Issues in Popular Contemporary French Cinema

Two-Day Conference Jointly Organised by Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester

At Manchester Metropolitan University on 12th and 13th January 2006

French cinema has witnessed a change in its fortunes in recent years, with a number of super- productions surpassing Hollywood blockbusters in terms of domestic box-office receipts. Films including the Taxi trilogy, Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, Astérix et Obélix mission Cléopatre and Les Choristes have sold in excess of 7 million tickets. Some of these productions question binaries which oppose ‘popular’ and auteur film and blur the conventional boundaries that have distinguished perceptions of French and American cinemas. Consequently, they raise important questions about notions of a national and ‘popular’ French cinema which this conference aims to address and explore.

We would welcome papers on ‘popular’ French films released over the past eight years and which explore one or more of the following areas:

 Understandings of French ‘mainstream’ cinema  The evolution of genres and their relation to French and US visual and performance cultures  The influence of television on film productions  The use of new technologies and special effects  Production contexts including the financing of films  Directors and the opposition between ‘popular’ and auteur cinema  Exhibition issues and the influence of multiplexes on the types of films produced and shown  Questions of representation, including gender, sexuality, ‘race’, ethnicity, class and national identity  The relationship between tradition and modernity  Stars  Reception, including reviews, quantitative indicators such as box-office receipts and audience responses  The exportability of the French super-productions

The conference will include three keynote speakers: Professor Ginette Vincendeau (University of Warwick), Dr Guy Austin (University of Sheffield) and Raphaëlle Moine (Université de Paris X- Nanterre). The conference will also feature a round table discussion involving professionals working in the French film industry (Bruno Delbonnel ASC to be confirmed).

Proposals of twenty minutes papers, to be delivered in either English or French, should be submitted in the form of a 300 word abstract by 31st August 2005. We intend to publish selected papers.

Please address any correspondence on organisation and general enquiries to Dr Isabelle Vanderschelden ([email protected]) or Dr Darren Waldron ([email protected]).

Further information will soon be available on a website which is currently under construction.