FILMOGRAPHY

FILMOGRAPHY

These films have been chosen to reflect the wide diversity of possible approaches to the themes of this publication. Titles are given in their original language together with a translation (where a standard one exists) into either English or French. Details of the date of release, director and country of origin are also included. There is no guarantee that all of these films will be easily available everywhere - some research will be necessary on your part to find out, for example, if the correct video format is available or, if necessary, if a version with sub-titles can be found.

1. BEING DIFFERENT

Many films make difference itself the motor of action. Whether it's Joseph Losey's boy with green hair, or the one with secateurs instead of hands with Tim Burton, these films challenge our capacity to accept the other's "being different".

"Easy Rider"; 1969; Denis Hopper; USA

A road movie , from West to East of the American sixties, confrontation between the new generation and the keepers of law and order up to the tragic end.

"Elephant Man" ; 1980 ; David Lynch ; USA

Being different means to permanently meet the stare of the others, their inquisitive and hostile eyes. The man with the elephant head, shown round in circus after circus in Victorian England, dies from it. One of the most beautiful films on looks ...

"Ratboy" ; 1985 ; Sondra Locke ; USA

A ratfaced child in a philosophical fairy tale, running away from being different.

"An angel at my table" ; 1990 ; Jane Campion ; New Zealand

It's difficult to be red-haired, dreamy, wanting to be a writer and in conflict with one's environment; Janet is declared "schizophrenic" for it and spends eight years in a psychiatric hospital. Madness is sometimes the reason we give for shutting away difference.

"Edward Scissorhands" ; 1990 ; Tim Burton ; USA

Unfinished creature of a mad scientist, Edward is equipped with garden scissors instead of hands. After having been everybody's darling in a small American village he is thrown out of it because of his being different. Practically like a fairy tale this film is deeply human.

2. IMPOSSIBLE LOVE

Love is supposed to overcome differences, to go beyond the skin colour of the other, but often communities find it difficult to accept what they consider treason of the clan. Cinema has often exploited this reality, from "West Side Story" to "Jungle Fever".

"West Side Story" ; 1963 ; Robert Wise ; USA

The antagonism between the Jets and Sharks is also the antagonism between two communities - Greek-American and Puertorican. An absolute must - and how to resist Bernstein's music...

"My beautiful launderette" ; 1985 ; Stephen Frears ; UK

A skinhead who has fallen in love with a Pakistani in London's suburbia, dreaming of opening an automatic laundry together. The first of Stephen Frears' films to explore Thatcher's Britain without kindness.

"Pierre et Djemila" ; 1986 ; Gérard Blain ; France

Seventeen year old Pierre has fallen in love with Djemila, 14. He is chtimi, (French from the North of France), she daughter of Algerians. Their love story cannot be accepted by their respective communities and finds a tragic end.

"Jungle Fever" ; 1991 ; Spike Lee ; USA

Is love possible between people of different "race"? Certainly not, says Spike Lee. To see, and to see again, for the scene where black women compare the respective sexual merits of black and white men, and also for the terrible last scene, which negates all possibility of love between different "races", because this could only be jungle fever.

"Mississippi Masala" ; 1991 ; Mira Nair ; USA

Indian Mira is chased out of Uganda with her family by Idi Amin Dada. She falls in love with the black American Demetrius, who is not acceptable to her family. A film which concentrates less on white racism than on separation and ostracism between the communities.

3. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

Cinema could not overlook the reality of those who had to leave their country for political, economical or other reasons. The camera catches the sorrow of exile, the difficulty of being a stranger in a strange land.

"La photo" ; 1986 ; Nikos Papatakis ; Greece

Because his father was a Communist a young Greek is obliged to leave the Greece of the Colonels. He flees to Paris where he stays with a distant cousin who falls in love with a photograph which has fallen out of the visitor's wallet. A wonderful film about the nostalgia of exile and the difficulty of being an immigrant.

"L'ange gardien"; 1986 ; Goran Paskaljevic ; Yugoslavia

Sometimes migration is not voluntary; this is particularly so in child trafficking. This quasi-documentary presents the situation of Gypsies in Yugoslavia and child-trafficking between what was at that time Yugoslavia, and Italy.

"Helsinki-Napoli" ; 1987 ; Mika Kaurismäki ; Finland/Switzerland/FRG

You may not know this, but Berlin is halfway between Helsinki and Naples. It is therefore the residence of a Finn and his Neapolitan wife. A bitter-sweet reflection on being a migrant, in a tone of comedy and irony.

"Abschied vom falschem Paradies"; 1988 ; Telvik Baser ; FRG

Elif, Turkish woman who lives in Germany, has killed her husband. In prison she discovers a new freedom which she did not know between obedience for her husband and religious restraint. The director is a Turkish film maker who lives in Hamburg.

"Le temps des gitans" : 1988 ; Emir Kusturica ; Yugoslavia

Halucinatory, baroque, pictures which stay in our visual memory (when the old Gypsy woman throws a red ball into the air on Milan Cathedral square). Kusturica offers this film to the Gypsy communities, to their culture, their perpetual wandering.

"La captive du désert" ; 1989 ; Raymond Depardon ; France

Based on the true story of Françoise Claustre, prisoner of Mauritanian rebels, this film offers a magnificent reflection on the impossibility of communication between people and cultures.

4. CHALLENGING THE MELTING POT

More than any others, American film makers have always challenged American society and its functioning, its myths. It is therefore not surprising, that the "melting pot" is often used not only as the background for a film, but as a main theme. This would also be true for film stories linked with the KKK or the fight for civil rights.

"Betrayed" ; 1988 ; Costa Gavras ; USA

During the investigation of a racist crime, an FBI detective falls in love with a witness before finding out that he is member of a neo-fascist organisation. Remarkable: a man hunt scene, racist and terrifying.

"Mississippi Burning" ; 1989 ; Alan Parker ; USA

On June 21, 1964, three (two white, one black) militant civil rights fighters (for equality of white and black Americans in the sixties) are killed near Philadelphia in Mississippi. The state of Mississippi goes up in flames in a conflict between segregationists and anti-segregationists. The film has been criticised for offering all the good parts to white anti-segregationists and leaving black actors in the background.

"Driving Miss Daisy" ; 1989 ; Bruce Beresdford ; USA

He is black and the driver of a rich middle-class Jewish woman from the South. The relationship between these two people is contrasted - with much tenderness and humour - with the slow social changes and the establishment of civil rights in the South.

"Do the right thing" ; 1989 ; Spike Lee ; USA

The melting pot is only a myth, reconciliation between the different communities living in the United Sates is not possible; this is the terrible statement of Spike Lee's second film, with scenes which are sometimes extremely violent and without any hope to ever see a multicultural society.

"Miss Missouri" ; 1990 ; Elie Chouraqui ; France

Nathan dreamed of Hemingway's Jazz America. He sets out for a country where all communication seems impossible, and where racial segregation reigns. One of the few non-American films which has a critical look at the melting pot.

"Boyz'n the hood" ; 1990 ; John Singleton ; USA

Description of the young black rappers and gang warfare in the North American ghettos. Again the same statement of exacerbated inter-ethnic conflict in the Reagan era.

"Hangin' with the Homeshap" ; 1991 ; John Battista Vasquez ; USA

One of the few films which has been made by a young Puertorican director. It presents the melting pot as a chance, as a source of richness, through the story of four friends of different ethnic origins who live in the Bronx.

5. LOOKING AT EUROPE

Europe, too, knows problems linked to the relationship between different communities. Even if the social and historical backgrounds are different, it seemed appropriate to differentiate between the United States and the idea of the melting pot and co-existence between the communities, and Europe where some countries have a different tradition.

"Nuit et brouillard" ; 1956 ; Alain Resnais ; France

Ten years after the end of the Second World War this film alternates sometimes unbearable images (especially those taken during the liberation of Auschwitz and Dachau) with images of concentration camps and of death in 1956. Without interviews, just through a succession of images and a voice which lacks all educational tone, the documentary asks: who is responsible? in the present tense, as if the nightmare could start again any moment.

"Shoah" ; 1985 ; Claude Lanzman ; France

A historic documentary of 9 1/2 hrs, monument to the memory of the Shoa and reflection on the memory itself, this film is essential for trying to understand what the systematic extermination of Jews in Europe actually meant. Without archive films or historical reconstruction, by filming in 1985 the places of horror and challenging the memories of survivors and some butchers Lanzman plunges us back into the indescribable horror, which until "Shoah" was also supposed invisible.

"Le thé au harem" ; 1985 ; Abdelkrim Bahloul and Medhi Charef ; France

Story of a group of young "beurs" (second generation immigrants from North Africa) in the banlieu (suburb) of Paris. Their relationship with their families, with school. The title is a deformation of "the theorem of Archimedes".

"Sammy and Rosie get laid" ; 1987 ; Stephen Frears ; UK

London suburbia is aflame with interethnic conflicts. An old Pakistani, exiled in Britain, does no longer understand his family or social reality, while Rosie and Sammy try to live their love. Frears pursues his pitiless dissection of Thatcher society.

"Cheb" ; 1991 ; Rachid Bouchared ; France

Mervan a young Algerian who has always lived in France, finds himself expelled to his fathers' country, of which he knows nothing and does not speak the language; he is immediately sent to barracks in the Sahara. An outcry against the system of double punishment in France and a serious reflection on leaving one's roots.

"Young soul rebel" ; 1991 ; Isaac Julien : UK

A police story for a film in line with Stephen Frears': the love story between a young black and a young unemployed, both crazy for soul music in a British suburb.

6. IMAGES AGAINST APARTHEID

Cinema plays an important role in the fight against Apartheid by showing the reality of the system to thousands of viewers, even in fiction. Even if South Africa has now changed its politics it makes sense to see these films again in order to never forget that such a system was possible.

"Cry Freedom" ; 1987 ; Sir Richard Attenborough ; UK

The black South African militant fighter Steven Biko was tortured and killed by police in 1977. Journalist Donald Woods wants to bring the truth to light. Attenborough was criticised for concentrating his film on the white journalist and not putting enough emphasis on the fight of black people themselves. The film is nevertheless one of the most important ones in the anti-Apartheid struggle.

"A World Apart" ; 1988 ; Chris Menges ; UK

A mother and her daughter discover the reality of Apartheid in 1963: even though the 13 year old girl holds it against her mother that she sacrifices her family to the anti-Apartheid struggle, they both find themselves in the same fight when their black friend is killed. Worth seeing for a child's discovery of the world's injustice...

"A Dry White Season"; 1989; Euzan Palecy; USA

An honest man, humble Afrikaner professor, discovers Apartheid in everyday life, his horror and his revolt. The film is based on the novel of the South African writer André Brink and recalls the Soweto riots of 1977.

7. FILMING RACISM

Some films choose racism itself, and its most outrageous manifestations as a theme.

"Dupont la Joie" ; 1974 ; Yves Boisset ; France

A French rapist and murderer accuses a North African of his crimes. This film is a story of everyday racism, the expression "dupont la joie" has become a synonym for racists without conscience and remorse.

"Train d'enfer" ; 1985 ; Roger Hanin ; France

The story evolves from the incident of an Arab being thrown out of a train alive after having been terribly beaten up. X-ray of a racist and (full of self-praise) France, where the police defend the values of the Republic.

8. TOWARDS A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY

Cinema can also show utopia. For many of us one of the great visions for the end of this century is the full recognition of the richness and chances of a real multicultural society.

"Bagdad Café" ("Out of Rosenheim") ; 1987 ; Percy Adlon ; USA/FRG

"I'm calling you" was a hit throughout Europe at the time. By describing the arrival of a Bavarian woman abandoned by her husband in a small community in the middle of nowhere, the film is a true song of integration, particularly through the friendship between this woman and a black woman living in the village.

"Romuald et Juliette" ; 1989 ; Colline Serrau ; France

The meeting, however improbable at the beginning, of the Managing Director of a yoghurt producing company and his cleaning lady from the Antilles. A bitter-sweet vision of a French society which reconciles social class and people of different origins.

Jean-Philippe RESTOUEIX, 1993