Worlds Within; In the World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2021
Summary
Cinéma-monde always came with a question mark: it was a hypothesis, a heuristic device, conjuring up a ‘what would happen if’ we looked at francophone film production through a slightly different lens. Simultaneously, it diverted us from, or even re-energised and re-focused, that ‘F’ word which so bedevils work in the discipline due to its baggage of implied binaries and hierarchies. The centrality of language invoked by ‘francophone’ might be re-harnessed not according to official unifications and diversities, and not just to ‘francophonise’ the non-decolonised metropole, but to make audible that ‘Frenchness’ in a special way, as Edouard Glissant says he writes, ‘en presence de toutes les langues du monde’ [in presence of all of the world's languages] (1996: 40). And to paraphrase and adapt Michel de Certeau, there was an opportunity to surpass the official carte de la francophonie and even the industrial-strategic hubs of new production formations in favour of the parcours of non-hierarchical connections and wanderings of creative personnel and ideas.
As the editors in their introduction, and other contributors, point out, cinéma-monde thus contains an ethical dimension, linked to ‘gestures of solidarity’ and ‘interest in others’ (page 10). Certainly, for example, contemporary refugee crises have led themselves to new patterns of transnational filmmaking, and, indeed, to a corpus of films within cinéma-monde that have profound ethical implications (e.g. Le Havre [Aki Kaurismaki, 2011, Finland/France/Germany]; Dheepan, [Jacques Audiard, 2015, France]). However, I wish to develop this further by emphasising the monde/world element in all its force. For, as Glissant continues :
ma langue, je la déporte et la bouscule non pas dans des syntheses, mais dans des ouvertures linguistiques qui me permettent de concevoir les rapports des langues entre elles aujourd’hui sur la surface de la terre – rapports de domination, de connivence, d’absorption, d’oppression, d’erosion, de tangence, etc. – comme le fait d’un immense drame, d’une immense tragedie dont ma propre langue ne peut etre exempte et sauve. (1996: 40)
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- Cinema-mondeDecentred Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French, pp. 323 - 335Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018