Traveling in French Cinema

by Blum-Reid, Sylvie

• ISBN13: 9781137553539
• ISBN10: 1137553537
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-19
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book covers different travel modes and tropes at play in French cinema since 1980 to the present day. It follows the archetypal figure of the traveler and the way these journeys are 'performed.' Films travel for us, spectators, and we in turn virtually take off with them. Examinations of departures and returns, as well as destinations and healing rituals attached to travels, take place, as do the way women travel and the urgent situation of migrants attempting to find refuge in the Global North across borders. The book questions high-speed travel, efficiency and technology at a time when slow speed and inner reflection are being revisited, and analyses film narratives that offer a way out of the daily routine and allow the traveler to escape a situation at home.

Author Biography

Sylvie Blum-Reid teaches French and European Cinema at the University of Florida, USA. She is the author of East-West Encounters: Franco-Asian Cinema and Literature (Wallflower 2003). Her articles have been published in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Portal: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Iris, and the Contemporary Journal of French and Francophone Studies.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Departure
2. Rituals: The Unlikely Travel
3. Vagabondages
4. The Return/The Nostoï
5. Transit
6. Rebels and Flâneuses
7. Dérives
Conclusion
Bibliography
Filmography
Index