Claire Denis (Contemporary Film Directors) [Paperback]

Judith Mayne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2005 | Series: Contemporary Film Directors

Widely regarded as one of the most innovative and passionate filmmakers working in France today, Claire Denis has continued to make beautiful and challenging films since the 1988 release of her first feature, "Chocolat". Judith Mayne's comprehensive study of these films traces Denis' career and discusses her major feature films in rich detail. Born in Paris but having grown up in Africa, Denis explores in her films the legacies of French colonialism and the complex relationships between sexuality, gender, and race. From the adult woman who observes her past as a child in Cameroon to the Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in Paris and watches a serial killer to the disgraced French Foreign Legionnaire attempting to make sense of his past, the subjects of Denis' films continually revisit themes of watching, bearing witness, and making contact, as well as displacement, masculinity, and the migratory subject.Judith Mayne, Professor of French and Women's Studies at the Ohio State University, is the author of six books: "Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture"; "Directed by Dorothy Arzner"; "Cinema and Spectatorship"; "The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women's Cinema"; "Kino and the Woman Question: Feminism and Soviet Silent Film"; and "Private Novels, Public Films". This is a volume in the "Contemporary Film Directors" series, edited by James Naremore.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

French director Claire Denis has made a number of well-received films during the past two decades, including the critical favorite Beau Travail (1999), but she remains best known for her first feature, Chocolat (1988), the semiautobiographical story of a girl growing up in Africa. Rather than proceeding chronologically, like Brunette and Anderson, through her subject's work, feminist scholar Mayne discusses Denis' films thematically, examining the filmmaker's treatment of the legacies of colonialism in Chocolat and No Fear, No Die; of brother-sister relationships in U.S. Go Home and Nenette and Boni; and the concept of strangerhood in I Can't Sleep and Beau Travail. A 2003 interview with Denis is included. The creator of a body of uncompromising and personal work, Denis is one of France's most important post-New Wave directors, one who, like Wong and Yang, has attracted the devotion of hard-core cineastes, a tiny, dedicated, generally highly literate audience that will embrace Mayne's study as well as its series mates. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (April 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252072383
• ISBN-13: 978-0252072383
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,634,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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