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9781526113580

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'Starting off with a brief overview of French cinema from the silent period to the present, King then focuses on eight films that are both multicultural and multilingual, and examines how the use of Kurdish, Tamil, Arabic and other languages within these films empowers the cultures they represent as well as the languages themselves. King argues that by refusing to center the French language in contemporary French cinema, these films - among them Jacques Audiard's Dheepan (2015) and Un prophete (2009), Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs (2008), Philippe Lioret's Welcome (2009) - force cinemagoers into a deeper engagement with issues of class, race, nationality, and cultural privilege.' G. A. Foster, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, CHOICE, October 2018, Vol. 56, No. 2 -- .

'Fifty years ago, the French cinema was both provincial and artificially nationalistic. Despite the New Wave's efforts to explore the more plastic qualities of the medium, French cinema remained tied to one form of identity, as the last remnants of its colonial past finally fell away. Today, the French cinema is much more multicultural, and indeed multiculturalism-and the profusion of languages that come with other cultures-has become one of the central themes of recent French films. Starting off with a brief overview of French cinema from the silent period to the present, King (Australian National Univ.,) then focuses on eight films that are both multicultural and multilingual, and examines how the use of Kurdish, Tamil, Arabic, and other languages within these films empowers the cultures they represent as well as the languages themselves. King argues that by refusing to center the French language in contemporary French cinema, these films-among them Jacques Audiard's Dheepan (2015) and Un prophete (2009), Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs (2008), Philippe Lioret's Welcome (2009)-force cinemagoers into a deeper engagement with issues of class, race, nationality, and cultural privilege.' G. A. Foster, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, CHOICE, October 2018, Vol. 56, No. 2 -- .

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Gemma King is Lecturer in French Studies at the Australian National University -- .

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