The second feature film from directors Jacques Martineau and Olivier Ducastel takes as its protagonist Félix (Sami Bouajila), a youthful thirty-something homosexual man of European and North-African descent who lives in Dieppe with his white partner Daniel (Pierre-Loup Rajot). The film’s narrative begins after his mother’s death; while clearing out her home, Félix happens uponContinue reading “Mixed-Race Dynamics and the French Road Movie: Drôle de Félix (Martineau & Ducastel, 2000)”
Tag Archives: french cinema
Transracial Fantasies in Mathieu Kassovitz’s Fierrot Le Pou
Synopsis: Set in an indoor basketball playing space, the film features two young adult characters: a skinny white boy (Kassovitz) who fancies the girl; an athletic black girl (Fabienne LaBonne) who appears indifferent to the white boy. It is a comedy without dialogue which relies on the cinematic language of silent films and privileges visualContinue reading “Transracial Fantasies in Mathieu Kassovitz’s Fierrot Le Pou”
Mixed-Race Melodrama: Métisse
Métisse [Mixed-Race] (Kassovitz, France, 1993) adheres to the ethics of beur cinema by reimagining the French nuclear family as black, mixed and white through its central characters. As a pioneering work it is flawed but, by directly engaging with issues of race, class, gender and sexuality, the film challenges the culturally embedded assumptions of itsContinue reading “Mixed-Race Melodrama: Métisse”
Josephine Baker’s French Films
American entertainer Josephine Baker was the first multigenerational mixed actress to grace French cinema screens in the 1920s and quickly became a star. Baker’s life and art reflected her multiplicity.[1] She started off in vaudeville in New York where she achieved success but faced limitations as a designated black woman. Having left the States toContinue reading “Josephine Baker’s French Films”
Dr Zélie Asava 