Screening Integration: Recasting Maghrebi Immigration in Contemporary France

1. From "Ghettoes" to Globlization: Situating Maghrebi-French Filmmakers

In the quarter century since second-generation Maghrebis in France first began making full-length feature films, there has been a vigorous and ongoing debate about how best to categorize and label them. The two most commonly used labels—“Beur” and “banlieue”cinema—are grounded respectively in ethnic and social markers that are specific to the multiethnic fabric of contemporary French society (Hargreaves 1999; Tarr 2005). Others, such as “postcolonial,” “diasporic,” “transnational,” and “accented” cinema,embrace the work of filmmakers of diverse origins in many different countries and are not unique to filmmaking in France by directors of Maghrebi origin (Naficy 2001; Shohat and Stam 2003). There is disagreement not only over the relative merits of different labels but also over the corpus of work denoted by each of these terms. These disagreements stem in part from a lack of consensus concerning the most salient aspects of films when it comes to categorizing them. Are films best categorized and labeled with reference to the ethnic origins of their directors, their diegetic content (i.e., their story lines), or the location of 1 FROM “GHETTOES” TO GLOBALIZATION Situating Maghrebi-French Filmmakers Alec G. Hargreaves 26 FROM “GHETTOES” TO GLOBALIZATION production companies and/or target audiences? Depending on whether “Beur” cinema is understood to reference films that are by, about, or for an ethnically defined group, the corpus denoted by this label varies considerably . Similar variations mark the use of other terms employed in this debate. My purpose in this chapter is less to argue for or against particular labels (though I will endeavor to clarify these in the course of my analysis) than to situate more clearly the body of work at issue in this debate. While delineating the cinematic corpus discussed here with reference to the ethnicity of its directors, second-generation Maghrebis raised in France by immigrant parents, I will argue that diegetically and intertextually (i.e., in its allusions to and borrowings from other films) this body of work extends far beyond ethnic markers of this kind. Ethnicity and Transnationalism In this context, the second generation of Maghrebis is to be understood as that raised in France by immigrant parents from the Maghreb. Most secondgeneration Maghrebis were born in France while others were brought there at a young age by their parents. What they all have in common is that they were born of Maghrebi immigrants and spent their formative years in France, of which most are citizens.Their backgrounds and early experiences distinguish them both from Maghrebi émigrés who came to France as adults after spending their formative years on the other side of the Mediterranean and from majority ethnic French citizens with no ancestral connections with the Maghreb. In the work of émigré directors such as Merzak Allouache, their country of origin generally retains a foundational referentiality that distinguishes it from films by second-generation Maghrebis, for whom France is “home” in a more fundamental sense than for migrants who have settled there as adults. Thus films such as Allouache’s Salut cousin! (1996) and Chouchou (2003) tend to be framed by the experiences of characters “discovering” France after migrating from the Maghreb whereas it is the southern, rather than the northern, side of the Mediterranean that appears unfamiliar in films such as Cheb (1991) and Bled number one (2006), directed by Rachid Bouchareb and Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, respectively, second-generation Maghrebis who spent their formative years in France. At the same time, the cultural heritage of second-generation Maghrebis and the discrimination that they often suffer in France distinguish them from their majority ethnic peers. Although, as we shall see, feature films directed by second-generation Maghrebis are by no ALEC G. HARGREAVES 27 means confined to a narrowly defined ethnically based optic, they draw on firsthand knowledge of minority ethnic cultures and experiences that are not directly shared by majority ethnic directors such as Mathieu Kassovitz and Eric Rochant, who in films such as La haine (1995) and Vive la République (1997), respectively, have featured second-generation Maghrebis among their characters.For analytical purposes it is therefore useful to distinguish movies directed by second-generation Maghrebis—also referred to here as MaghrebiFrench —from those of North African émigrés or majority ethnic French directors, though there are of course many areas of overlap between them. Most of the discussion surrounding the films made by second-generation Maghrebis has tended...