Browse Hierarchy FLM508: Memories of the Holocaust and Colonialism in French Cinema

This module explores how memories of the Holocaust and colonial crimes - two of the most extreme instances of violence in modern history - have circulated and sometimes overlapped in French-language cinema, including landmark films such as Alain Resnais's Night and Fog, Chris Marker's The Pier, Claude Lanzmann's Shoah and Michael Haneke's Hidden. It investigates the capacity of cinema to act as witness to atrocity, to mediate testimony, to model psychic trauma and repression, to challenge myths about the national past, and to probe the connections between seemingly disparate types of violence. Students will also gain an understanding of critical debates about these issues in French and wider contexts. All films will be available in subtitled versions and all key reading will be in English.