France today V.Martinez - LANG 1035

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France todayV.Martinez - LANG 1035

• The French cinema

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French cinema

• The first moving images recorded on film were
  shown under the title Sortie des usines
  Lumière from Les frères Lumière. France was
  the birthplace of the Seven Art and since then
  has remained a hub of the film world.
• In 2002, cinemas in France sold some 184.5
  million tickets. 58.4 of the French population
  go to the cinema a least once a year, and 34.6,
  once a month. The number of cinemagoers remains
  high even though there is a decline due the
  competition from television and DVD.

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History

• The brothers Lumière
• The inspired trail-blazer Méliès
• The generation of poetic realism in the thirties
  (Renoir, Carné les enfants du paradis, Prévert)
• The New Wave cinema of the sixties (Truffaut,
  Godards A bout de souffle, Chabrol, Malle,
  Rohmer)

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Prenational/National/ Postnational cinema

• In the early 1920s, several important French film
  industrialists turned to a strategy of
  internationalism, realizing an alliance with the
  hope of producing international films. European
  film industrialists were learning from their
  American competitors that cinema required greater
  concentration of capital and significant market
  expansion to remain economically successful.
• However, it was not this emerging European cinema
  that really came to challenge Hollywood, but
  rather the creation of a national cinema as the
  result of growing pressure from film
  industrialists demanding protectionist
  legislation. The cinema became an cultural
  institution.

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Prenational/National/ Postnational cinema

• In 1946 the CNC (Centre National de la
  Cinématographie) was created. The CNC allowed
  French cinema to combat internal crisis,
  withstand strong competition, and contribute to
  the cultural unity needed to strengthen the
  capitalist nation-state.
• The main measure is (1950) to redistribute the
  funds obtained from a tax on box-office takings,
  sales of video and television broadcast
• the strength of the French cinema became possible
  through a symbiosis between high and mass
  culture. The aim was to gain some shares in the
  global markets. However, while facilitating
  postnational productions, the French state
  continued simultaneously to support modes of film
  practice which appeared to resist the
  homogenizing effects of globalization. The French
  cinema was representing a pluralistic society and
  was preserving its cultural diversity.

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Commercial success stories

• Through the end of the 19th century the French
  cinema is handle only by the people who make it,
  they create the movies, produce them and
  distribute them. The Lumière family travelled
  everywhere in order to promote their movies.
  Because of them the cinema became a popular art
  discovered by all.
• However, from 1895, two companies started to
  produce and distribute French movies, created by
  Charles Pathé and Léon Gaumont. Those two
  companies, Pathé and Gaumont, produced and
  distributed a lot of the French cinema until 1914
  ( first World War). They also created the first
  permanent film theatre between 1906 and 1911.
• http//www.hku.hk/french/LANG3036/2premierspas.htm
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Current generation

• Through the CNC, Frances renewed its commitment
  to a diversified approach to production and
  contributed to a market rebirth of creativity,
  especially among younger film-makers. This young
  cinema with little or sometimes non-professional
  actors revived a form of realism and social
  consciousness often neglected since the New wave.
  
• The new generation of directors often describe
  the hash social environment in which evolve their
  characters. Erick Zonca La vie rêvée des anges
  Matthieu Kassovitz La Haine Nicolas Phillibert
  Documentary Etre et avoir