Michael Gott | University of Cincinnati (original) (raw)

Papers by Michael Gott

Contemporary French Civilization: Volume 47, Issue 1, 2022

This article considers a selection of films about air travel that encompass an array of voyagers ... more This article considers a selection of films about air travel that encompass an array of voyagers from refugees to business travelers as a metaphor for cinéma-monde and its complex threads and trajectories. Through an analysis of key moments of transition, transformation, or exposition within short scenes from six films set at least in part at airports, I examine how characters and viewers orient themselves between the hubs shared by air networks and the film apparatuses that compose cinéma-monde. I also consider the ways that air networks intersect with other (terrestrial, virtual, cine-industrial) networks. The films analyzed are Des étoiles/Under the Starry Sky (Dyana Gaye, 2013, France/Belgium/Senegal), Je suis mort mais j’ai des amis/I’m Dead But I Have Friends (Guillaume Malandrin and Stéphane Malandrin, 2015, Belgium/France), Le fils de Jean/A Kid (Philippe Lioret, 2016, France/Canada), Bab el web (Merzak Allouache, 2005, France/Switzerland/Algeria), Bird People (Pascale Ferra...

Contemporary French Civilization: Volume 47, Issue 1, 2022

Introduction to special issue, "New Directions in Cinéma-monde."

Contemporary French Civilization, 2018

Black Diaspora Review, Sep 12, 2014

Chapter 5 changes directions to consider the flip side of the European mobility boom. Th... more Chapter 5 changes directions to consider the flip side of the European mobility boom. The chapter analyses three films whose protagonists are migrants from beyond the European Union: Hope (Boris Lojkine, 2014, France), Illégal (Olivier Masset-Depasse, 2010, Belgium/France/Luxembourg) and Marussia (Eva Pervolovici, 2012, France/Russia). It argues that these films – even when they narrate the lives of protagonists already in Europe – are filmed as road movies or continuations thereof. In earlier chapters it was argued that road cinema is defined first and foremost by an emphasis on 'travelling shots'. This chapter considers how the generally panoramic vantage points of road cinema are represented in migrant road films, in which travellers are often granted solely or primarily limited viewpoints and sightlines.

Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia de Cultura, 2020

This paper is dedicated to the analysis of the development of Central European road movies after ... more This paper is dedicated to the analysis of the development of Central European road movies after 2004, with special consideration given to Polish and Czech cinematography. The films which have been discussed are Polish productions Francuski numer (2006, directed by Robert Wichrowski) and Handlarz cudow (2009, directed by Boleslaw Pawica and Jaroslaw Szoda), as well as Czech Rodina je zaklad statu (2011, directed by Robert Sedlacek) and Pusinky (2007, directed by Karin Babinska). Although these films – to a certain extent – follow the fixed paths, we put forward the assumption that at the same time, they use the tools of road movies in an innovative and varied manner, responding to problems, dilemmas and perspectives of Central Europe after 2004.

This chapter examines what is likely the increasingly prevalent ‘return to origins’ movie. A clos... more This chapter examines what is likely the increasingly prevalent ‘return to origins’ movie. A close look at the corpus of French-language road cinema of the past twenty years reveals a genre that actively reformulates the limits of national and European identity by (often literally) redrawing the map. The popularity of ‘return’ voyages is reflective of a desire to remap French and other national identities within the parameters of an enlarged European Union, within which physical and administrative frontiers have fallen. Return films demonstrate that it is now conceivable to be French, Belgian or Swiss and retain, or rediscover, a connection to another identity, whether Polish, Czech, Armenian, Spanish, Italian, or Maghrebi. The chapter begins with a discussion of how mobile and layered outlooks on citizenship fit into conception of French republicanism and European identity frameworks before zooming in on case studies from France and Switzerland. Voyage en Arménie/Armenia (Robert Guédiguian, 2006, France), Ten’ja/Testament (Hassan Legzouli, 2004, France/Morocco) and Comme des voleurs (à l'est)/Stealth (Lionel Baier, 2005, Switzerland) furnish the examples.

Building upon the concepts of <italic>littérature-monde</italic> (citing a 2... more Building upon the concepts of <italic>littérature-monde</italic> (citing a 2007 manifesto) and cinéma-monde (citing a 2013 article by Bill Marshall), this introduction aims to explore the opportunities and limitations of adopting the label of 'cinéma-monde' as a critical framework through which to approach a corpus of films linked to the francophone world and its production networks. To this end, it discusses the Trophées Francophones du cinéma (created in 2013), the first cinema awards specifically dedicated to internationally produced francophone films, as well as the concepts of 'accented cinemas' (a term borrowed from Hamid Naficy), 'franco-zones' and cinematic 'hubs' in order to further delineate cinéma-monde and articulate a decentred approach to global French-language filmmaking. A kaleidoscope is forwarded as a metaphor because it involves looking at the world through a particular yet variable and adjustable optic. The introduction ends with a summary of the fourteen chapters and three epilogues, which comprise the volume.

Studies in European Cinema

ABSTRACT Travel cinema has flourished in the era of EU expansion and Schengen open border policie... more ABSTRACT Travel cinema has flourished in the era of EU expansion and Schengen open border policies because it provides a fitting template for the exploration of the new possibilities of European identity. This article will focus on a related strand of cinema that is less common for practical and aesthetic reasons. Airport cinema is arguably the exemplar of what an interconnected and transnational ‘European’ cinema is or could be. More broadly, it represents the possibilities of what a properly European identity might look like in the future. The airport – and air travel – is symbolic on various levels of the policies and ideologies of European citizenship construction. The three examples take different approaches to the topic and cover a wide geographic swath of the Continent. In each the airport is a zone of transit and containment, but more than simply a non-place it also becomes the site of an encounter that defines or delineates European identity. In Viagem a Portugal/Journey to Portugal (Sérgio Tréfaut, 2011, Portugal), a Ukranian doctor is detained in the Faro airport because her very presence as an eastern European woman arouses suspicion. In Dual (Nejc Gazvoda, 2013, Slovenia/Croatia/Denmark),a Danish woman meets a Slovenian women who works at the airport during an unplanned layover in Ljubljana. Their relationship and linguistic interactions – in English but also their respective native tongues – symbolizes the uncertain standing of a young generation of Europeans. A final example offers a more playful twist on identity within the context of post-Schengen travel. In L’Italien, by Olivier Baroux (2010, France), the Marseille airport becomes a symbolic border zone between the different identities a Frenchman of Algerian descent. The airport here becomes something similar to what Etienne Balibar theorizes as ‘borderland Europe’, a space where one enjoys the freedom to recreate one’s identity in a positive light.

Transfers, 2015

Il sorpasso, Italy, 1962; Mario Cecchi Gori (producer); Dino Risi (director), Dino Risi, Ettore S... more Il sorpasso, Italy, 1962; Mario Cecchi Gori (producer); Dino Risi (director), Dino Risi, Ettore Scola, and Ruggero Maccari (screenplay); starring Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant. 2014 DVD release by the Criterion Collection includes new English subtitle translation, interviews, essays, excerpts of a documentary, and an introduction by filmmaker Alexander Payne.

Studies in European Cinema, 2015

The controversies surrounding the adoption of the pacte civil de solidarité and similar European ... more The controversies surrounding the adoption of the pacte civil de solidarité and similar European debates in the late 1990s coincide with a revival of the road movie format in the cinema of France and its neighbours. The border-crossing inclinations of road movies generate an often polyglot battery of films that tackle questions of identity, kinship and citizenship from a transnational perspective. This article focuses on three French-language, queer-themed, border-crossing road movies: Plein sud/Going South (Sébastien Lifshitz, dir., 2009a), Origine contrôlée/Made in France (Ahmed Bouchaala and Zakia Tahri, dir., 2001) and Comme des voleurs (à l’est)/Stealth (Lionel Baier, dir., 2006). These films, and the recent vogue in French and European road movies in general, correspond to a period marked by identity debates and the decreasing relevance of the traditional fabric of citizenship. Beyond the evident questioning of the patriarchal system and the staging of quests of individual agency and self-discovery, these films offer unique twists on the return to ‘origins’ narrative. While each journey takes a different direction (towards Spain, Algeria/Switzerland and Poland, respectively), it is the road itself that enables the fluid construction of selfhood. We examine in particular how the queering of each protagonist informs the relationships that these narratives entertain with wider identity debates, whether racial, national, ethnic or religious.

Reframing post-1989 European Cinema, 2015

Contemporary French Civilization, 2018

Review of In Permanent Crisis by Michael Gott (to whom I cannot thank enough)

Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2014

This article examines French-language films produced after, and sometimes inspired by, the fall o... more This article examines French-language films produced after, and sometimes inspired by, the fall of the Berlin Wall and of communism in Eastern Europe. Commentators such as Alain Badiou have argued that that post-Wall ‘borderless’ Europe has failed to live up to its promise and cinema has taken a leading role in mapping what ‘Fortress Europe’ looks like from those literally or figuratively on the outside. I propose in this
essay a different angle of vision, one that takes into account cinematic representations of what I label ‘touring’, an activity related to the often-maligned practice of tourism. Tourism, however, is changing and is often seen under a new light, particularly in Europe, where it is believed to have a crucial role in the construction of European citizenship. Low-cost air travel made possible by deregulation of the airline industry has
made borderless travel within Europe increasingly affordable and common. The touring on display in eight cinematic case studies addressed here combines tourism with a
variety of other practices that include work, study and ‘visiting friends and relatives’. I argue that this cinematic activity within the ‘soft border’ (K. Eder, 2006.) space of Europe or ‘borderland Europe’ (É. Balibar,2009) – in other words, the spaces within the EU and Schengen Zone – promotes what Balibar has called
‘translation’ and a variety of encounters with the potential to engender transnational hybridity and new, flexible notions of identity.

Contemporary French Civilization: Volume 47, Issue 1, 2022

Introduction to special issue, "New Directions in Cinéma-monde."

Contemporary French Civilization, 2018

Black Diaspora Review, Sep 12, 2014

Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia de Cultura, 2020

Studies in European Cinema

Transfers, 2015

Studies in European Cinema, 2015

Reframing post-1989 European Cinema, 2015

Contemporary French Civilization, 2018

Review of In Permanent Crisis by Michael Gott (to whom I cannot thank enough)

Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2014

Introduction: The Kaleidoscope of Cinéma-monde, 2018

Intro to the 2018 collection Cinéma-monde: Decentred Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French

Extract from Edinburgh University Press containing the table of contents and full introduction. ... more Extract from Edinburgh University Press containing the table of contents and full introduction.

Abstract:

Twenty-five years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe, and ten years have passed since the first formerly communist states entered the E.U. An entire post-Wall generation has now entered adulthood, yet scholarship on European cinema still tends to divide the continent along the old Cold War lines.

In East West and Centre the world's leading scholars in the field assemble to consider the ways in which notions such as East and West, national and transnational, central and marginal are being rethought and reframed in contemporary European cinema. Assessing the state of post-1989 European cinema, from (co)production and reception trends to filmic depictions of migration patterns, economic transformations and socio-political debates over the past and the present, they address increasingly intertwined cinema industries that are both central (France and Germany) and marginal in Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania).

This extract provided by Edinburgh University Press includes the full introduction, the table of ... more This extract provided by Edinburgh University Press includes the full introduction, the table of contents, and a link to the book's page on the EUP website.

Abstract:
Over the past two decades road cinema has become an increasingly popular form of expression for European directors. Focusing on a corpus of films from France, Belgium and Switzerland, including works by Ismaël Ferroukhi, Bouli Lanners, Aki Kaurismäki and Jacqueline Audry amongst many others, French-language Road Cinema contends that nowhere is the impulse to remap the spaces and identities of ‘New Europe’ more evident than in French-language cinema. Drawing on mobility studies, cultural geography and film theory, this innovative work sketches out the flexible yet distinctive parameters of contemporary French-language road cinema, and argues for an understanding of the ‘road movie’ not as a genre but as a thematic and formal template that crosses cinematic categories to bring together a wide array of films that narrate the movements of migrants, tourists and business executives.

Twenty-five years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Easte... more Twenty-five years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe, and ten years have passed since the first formerly communist states entered the E.U. An entire post-Wall generation has now entered adulthood, yet scholarship on European cinema still tends to divide the continent along the old Cold War lines.

ReFocus: The Films of Rachid Bouchareb, 2020

ReFocus: The Films of Rachid Bouchareb is the first book-length study of the internationally reco... more ReFocus: The Films of Rachid Bouchareb is the first book-length study of the internationally recognized director’s films. Bouchareb was one of France’s first filmmakers of North African descent and his career as a director and producer now spans over 35 years. Remarkably varied in their themes, formal elements and narrative settings, Bouchareb’s work has engaged with and reflected on a variety of crucial social, political and historical issues; from the role of colonial troops in the French army during the Second World War, to terrorism in contemporary Europe. This volume examines Bouchareb’s films from an interdisciplinary perspective, exploring key influences on his output and considering new theoretical approaches to his filmmaking.

Cinéma-monde: Decentred Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French, 2018