French B Movies

<p><b>In the impoverished outskirts of French cities known as the </b><b><i>banlieues</i></b><b> minority communities are turning to American culture history and theory to make their own voices cultures and histories visible. Filmmakers have followed suit turning to Hollywood genre conventions to challenge notions of identity belonging and marginalization in mainstream French film.<br /></b><b><i><br /></i></b><i>French B Movies</i> proposes that French <i>banlieue</i> films far from being a fringe genre offer a privileged site from which to understand the current state of the French film industry in an age of globalization. This gritty style appears in popular arthouse films such as Mathieu Kassovitz's <i>La Haine </i>and <i>Bande de filles </i>(<i>Girlhood</i>) along with the major Netflix hit series <i>Lupin</i>. David Pettersen traces how in these works and others directors fuse features of <i>banlieue </i>cinema with genre formulas associated with both Hollywood and Black cultural models as well as how transnational genre hybridizations such as B movies have become part of the ecosystem of the French film industry.<br /><br />By combining film analysis cultural history critical theory and industry studies <i>French B Movies</i> reveals how featuring <i>banlieues </i>is as much about trying to imagine new identities and production models for French cinema as it is about representation.</p>