Examining Three French Films Through the Lens of Ethnofiction

Schimmel/Conrades Science Center 167

Our presentation proposes to read three French films focusing on the education of young schoolchildren as ethnofiction. In analyzing Truffaut’s “L’argent de poche,” “Sur le chemin de l’ecole » and « Etre et Avoir » we will evaluate how the protagonists ‘played themselves’ in fictional and non-fictional film contexts. In so doing, we will also reflect on the extent to which this process is translated into the similarities and differences between the documentary and fictional film genres. For the theoretical framework, we will draw on Gregory Currie’s “Visible Traces: Documentary and the Contents of Photographs” as well as Sheila Curran Bernard’s “Documentary Storytelling.” In discussing the production history of the selected films we will rely on numerous interviews with the directors, including those published by Nolwenn Nedelec, Clélia Zernik, and Stéphane Durin. To give further dimension to the contrast between professional actors and untrained actors, who generally appear in fictional and documentary films, we will also engage in star studies, relying on Martin Shingler’s theoretical reader “Star Studies”