Heritage, history and ‘new realism’: French cinema in the 1990s

Abstract

A number of key events in the 1990s have helped shape the decade's cinema. The first of these is the conjuncture of the GATT negotiations (culminating in 1993) and the ascendancy of heritage cinema to mainstream dominance in French production at the expense of popular genres such as comedy and the polar. The second is the attempted return of the auteur through the influential 1994 television series ‘Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge’. Finally, overlapping to some extent with the return of the auteur, is the arrival of a new generation of film‐makers whose political impact in the call for civil disobedience of February 1997 has undoubtedly affected the way in which the French view the films of this younger generation of directors.