outside and apparently\n'above' the world of the film speaks a discourse which directs the\nspectator's reading of the film. The documentary voice-over is\ntypically marked as authoritative, as a mctadiscoursc which orders\nthe potentially erratic signifiers of image and diegetic sound. In this\ncase, the guarantee of the 'truth' of the film lies in the relationship\nbetween voice-over and image, in that the latter may be read as\n'illustrating' the former. The notion of the visible as evidence is still at\nwork here, of course, but the specificity of the classic voice-over\ndocumentary lies in the fact that the image somehow serves as\nevidence of the truth of the commentary rather than as direct and\nvisible evidence of events in the 'real world'.\n\n==\"Real Women\" chapter, pages 148-49==\n\nThese\ntransformations operate across texts to produce certain codes and\nmodes of address which constitute a specific set of signifiers for\nfeminist documentary cinema. By this 1 mean that certain sets of\ntextual operations have, for various political and historical reasons,\nbecome defining characteristics of this type of cinema. These operations\nmay be seen at work in the three films which I have selected as\nrepresentative examples of feminist documentary cinema: ''Janie's\nJanie'' (Ashur, New York Newsreel, 1971), ''Women of the Rhondda''\n(Capps, Kelly, Dickinson, Ronay, SegravcandTrcvelyan, 1973), and\n''Union Maids'' (Klein, Reichert and Mogulescu, 1976).\n\nIf there is any structural principle governing the organisation of\nfeminist documentary film, it is that provided by '''autobiographical discourse''': 'Film after film shows a woman, telling her story to the\ncamera' (Lesage, 1978, p. 515). Protagonists of these films are women\nwho talk about their own lives, and their autobiographies tend to be\norganised in the linear manner characteristic of the plots of fictional\nnarratives. The speaker begins her story at a point in her earlier life\nand works through to her own present and the 'present' of the film.\nThe plot order of the film will usually reflect this linear chronology.\nThis 'consistent organisation of narrative materials', argues Lesage,\nis structured in a manner analogous to the process of consciousness-raising\nand functions similarly in political terms. Lesage takes for\ngranted a degree of transparency in cinematic representation, assuming\nthat its 'truth' will be accepted by the spectator in processes of\nidentification with the 'narrative' trajectory of the autobiography on\nthe one hand and the protagonists and their lives on the other. She\nalso suggests that the contents of the autobiographical accounts\nwhich structure the films are, like those brought forward in consciousness-\nraising, selected and ordered by their subjects.\n\nGiven that autobiographical discourse structures feminist\ndocumentary films, and if protagonists order their own discourses,\nthen clearly the enunciating voice of these films belongs to the female\nprotagonists themselves. This point is underscored by the fact that\nvoice-over is invariably absent from feminist documentaries. When\nthere is a voice-over, it does not come from outside the diegetic space\nset up by the film, but is spoken by the subject or subjects of the\nautobiography.\n\n==\"Textual Politics\" chapter, page 160: Deconstruction==\nAs the term suggests, deconstructive cinema works by a process of\nbreaking down. On one level, the object of the deconstruction\nprocess is the textual operations and modes of address characteristic\nof dominant cinema, the aim being to provoke spectators into\nawareness of the actual existence and effectivity of dominant codes,\nand consequently to engender a critical attitude towards these codes.\nProvocation, awareness and a critical attitude suggest in turn a\ntransformation in spectator-text relations from the passive receptivity\nor unthinking suspension of disbelief fostered by dominant modes\nof address to a more active and questioning position. Deconstructive\ncinema aims therefore to unsettle the spectator. But there is more at\nstake in deconstructive cinema than simply a challenge to the textual\noperations of dominant cinema. After all, many forms of avant-garde\nand experimental cinema may be read as doing just this,\nwithout - except in the very broadest sense - being defined as\ndeconstructive. The distinguishing mark of deconstructive cinema,\nas against other non-dominant or anti-dominant forms, is its recruitment\nof the spectator's active relation to the signification process for\ncertain signifieds, or areas of substantive concern.\n\n==\"Textual Politics\" chapter, page 169: Feminine Voices==\n...I shall look at four specific\nexamples: ''Thriller'' (Potter, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979),\n''Lives of Performers'' (Rainer, 1972), ''Daughter Rite'' (Citron, 1978)\nand ''Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles'' (Akerman,\nParadise Films/Unite Trois, 1975). My argument is that these\nfilms share a discourse which sets up the possibility of sexual\ndifference in spectator-text relations by privileging a 'feminine\nvoice'. They pose the possibility of a feminine writing which would\nconstruct new forms of pleasure in cinema. The areas through which\nthe 'feminine voice' speaks in these films include relations of looking,\nnarrativity and narrative discourse, subjectivity and autobiography,\nfiction as against non-fiction, and openness as against closure.\n\n=Sources=\n*[[wikipedia:Feminist film theory|Feminist film theory]]\n*[[wikipedia:Agn\u00e8s Varda|Agn\u00e8s Varda]]\n*Annette Kuhn, ''Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema'' (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982).\n\n=References=\n\nBecause these references were copied from Wikipedia articles, they may be broken.\n\n{{reflist}}\n\n[[Category:JCM312 Discussion]]\n[[Category:JCM312 Readings]]"
                    }
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