thomas - documenting the periphery - the short films and faiza guene

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Dominic Thomas

Documenting the Periphery

The Short Films of Faïza Guène

Pour rendre acceptable cette segmentation, l’imaginaire colonial est mobilisé et revitalisé afi n de parcelliser la subjectivité des dominés. (Bouamama, 75)

As François Niney has pointed out, “Entre les murs (2008) de Laurent Cantet, paradocumentaire joué par les intéressés reconstituant ‘la réalité’ d’une classe de collè ge” ( 11), serv ed to underscore the complex w ays in which fi ction and reality were being documented today and ho w the di vision between fi lmic genres had become increasingly complicated by rapid technological inno vation. Strictly speaking, “‘(un) documentaire’ se singularise pour ne plus désigner qu’un seul type de document, ou de documentation, visuel ou audiovisuel: un documentair e est alors un fi lm (ou une vidéo) qui s’oppose à fi lm de fi ction, un peu comme l’essai au roman” (Nine y, 15–16) and “La plupart des dictionnaires de la langue française comme des vocabulaires du cinéma tentent de défi nir le documentaire par deux traits principaux: son aspect didactique et son opposition à la fi ction qui recouvrirait l’opposition entre réel et imaginaire” (Nine y, 16). However, the indiscriminate recourse to such terms as “montrant des f aits réels” and “ren voyant au réel” (Nine y, 17) to designate events or features of all forms of fi lm has served to further complicate the process of cate gorizing fi lm productions. Gi ven their specifi c objective of documenting the cultural, economic, political, and social realities of the banlieues, the short fi lms by F aïza Guène that are under consideration here compel vie wers to refl ect simultaneously on the subjects e xplored and the ef fectiveness—and therefore the social function—of the camera itself as a tool. Relying as the y do on diverse evidentiary modes, testimonies, and pri vileged ethnographic

192 / French Forum / Spring/Fall 2010 / Vol. 35, Nos. 2–3

informers, “au-delà d’être des œuvres de création, de fi ction, les fi lms sont des supports de compréhension d’une partie de la vie des adolescents de ma génération et de mon milieu social” (F aïza Guène, “Personal communication”), these fi lms engage in a dialogue between the center and the periphery.

The French banlieues ha ve recei ved considerable attention—on the subject of religion and gender roles (K eaton 2006), comparative urban policies (W acquant 1992 and 2006), ethnicity, race and class (Stovall 2003), social mobility (F assin 2010), police repression (Le Cour Grandmaison 2009)—and we are today better -equipped thanks to these historical and sociological analyses to understand cultural and social dynamics in these urban spaces and also to identify reducti ve characterizations of these. However, as new generations of researchers have gained scholarly legitimacy as a result of e xtensive fi eldwork in the banlieues, it remains of crucial importance to determine what can be gained by connecting these fi ndings and observ ations with fi lms and texts generated internally . Indeed, in his discussion of Beur au-thors (Azouz Begag, Farida Belghoul, Mehdi Charef, etc.), Alec Har-greaves demonstrated ho w they were “the fi rst to write from within the immigrant community itself” ( Immigration and identity , 4, em-phasis added). Likewise, Beur cinema would also focus on analogous themes, most notably the question of bi-cultural upbringing, Islam in French society, immigrant politics, the parameters of Frenchness, the legacy of the Algerian war, family dynamics, colonial memory , and so on (see Dhoukar). Ultimately, these cultural practitioners provided a perspective on France that w as not available elsewhere. The docu-mentary component—albeit mediated via fi ction—was integral to the genealogy of production, recording an aspect of French society that might not have otherwise been available.

The focus on sociological elements complicated the reception of literary works within a highly institutionalized literary establishment (Pascale Casanova has de voted a book-length study to this “répub-lique mondiale des lettres”), and Beur authors were often hea vily criticized for this. Furthermore, the critiques these writers articulated against failed assimilationist and inte grational measures and policies were also construed as calling into question accepted norms and attri-butes. As Ahmed Boubeker has argued,

Thomas: Documenting the Periphery / 193

Bien sûr, le combat peut sembler douteux f ace aux vigiles de la “vieille France” et ses assignations à demeure f antasmatiques, ses compulsions à la répétition qui réinventent l’étranger pour mieux refouler ses banlieues. Il n’empêche que, des années 1980 aux années 1990, une révolution symbolique a eu lieu: l’immigration devenue l’élément central d’une réfl exion identitaire s’est imposée comme une dimension de la société française. (2008, 192)

Relative newcomers to the cultural scene elected to investigate subjects anchored in personal e xperience, but also to address perceptions and constructs that circulated concerning these communities. Therefore, when one attempts to categorize fi lms, as François Niney has shown, distinctions between fi ction and reality ha ve not al ways been that obvious:

fi ction et documentaire sont tous deux des fi lms, ils utilisent l’une comme l’autre le langage cinématographique à base de prises de vues, sons et raccords, même si leurs tournures dominantes et surtout, on v a le voir, la relation fi lmeur/fi lmé et la relation monde fi lmé (diégèse)/monde commun (où vit le spectateur) pri vilégient ici et là des dispositifs dif férents (le drame mimétique d’un côté, l’enquête dis-cursive de l’autre); la fi ction comme le documentaire est à base de prises de vues réelles; et le documentaire comme la fi ction transforme le temps réel, le temps chronique en récit, en montage. (62)

The decision to engage with dominant society was partially the result of gro wing a wareness of discrimination and the adv ances that had been made thanks to social acti vism and mobilization (Har greaves 2007, 75–139). In an intervie w pertaining to the role played by the organization DiverCité, Boualam Azahoum remarked that

Il y a certes des problèmes propres au quartier , mais d’autres sont liés à des contextes sociétaux, économiques, culturels, historiques. Ces problèmes sont à peu près les mêmes partout, avec des variances dues à des histoires locales. [. . .] L’en-jeu, c’était donc de dépasser cette situation à partir d’une mutualisation des moyens et d’une compréhension des changements que nous vivions. (“Interview,” 203)

Thus, aligning oneself with the momentum in place and w orking towards improving the circulation of ideas and images “out” of the banlieues necessarily meant fore grounding the dual components of representation: on the one hand, tracing the positi ve de velopments that had resulted from enhanced political consciousness and advocacy,


and on the other emphasizing the benefi ts of coordinating ef forts aimed at achie ving more accurate representations of the banlieues themselves. Such measures w ould entail a direct confrontation with colonial history and postcolonial realities (see Maghraoui), and with an analysis of the social and political mechanisms responsible for producing inequality.

The transcoloniality of these questions may seem ob vious to ob-servers, but they remain contested issues in French society today. “Le concept d’intégration,” as Pierre Tévanian has shown, “fut ainsi brandi par l’Etat colonial comme une concession destiné à contenir les colo-nisés et à refouler leurs revendications d’égalité puis d’autodétermina-tion. [. . .] C’est ce refoulement de la question égalitaire qui conduit au débat public tel qu’il est aujourd’hui posé” (64–65). Some historians, have been slightly less inclined to accept the linearity of these colonial legacies, arguing that in order to “comprendre de manière plus globale et moins mécanique le poids du f ait colonial dans notre présent im-plique d’être attentif à des rapports de pouv oir, nécessairement con-jonctuels car redistribués en permanence” (Saada, 71). However, the “précédent colonial” (Masure, 568) appears incontro vertible, and as Hafi d Gafaiti has insisted, the fact nevertheless remains that

the French colonial authorities produced an ethnic discourse that w ould serve as the basis of and justifi cation for their policies. Along with economic and political factors that determine the de velopment of immigration in France, this discourse shaped the representation of North African immigrants within France. [ . . . ] the new status of immigrants, and of their children in particular, designated as the sec-ond generation, led to the currently exacerbated tensions within the French social fabric and to an increasing racism and discourse of exclusion. (201–208)

Nowhere, ar guably, ha ve these transcolonial links been more convincingly present than in the images found on television, whereby the “images that do feature on screen tend to be neocolonial in character, presenting migrants and their descendants as alien to the national community and/or as the benefi ciaries of paternalistic condescension” (Hargreaves 1997, 96). “L’observation qualitative des émissions montre en ef fet que la production de stéréotypes positifs ou né gatifs a pour motif persistant la réduction des non-Blancs à leurs ‘origines,’ constitutives de leur étrangeté à la société française” (Macé, 398).


In 1997, Alec Hargreaves published an insightful study of post-co-lonial minorities and French tele vision, noting that the “hea vy capi-tal cost involved in television production and marketing do not make it easy for minority groups to tak e an active role as program-mak ers and suppliers” (Hargreaves 1997, 96). Since that time, technological evolution has democratized access to production (digital cameras) and distribution (on the internet), and young people ha ve capitalized on these digital and technological adv ances. In turn, this has translated into greater minority participation and therefore visibility . In a 2008 article in Le Monde , “Les cités s’emparent de la caméra, ” P ascale Krémer indicated how “les outils, caméras numériques et logiciels de montage, se sont démocratisés, leurs prix s’effondrant et leur usage se simplifi ant à l’extrême” (24). Today,

[v]endus sous forme de DVD, et surtout diffusés gracieusement sur des sites Inter-net, qui s’apparentent parfois à de v éritables webtélés, sur des vidéoblogs ou des sites de partage come Dailymotion [. . .]. Quels qu’en soient la forme et le support fi nal, avec des modes d’organisations variés (collectif informel, association, atelier de centre culturel municipal), la création foisonne dans les cités. (24)

The potential of fi lmmaking and writing w as partially ad-dressed in the manifesto published in 2007 by the collecti ve of young banlieue artists Qui F ait la F rance in which the y stat-ed “nous refusons de demeurer spectateurs des souf frances dont sont victimes les plus fragiles, les déclassés, les in visibles” (www.quifaitlafrance.com). Later that year the y published an edited v ol-ume Chroniques pour une société annoncée , and announced that “tous les droits d’auteur de ce li vre alimenteront cette associa-tion pour fi nancer sur le terrain des projets en direction des habi-tants de ces territoires en souf france” (http://www .quifaitlafrance.com/content/blogcategory/26/58/). The primary concern of the col-lective has been to reject stereotypes and false characterizations of the banlieues, and accordingly to counter these by re gistering accurate accounts of France’s cultural, economic, ethnic, and social diversity:

Parce que nous pensons que la France est un pays moderne dont le vivre ensemble s’élabore par le décloisonnement des mentalités, la reconnaissance des souf fran-ces particulières, la mise en récit de sa di versité et de ses imaginaires; parce que nous refusons que l’espace public, seule ressource intellectuelle dont dispose une


société pour se penser, soit gaspillé par les vaines polémiques, la dérision systéma-tique, les discours con venus et l’inlassable mise en scène des dominants. (www .quifaitlafrance.com)

In F aïza Guène’ s 2006 no vel, Du r êve pour les oufs , the twenty-four year old main character Ahlème refl ects on her circumstances, concluding “Je suis digne et debout et je pense à tout un tas de choses (36), and much lik e Guène herself, resolving to be proacti ve (see Adams). The aim of writers and fi lmmakers could be summarized as examples of concerted action, whereby “Exaspérés par les stéréotypes sur la banlieue dont les abreuv e la télé vision, des jeunes des cités prennent le pouvoir médiatique” (Krémer, 24), providing a therapeutic dimension through action, a “tra vail aux bienfaits thérapeutiques sur leur propre image, afi n de contrer celle que véhiculent les médias [. . .] En passant derrière la caméra, ils se réapproprient leur image” (Krémer, 25). The question of visibility is therefore twofold, allowing populations that occupy an otherwise marginal status to be noticed by dominant society, and rendering conspicuous a broad range of social issues that necessarily question and place under pressure Republican ideals and v alues. For, as Carrie Tarr has demonstrated, “fi lms from the cinemas of the periphery tell a dif ferent story [and pro vide] the potential to articulate e xclusion and double consciousness in a w ay that challenges the he gemony of French culture” ( 1997, 73–79). Historically at least, this is a recent phenomenon for until 1999

la question des politiques de la représentation des minorités non blanches et des nouvelles confi gurations de la nation française et de ses imaginaires collectifs n’avait pas été posée e xplicitement. [. . .] Jusqu’en 1998, la télé vision française était le refl et du modèle républicain français: au nom du principe d’é galité entre les individus, il convenait d’être “indifférent aux différences,” c’est-à-dire ne pas prendre en compte les différences entre les individus et les groupes, afi n de ne pas menacer l’unité de la nation en lui opposant des “communautés” fondées sur la “race,” l’ethnie, le genre, la religion. [. . .] L ’effet pervers de cette “indif férence aux différences” est celui de l’indifférence aux discriminations. (Macé, 391–392)

The project of documenting the banlieues, the principles, rationale and logistics of obtaining an “eye” into the contemporary postcolonial context and of obtaining a view from within that could be juxtaposed with external projections w as advanced by the creation of numerous


association and groups in the banlieues—partially as a response to the multiple uprisings that had occurred during the 1990s in such Parisian banlieues (among others of course) as Sartrouville, Gar ges-lès-Gonesse, Mantes-la-Jolie, and Nanterre. Dif ferent associations and or ganizations (www .citeart.free.fr), web-TV netw orks (www.icetream.com), Internet sites (such as www.regards2banlieue.org and www.enattendantdemain.org) and youth or ganizations were set up. As Pascale Krémer has underlined, these are “documentaires et des fi ctions, surtout, qui sonnent remarquablement juste” ( 27). On some sites, such as www.les-engraineurs.org, most fi lms are accessible and can be do wnloaded, the objecti ve being abo ve all to “f aire émerger une parole chez les jeunes des quartiers dits sensibles en dé veloppant des projets audio visuels de proximité à petite ou à grande échelle. ” The fi lms address a broad range of important issues, including gender roles and e xpectations, po verty, f amily v alues, education, school, youth culture, disillusionment, language, Islam, etc. Omnipresent are concerns with “délinquance, ” the nationalistic and x enophobic tendencies of the e xtreme right whose policies ha ve no w been recuperated and mainstreamed by President Nicolas Sark ozy’s ruling Union pour un Mouv ement Populaire, police brutality , increased surveillance of the banlieues, and police harassment and brutality . Documenting these harsh realities also entails demystifying e xternal projections. As Guy Gauthier has sho wn, fi lms and documentaries assume multiple forms, ranging from an “immersion dans la vie réelle” ( 207) to “l’authenticité du témoignage” ( 208), or a “fi ction documentaire” (212). Over time, documentaries have evolved, but what has remained constant is the imperati ve of constructing a narrati ve, of directing and guiding the vie wer, of communicating ideas and positions; ultimately though, the objecti ve is to sustain a relationship to a given reality. “Le documentaire,” Guy Gauthier has shown, “s’est défi ni par rapport à la vie, qui lui permet d’affi rmer sa différence; par rapport à la fi ction, en essayant de profi ter de son ombre gigantesque; par rapport à la technique, tantôt mise en a vant, tantôt rel éguée à l’arrière par la question essentielle de l’authenticité” (206).

Faïza Guène, whose three novels Kiffe kiffe demain (2004), Du rêve pour les oufs (2006), and Les gens du Balto (2008) have been bestsell-ers in France, has also proven particularly adept at making short fi lms.


She collaborated with the “engraineurs” group, founded originally as a direct response to media representations of the banlieues: “Nous ne nous reconnaissions pas dans l’image que les médias v éhiculaient de nous et de nos vies, alors nous fabriquions nos propres images” (“Per-sonal communication”). For Guène,

Les courts-métrages, cela a surtout été un préte xte de débat dans de nombreuses circonstances, les fi lms traitaient de sujets de société tout en étant inscrits dans la vie quotidienne des jeunes, ce qui a été pour moi à de nombreuses reprises d’e x-cellents leviers de débats lorsque j’allais à la rencontre d’élèves dans des collèges ou lycées. Ils s’identifi aient souvent aux problématiques traitées, et tout en passant par le fi lm, cela les ramenait à eux et à leurs opinions. J’ai l’impression que ces courts-métrages ont été da vantage un outil pédagogique, une démarche presque sociologique beaucoup plus qu’une œuvre cinématographique. Une démarche très différente de mes romans je crois. (Personal communication)

Cited in Mohamed Ridha Bouguerra’ s and Sahiba Bouguerra’ s Histoire de la littérature du Maghreb: littérature francophone, Guène has indicated ho w “Mes parents, ils ont connu la guerre en Algérie, Octobre 1961 à Paris. Ils ne v eulent pas faire de bruit. Mais nous on est né ici, on ne se tait pas” ( 148), and how this realization pro vided the motivation for her documentary Mémoires du 17 octobre (with Bernard Richard 2002, 17 mins.). Inspired by Jean-Luc Einaudi’ s important and contro versial book, La bataille de P aris: 17 octobre 1961 (1991), on the massacre of o ver tw o hundred Algerians (and physical injury to se veral thousand others) that took place in P aris in October 1961, Guène’s documentary stands today as an important contribution to the process of establishing and recognizing—as well as memorializing—some of the more disquieting aspects of French-Algerian contact and history . The documentary brings together a number of fi rsthand testimonies by indi viduals (Algerian w orkers, demonstrators, journalists, photographers, bystanders, or ganizers, etc.) who witnessed the violent response by the police to a peaceful demonstration organized by Algerian workers and pro-FLN supporters against the imposition of a curfe w that limited circulation in the city and prevented workers from getting to night-shifts at various factories. Georges Azenstarck, then a staf f photographer at the Communist newspaper L’Humanité, w as on assignment at the time: “J’étais-là. Je l’ai vu devant moi.” Such statements—made in the documentary—


are useful for the ar gument that is being made, b ut also pro ved crucial when he testifi ed before the French courts to support Jean-Luc Einaudi’s accusation that Maurice Papon (the former chief of the Paris police) had been responsible for perpetrating organization of the October 1961 massacres.

On the evening of October 17, 1961, Algerian workers congregated at the Place de l’Opéra in Paris. According to the documentary, the evi-dence gathered corroborates claims pertaining to the peaceful goals of the demonstration and confi rms that the organizers had implemented a set of safety and precautionary measures. All the eyewitness accounts thus contradict the offi cial version of events. Monique Hervo, for ex-ample, claims that “La police tirait, et ça je le maintiendrai toujours puisque j’étais là,” a statement substantiated by Ahmed Touil: “J’ai vu de mes propres yeux.” His brother, Omar Touil, has also asserted that the events of October 17 were to be inscribed in a broader pattern of police harassment, whereby “On se faisait rafl er à tout les coups,” and Monique Hervo described the alarming, shocking accounts of Alge-rians being lynched and tortured in the w oods of Boulogne and Vin-cennes to the eastern and western perimeter of the capital:

C’était l’arbitraire le plus complet. [. . .] C’était le rè gne, ef fectivement, de la terreur, de quelque chose qui ne pouv ait amener qu’une manifestation, a vec le couvre-feu qui avait été décrété par Papon, qui était le point d’orgue, je dirais, de la répression. Donc, moi, le 17 octobre reste pour mémoire quelque chose d’af-freux, mais tous les jours et les mois qui l’ont précédé, c’était pareil.

Guène’s documentary examines one of the most problematic chapters in Algerian-French history , re vealing the constituti ve nature of the apparatus of contemporary identity-formation. It is to these themes, among others, that the short fi lms under consideration turn their attention. Likewise, these pro vide alternative accounts of life in the banlieues that counter those a vailable in what may be considered offi cial outlets.

Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 fi lm La Haine includes a sequence dur -ing which a tele vision news crew pulls up in a banlieue housing es-tate seeking live footage of urban youth commenting on their role in the previous night’s violent uprising and clash with the police. Rather than providing the journalist with the kind of predetermined answers


she hopes for, one of the main characters, Hubert, shouts out “On est pas à Thoiry ici!” Much in the same way as one would visit Thoiry—a wildlife animal park located on the outskirts of P aris—the journal-ist in question remains within the confi nes of her v ehicle, keeping a safe distance—and thereby causing of fence—from the “wild” youth she encounters. As I will argue, Sale réput’ (2002, 14 mins.), a short fi lm to which F aïza Guène contrib uted, operates interte xtually with the kind of conclusion Kassovitz is drawing in terms of media percep-tions of banlieue youth. In Sale réput’, a journalist (Carole, played by Isabelle Carré) is given the assignment of following up on a news story about ri val gangs fi ghting in the neighborhood of La Défense. Rather than going to La Défense, she opts instead to visit the peaceful Courtillières estate located at the opposite perimeter of Paris in Pantin where she has a contact. F or her, one must assume, banlieue spaces are interchangeable, perhaps defi ned by varying degrees of violence, but essentially sharing common signifi ers. Achille Mbembe has ar -gued that “a confl ation is occurring between colonial modes of con-trol, treatment, and segregation, the treatment in metropolitan France of men and w omen judged undesirable, and the treatment of citizens considered to be second-class simply because they are not ‘French of pure stock’ or ‘of the white race’” (Mbembe, 52). As with the scene from Kassovitz’s fi lm alluded to earlier, the journalist in question be-gins to ask loaded questions that ha ve to do with gang acti vity, vio-lence, and so on. Initially , the respondents challenge the premise of her questions:

respondent #1: Des gens quand ils nous voient en groupe ils ont peur. Mais nous, on ne veut du mal à personne.

carole: D’où vient la peur à votre avis?respondent #2: C’est par rapport à ce qui se passe à la télé,

tout ça. C’est les politiques. C’est genre la délinquance, la vio-lence dans les quartiers. C’est un aperçu.

However, these responses pro ve unsatisf actory because the y don’ t conform to the narrati ve she is endea voring to construct and are therefore not ne wsworthy. (This is made e ven more apparent in some of the footage that w as cut from the fi nal edit, in which Carole states that “J’ai pas ce qu’il f aut”). She therefore seeks out other


interviewees, and eventually obtains the kind of response she has been looking for from a teenage girl named Rachida:

carole: Vous êtes d’accord pour répondre à quelques questions?rachida: Oui, y a pas de problème.

At this moment the fi lm switches to the e vening televised news pro-gram on which we learn that young people in the banlieues settle dif-ferences with weapons that are housed in no less than an “armurerie.” The journalist’s “fact checking” mission to a banlieue thus proves suc-cessful in terms of the kind of audience e xpectations they have cre-ated through sensationalized news coverage, but grossly inaccurate in terms of the reality on the ground. As Ernesto Oña (a young man inter-viewed by Pascale Krémer for her Le Monde article on banlieue fi lm-making) comments, “Après 2005 [the social uprisings and riots], on s’est dit que c’était fi ni, qu’on ne laisserait plus parler de nous comme ça, de cette manière blessante, violente! Que c’était de l’intérieur que la parole de vrait venir” (Krémer, 25). Although Sale réput’ was re-leased several years before the 2005 uprisings, the fi lm was a response to prevalent assumptions about the banlieues. As Krémer has shown, outsiders “ne s’intéressent qu’au spectaculaire susceptible de confort-er leurs préjugés, les éternels stéréotypes sur la cité et ses habitants—un monde à part de violence, de délinquance, de souf france, peuplé de rappeurs, dealers, violeurs et inté gristes encapuchonnés [. . .]” (26). Running stories such as these are not of course without conse-quence. In the case of Sale réput’, the footage screened on tele vision results in—or serv es to justify—a toughening of police controls in their neighborhood. Adult residents e xpress their concern with “cor -recting” such negative characterizations by contacting the media, b ut of course one knows only too well that such attempts would prove fu-tile. The “sale réput’”—or “bad rep’”—corresponds to accepted opin-ions about the banlieue, enabling an apparently inescapable c ycle of violence, a kind of “tautology of fear” (Dal Lago, 85), triggering a heightened police presence which in turn prompts further anger, resis-tance, and oppositionality. The fatigue with such images and ongoing discussions as to how best to represent oneself also culminates in fur-ther disillusionment. As Ahmed Boubeker has written


They are nothing more nor less than caricatures of a sham alienness that reinforces an unhealthy taste for the sensational e ven while appeasing the conscience. With no place of recognition to hang their hats, these new barbarians in the news do not even have the e xtenuating circumstance of being the of fspring of generations of poverty and oppression. For under the state of emergency of monstrosity or subhu-man barbarism, they are emptied of all social meaning, deprived of any experience proper to them. (2009, 77)

In both Beur and banlieue fi lms, boredom—and therefore the con-sequences of limited acti vity and opportunity—has become a com-mon feature. In Le bon à rien (2001, 11 mins.), written by F aïza Guène, three teenage bo ys are seen resting on the grass outside one of the neighborhood HLM b uildings. True to the title of the fi lm—Le bon à rien , literally “good for nothing”—tw o of them decide to go shoplifting. In a later scene, one of the young men (Brahim) has now returned home where his mother is struggling to interrupt endless hours of computer gaming. “T u me f ais honte” she interjects, pres-suring him to get up and fi nd work. His of fhand respond, “De toute façon j’suis un bon à rien,” reveals the extent to which he has appro-priated this label. However, faced with his mother’s ultimatum that he either fi nd work or leave home, the camera now marks Brahim’s deci-sion to respond to the challenge with a transition from the domestic space of the home to the public one where we no w observe Brahim in front of the intérim employment agency scrutinizing job announce-ments. The agenc y’s promotional statement, prominently displayed in the front windo w—“Et si j’essayais l’intérim?”—confronts Bra-him with the e xistential choice he no w has to mak e between action (What if I tried Interim? Or: What if I gave Interim a chance?) and the status quo. Realizing that Intérim’ s list only contains specialized job offerings, Brahim makes his way to the local Agence nationale pour l’emploi (ANPE) offi ce. At fi rst he seems reluctant to enter the build-ing—his hesitation might e ven imply a concern that others witness him crossing the threshold into this go vernment agency—but eventu-ally builds up the courage at the v ery moment when another man e x-iting the building tells him not to w aste his time since the minimum requirement for the positions they have available is the BAC + 3 (i.e., three years of post-secondary education).

Not surprisingly, as Brahim is left w andering the area, he com-


ments that “C’est la merde ici.” He does make one additional attempt to fi nd a job at the local auto shop, b ut when his alarm clock f ails to wake him up the follo wing morning for the agreed upon 8.30 start, he realizes it is not worth arriving late and attempting to convince his employer to give him another chance. Disheartened, downhearted, he wanders the streets until the moment he comes upon a young black boy drowning, unable to get out of the canal into which he has fallen. Brahim hesitates, and then decides that he will not intervene (interest-ingly enough, another version of the fi lm explored an ending in which Brahim runs to the bo y’s rescue). His unwillingness to act operates metaphorically, pointing to a form of social paralysis whereby he has been told or made to feel on so man y occasions that he is a “bon à rien” that he most likely feels incapable of rescuing the drowning boy, much in the same w ay that no fi gure of authority (either an adult or the French state itself) has been able to save him, or afforded him the skills and training to save himself from his own social drowning. The inadequacies of the broader infrastructure are e xposed, shown to be intrinsic to government agencies and inseparable from the emptiness of political rhetoric, producing o verwhelming obstacles and barriers to social mobility and perpetuating mar ginality and inequality . The impact is most powerfully felt in the home environment where a pre-carious relationship exists between the hopes, aspirations, and expec-tations of parents, the demands of the French state, and the autonomy of the children.

In RTT (2002, 11 mins.), written and directed by F aïza Guène, a single-mother (Zohra, played by the author’s mother Kadra Guène) of three children who works the evening shift as an offi ce cleaner takes a day off work (through the “Réduction du temps de tra vail” policy) in order to be able to attend a parent-teacher meeting at the school’ s re-quest. At the meeting she discovers the extent of her eldest son’s (Me-hdi) absenteeism—the school has sent out multiple letters, b ut Me-hdi and his sister (Naïma) had thus f ar successfully intercepted the mail so that the letters from the school do not reach their intended recipient. The teacher remarks that “On ne v ous voit pas souv ent en réunions,” and Zohra informs him that this is because “Je tra vaille le soir.” Throughout RTT the vie wer becomes a ware of the precarious situation in which the family lives: the children are asleep when Zohra returns from work, they live in an HLM, their fi nances are limited, etc.


The interaction between Zohra and the teacher is all the more interest-ing because her usage of French is f amiliar, often grammatically in-correct, and the le vel of profi ciency limited (she speaks for the most part in Arabic with her children and the y in turn respond in French): “Moi ce qui m’intéresse c’est la réussite de mon fi ls, c’est tout.” What pains her in disco vering that her se venteen year old son has aban-doned school is both that he has relinquished an individual opportuni-ty—“Quel gâchis, je cro yais qu’il allait étudier , travailler [. . .]” (e x-pressed in Arabic with subtitles in French)—as well as implicated the rest of the family because of his selfi sh behavior—“et me sortir de la misère dans laquelle son père m’a laissée.”

Rafi k, the youngest child, accompanies her to the meeting. Rather than recognizing Mehdi’s poor judgment, he interprets this instead as an injustice towards him: “Pourquoi Mehdi il v a pas à l’école et moi je suis obligé d’y aller?” His mother assumes parental authority, high-lighting that Mehdi’s choices are not to be emulated: “Tais-toi, tu veux devenir comme lui, c’est ça?” The family argument that ensues when Zohra returns home serves to bring into the open confl icting views of domestic responsibility. Mehdi of fers his mother some mone y, stat-ing that “Moi aussi j’en ai marre de v oir ma mère s’humilier ,” ap-parently clarifying his determination to assume responsibility for the household even if this entails operating outside the strict confi nes of the system (the unidentifi ed source of the money he offers his mother remains subject to interpretation). RTT ends with a po werful visual sequence, during which Naïma and Mehdi are fi lmed walking along a path that leads them out of the housing estate. Ev entually the path bifurcates; the former elects to follo w the path to school, while the latter heads of f in the other direction. Ho wever, the outcome is left deliberately ambiguous: societal e xpectations call for conformity by adhering to uniform standards of mobility pro vided by educational advancement, yet it remains diffi cult to trust their application gi ven the inequitable allocation of resources to banlieues schools, such that a feeling of helplessness lingers, coupled with the inescapable do wn-ward economic and social obstacles and pressures. Metaphors of im-prisonment—inescapability, rigid class structures, tradition, and so on—are familiar themes.

In La zonzonnière (2001, 8 mins.), Faïza Guène uses the slang term for a prison, “zonzon, ” whose v ariations on the noun form include


“zonzonnier” and “zonzonnière” to indicate the male and female form of “prisoner” or “inmate. ” In this case, as with Rien que des mots (2003, 27 mins.), the attention has shifted to complex gender dynam-ics in Muslim households. In La zonzonnière, teenage Fatima has been skipping school and both her f ather and brother (F arid) step in. First her father, who in harsh terms (speaking in Arabic) asserts his author-ity over her and restricts her mo vements henceforth between home and school: “Je suis ton père, oui ou non? Ecoute ce que je te dis, c’est moi qui f ais la loi, c’est moi qui commande!” And then her brother who tells her, clarifying gender roles, “T’es là pour aider maman, pour aider tes petites sœurs.” Initially, the father’s response and frustration upon learning of his daughter’ s behavior may be understandable, b ut an additional point is being made here relating to the anxiety young women experience as they seek to negotiate or reconcile expectations at home with public standards. Lik ewise, in Rien que des mots , Laïla feels compelled to hide her acti vities and interests from her parents. When she returns home after dark one e vening, her mother (played by Kadra Guène), informs her that “Depuis que ton père est au bled, tu me fais la misère,” and that the homeostasis she has disrupted will be restored: “Attends qu’il revienne, il va s’occuper de toi!” Subtitles are provided to afford access to the non-Arabophone viewer, who will subsequently discover that stability is going to be pro vided by pursu-ing a planned marriage in Algeria. The emphasis on maintaining or -der and abiding by parental appraisals of cultural and social standards are expressed in the ways in which these are fi ltered and disseminated into the community. This is persuasively displayed in Rumeurs (2003, 8 mins., co-written by Faïza Guène and Sonia Chikh, and directed by Faïza Guène) when a young black bo y from the banlieue neighbor-hood observes “la fi lle Chafri” (played by F aïza Guène herself) dur -ing an e xcursion into the centre of P aris walking along the banks of the Seine ri ver talking to a white man. This triggers se veral discus-sions between protagonists back in the banlieue about gender roles, Islam, immigrant women and those in the Maghreb; the questionable actions and beha vior of the “fi lle Chafri” persist in acquiring ne ga-tive overtones as the rumor spreads, and provides the occasion for the community to come together against a shared detractor. Disobedience and failure to follo w convention are no w met with such statements as “Tu veux devenir comme la fi lle Chafri? Les gens parlent sur elle


toute la journée!” and “Tous les gens du quartier racontent que sa fi lle sort avec un Parisien,” and in the entrance to her building graffi ti now reads “Chafri la pute.” The dénouement exposes the potential dangers of collective ignorance as we discover that the “fi lle Chafri” has in ac-tuality been working on a homework assignment, conducting a survey that required interviewing subjects outside of her neighborhood.

The tenuous relationship between the center and the periphery and between the inside and the outside is of course a subjective one. Simi-larly, banlieue artists might very well question the pertinence, or pos-sibly even reject such a label. Yet, what remains rele vant is the com-mitment to meet head-on those images circulating in the media, in political discourse, and else where, and aiming at essentializing and stigmatizing the behavior of underprivileged members of society. The term “immigrant” continues to operate meton ymically for all kinds of twenty-fi rst century problems in French society, but the authorities refuse to acknowledge (and are therefore incapable of correcting eco-nomic and social dissymmetry) that ethnicity itself remains a founda-tional element of discrimination. “Il serait bien diffi cile aujourd’hui à nos gouv ernements de reconnaître que le problème ce n’est pas l’immigration elle-même, mais la politique d’immigration qu’ils mè-nent, tant il est vrai qu’elle les défi nit en même temps qu’ils la défi nis-sent” (“La crise de la politique d’immigration,” 7).

University of California, Los Angeles

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———. Parias urbains: ghetto, banlieues, état . P aris: La Découv erte, 2006. www.quifaitlafrance.com.

thomas - documenting the periphery - the short films and faiza guene

Documents

une mauvaise dcolonisation

jane marie todd

indiana university press

ditions la dcouverte

french tele vision

la dcouverte

gender roles

ha ve