A prophet (Un prophète) by Jacques Audiard - a complex crime film mixing realism, imagination and violence, while exploring numerous contemporary themes

Jacques Audiard

For my Media and Crime course at the University, I was asked to write about a crime film and to analyse “how does it do whatever it does?”. I chose A prophet (Un prophète) directed by the French filmmaker Jacques Audiard. The filmmaker, known for approaching the themes of violence, power and masculinity, creates a complex crime film mixing realism, imagination and violence, while exploring numerous contemporary themes - identity, individual development, racism, criminality, power, masculinity and prison. Released in France on 26 August 2009 and then in foreign countries, A prophet is acclaimed by both film critics and the audience[1] and still raises many discussions about its meaning.

My essay’s conclusion is that whatever the viewer decides A prophet means, it does it well. We identify with the main character, a new prototype of criminal-hero, and follow his rise to power until what may be considered a ‘happy ending’. As such, we (re)discover this hidden world that is prison through a representation that creates a persuasive ‘effect of reality’. Eventually, A prophet’s narrative and mise en scène provide arguably what Rafter called “a celluloid rendezvous where audiences engage with major social issues”.

The movie reveals itself very interesting regarding the topic of this blog so I decided to publish a summary of my essay (which is copyrighted).

A prophet, directed by Jacques Audiard

From the early scenes of A prophet the spectator has no choice but to identify with Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim), a young French condemned to six-years prison. Through a ‘subjective camera’, we are taken to a police van, seeing what Malik sees through the van’s ‘wire mesh’. With him, we are brought to prison, bearing in mind his lawyer’s last words: “you’re an adult now… you’re in with the big guys”. When Malik enters the Centrale – French prison for ‘big guys’ – he is illiterate, has no story or identity, no family, and no money. Trying to survive on his own, he looks physically weaker than the others inmates and is aggressed from the first day. César Luciani (Niels Arestrup), leader of the powerful Corsican gang which rules the yard, offers him his protection at one condition: Malik must kill Reyeb, a new inmate witness in a trial involving others Corsicans. “You’ll kill him or I’ll kill you”: Malik has actually no choice but to become a murderer to survive. During two hours and a half, we follow Malik’s abrupt and violent education and his ‘new’ criminal career until he leaves the prison as “a mafia kingpin”.

Based on film and media, crime, and culture theories, I tried in my essay to analyse A prophet’s meaning(s) through two academic observations. First, O’Sullivan’s proposal that “part of the process of creating meaning is the degree to which we, as audiences, can recognize and identify with what is being portrayed”, i.e. the media text’s realism[2]. Second, Rafter’s statement that crime films are not just entertainment and “invite us to participate in a global examinations of social problems”[3].

A realist representation of prison: first step in creating meaning

Set mainly in prison, A prophet is often described by the viewers as a ‘French prison film’. Despite the prison genre’ popularity, prison is not much represented in French movies, conversely to American cinema. This may partly explain A prophet’s success in France, since many agree that the genre appeal mostly lies in opening a hidden world that is “not just unknown but unknowable to many viewers”[4]. However, regarding its success in the United States, the answer cannot be as simple as this. One finds in academic literature different theories explaining the attraction of prison movie. With regard to A prophet, its ‘universal’ appeal as a prison film, seems to lie mainly in its “apparent realities of prison life”[5]. Although A prophet is not a movie about the conditions in French prisons, it has been acclaimed for its realism in representing prison. And it is interesting to mention that after its release, the French Secretary of State for Justice made compulsory learning to read and write French in prison.

Audiard’s mise en scène makes us feel we are seeing the prison as it actually is and we find three of the four distinctive criteria that O’Sullivan has identified “as contributing toward a sense of realism”[6]. For example, one finds the “surface realism” criterion, which means “getting the details right”. Audiard employed extras that previously experienced life in prison, letting them ‘playing’ their role as when doing their ‘times’. Another criterion is the “inner or emotional realism of the characters and their motivation”. According to O’Sullivan it allows the audience “to identify with the situation and characters portrayed” and to “‘feel’ or ‘share’ the emotions that are an essential part of the story-telling process”. Malik’s first motivation is to survive the prison system and we are encouraged to identify with the hero through a fish-eye camera. In a world where media portray prison as one of the supreme place of violence, A prophet’s narrative and mise en scène clearly contributes towards a ‘sense of realism’.

One may criticize A prophet’s claim of authenticity, since it actually includes misrepresentations of what really happens in French prisons[7]. But even if it is not ‘really’ realistic, one can talk about an ‘effect of reality’, whose effectivity is proved by the audience reception. With regard to O’Sullivan’s argument mentioned in the introduction, and considering A prophet’s ‘effect of reality’ in representing prison, the question of its meaning naturally follows.

A Prophet’s meaning(s) as a crime film

To “invite us to participate in a global examinations of social problems”, Rafter argues that crime films have traditionally made two arguments at once: on the one hand, “they criticize some aspect of society”, often by “encouraging viewers to identify with a “good” bad guy who challenges the system”; and on the other hand, “they enable us to identify with a character who restores order at the end”[8]. One finds these traditional features in Audiard’s movie.

A new prototype of criminal-hero: a “good” bad-guy who owes everything to prison and who restores ‘order’

Since A prophet tells Malik’s criminal ‘career’ within the prison walls, viewers often compared it with the famous American mob movies Scarface (1982), The Godfather trilogy (1972; 1974; 1990), and Goodfellas (1990). In gangster movies, rules are “so fundamental that they are virtually universal” and the leader’s authority “is not to be questioned”[9], as portrayed by César Luciani. However, some aspect of A prophet’s narrative makes it different from those American gangster films. Malik is considered by many viewers as the ‘new Scarface’, but he remains, however, very different from Tony Montana. When Luciani asks Malik to kill Reyeb, Malik reacts saying that he “can’t kill anyone”. Further, after the killing, his guilt is represented by Reyeb’s ghost, who follows him until his release from prison. Guilt is far from Tony Montana, who claims “I’d killed a communist for fun, but for a green card, I gonna carve him up real nice”. A prophet is as well compared to Goodfellas, that tells the story of the gangster Henri Hill. Although Henri’s education takes place within the mafias of New York, one finds, like in A prophet, an escalation towards more and more violence. However, Audiard’s movie remains largely different from traditional Hollywood gangster movies which fail in explaining how and why the criminal becomes criminal. The viewer has no really explanation about the reasons Malik is sent to prison. We know that he is condemned for a police officer assault but the mise en scène makes us feel that this information, as well as Malik’s guilty or innocence, does not really matter. However, and conversely to American gangster films, A prophet provides answer regarding Malik’s transformation as a criminal: to survive the system.

Malik may as well be considered as a criminal-hero who restores ‘order’ at the end. First since A prophet’s end, even if not like the ‘happy endings’ that we find for comedies, is surely an happy one. After six years of violent and criminal education and personal development in this ‘school of life’, Malik leaves with power, a story and an identity (the Muslim identity), a family and, one can imagine, a possible future ‘love story’. Second, since Malik is a kind of ‘David’ who wins against ‘Goliath’, represented by César Luciani. Eventually, Audiard participates to the “legend of the self-made man” while being a de-mythologizer in breaking “the myth that only hot-headed with muscles win”[10].

A mirror of the society: identity, representation, racism, power

A prophet’s narrative as a mirror of the society may be inferred from the parallel made between the inside and the outside world. The most relevant scene is when Ryad, released from prison, tells to Malik in a letter that he “won’t say that it is worse outside but it is not better”. When Malik arrives in prison, he has no identity. This is highlighted by the scene when he meets the warden. “Are you religious? Malik replies “What?”. “Do you go to prayers?” Do you eat pork?” Malik replies: “No. Yeah”. He is really confused and looks like he even does not know if he prays or if he eats pork. Thus, as suggested by Manohla Dargis, film critic for the New York Times, we could read A prophet “as an allegory about France and its uneasy relations with generations of Arab immigrants and their children”[11].

To focus on this idea, I based my discussion on Rafter’s assertion that ideology “relates to power”[12] and that “what is not said is easily as important, ideologically, as what is said”. The author’s example of the late representation in Hollywood movies of African American, implying a difficulty to portray them as heroes, is material in discussing A prophet’s possible ideological message. Indeed, Rafter argues that through absence and marginalization in films, African-Americans “were denied access to a form of power”. What is interesting here is the fact that for his fifth movie, Audiard wanted to “make a fictional film with people whose faces weren’t really recognizable in the world of French cinema”. And his choice to portray his hero as an Arab, or French-Maghrebi, is not without suggesting anything. One finds in A prophet several references to the recurrent stereotypes and racism against French-Maghrebi, and the discrimination they are subjected, especially within the field of employment. The scene where Ryad, just released from prison, tells Malik his fist day working in a call center is revealing of such a message. During his work, Ryad is not anymore Ryad but ‘Jean Philippe’, a cliché French name. This is what actually happens in certain French call centers, since a ‘Jean-Philippe’ sells more than a ‘Ryad’. By choosing Tahar Rahim to play Malik, an actor at the time unknown in the world of French cinema, Audiard adds more to the symbolic. A prophet reflects the issues of minorities’ representation and multiculturalism that exist in France. Currently not adequately portrayed and often in a negative way, the movie may participate to a change in representing minorities in France, and then confirm O’Sullivan observation that “as society changes, so do the media”[13].

[1] Commercial success, the movie won numerous of prizes: the Grand Prix Jury at the Cannes Film Festival 2009 the Best Film Award at the 53rd London Film Festival, the Prix Louis Delluc 2009, the Best Film Not in English Language prize at the 63rd British Academy Film Awards, nine Cesars, and the Best Foreign Film at the 13th British Independent Film Awards. Further, A prophet is rank 8/10 on IMDb, 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4/5 on the French website Allociné.

[2] O'Sullivan, T., Dutton, B., and Rayner, P. (2003) Studying The Media: An Introduction, 3^rd ed., London: Arnold, pp. 105-106.

[3] Rafter, N. (2006) Shots in the mirror: crime films and society, 2^nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, Preface, p. vii.

[4] Jewkes, Y. (2011) “Crime Films and Prison Films”, in Jewkes, Y., Media & Crime, 2^nd ed., Los Angeles; London: Sage, p. 183.

[5] Rafter, N. (2006) Shots in the mirror: crime films and society…, p. 169.

[6] O'Sullivan, T., Dutton, B., and Rayner, P. (2003) Studying The Media: An Introduction…, p. 105-106.

[7] See Cassely, J. L. “Un Prophète: la prison comme si vous y étiez?”, Slate.fr, 9 September 2009 (accessible at <http://www.slate.fr/story/10081/«un-prophete»-la-prison-comme-si-vous-y-etiez>). For example, the author explains that it is not possible in reality that someone as Malik would be sent in a prison where he would have been with serious criminal such as César Luciani.

[8] Rafter, N. (2006) Shots in the mirror: crime films and society…, p. 3.

[9] Leitch T. “The Godfather and the Gangster Film” in Crime Films, 2002, Cambridge University Press, p. 103.

[10] A prophet, DVD, Bonus interview.

[11] Dargis, M. “Learning to Read, Murder, Survive”, New York Times, 25 February 2010 (accessible at <http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/movies/26prophet.html?pagewanted=1>).

[12] Rafter, N. (2006) Shots in the mirror: crime films and society…, p. 9.

[13] O'Sullivan, T., Dutton, B., and Rayner, P. (2003) Studying The Media: An Introduction…, p. 102.

References

•    Filmography 

A prophet (2009), Jacques Audiard, 155 min.

Goodfellas (1990), Martin Scorsese, 146 min.

Scarface, (1983), Brian de Palma, 170 min.

The Godfather trilogy (1972; 1974; 1990), Martin Scorsese.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Frank Darabont, 142 min.

•    Books and Articles 

Alber, J. (2011) “Cinematic Carcerality: Prison Metaphors in Film”, The Journal of Popular Culture, 44 (2): 217-232.

Jewkes, Y. (2011) “Crime Films and Prison Films”, in Jewkes, Y., Media & Crime, 2^nd ed., Los Angeles; London: Sage, pp. 181- 207.

Langford, B. (2010) “The Gangster Film: Genre and Society”, in Greer, C. (ed.), Crime & Media: A Reader, London; New York: Routledge, pp. 335-350.

Leitch, T. M. (2002) “The Godfather and the Gangster Film” in Leitch, T. M., Crime Films, Cambridge University Press, pp. 103-125.

Mason, P. (2003) “The screen machine: cinematic representations of prison”, in P. Mason (ed.) Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime and Justice, Cullompton: Willan Publishing, pp. 278-297.

Mason, P. (2006) “Prison Decayed: Cinematic Penal Discourse and Populism 1995/2005”, Social Semiotics 16(4): 607-626.

Milly, B. (2010) “La prison, école de quoi ? Un regard sociologique”, Pouvoir 135: 135-147.

O'Sullivan, T., Dutton, B., and Rayner, P. (2003) Studying The Media: An Introduction, 3^rd ed. London: Arnold.

O’Sullivan, S. (2001) “Representations of Prison in Nineties Hollywood Cinema: From Con Air to The Shawshank Redemption”, The Howard Journal 40(4): 317–334.

Papke, D. R. (1996) “Myth and Meaning: Francis Ford Coppola and Popular Response to the Godfather Trilogy”, in Denvir J., Legal reelism: Movies as legal texts, University of Illinois Press, pp. 1-22.

Rafter, N. (2006) Shots in the mirror: crime films and society, 2^nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

•    Newspapers articles

Bradshaw, P. “A Prophet”, The Guardian, 21 January 2010 (accessible at http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jan/21/a-prophet-review?INTCMP=SRCH).

Cassely, J. L. “Un Prophète: la prison comme si vous y étiez?”, Slate.fr, 9 September 2009 (accessible at <http://www.slate.fr/story/10081/«un-prophete»-la-prison-comme-si-vous-y-etiez>).

Dargis, M. “Learning to Read, Murder, Survive”, New York Times, 25 February 2010 (accessible at <http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/movies/26prophet.html?pagewanted=1>).

Ertuna, I., “Prison as the Locus of Power Dynamics”, JGCinema.com, (accessible at <http://www.jgcinema.com/single.php?sl=Prison-Violence-Mafia-Masculinity-Identity>).

Marest, P. “Un prophète, métaphore de la réalité carcérale”, Libération, 7 September 2009 (accessible at <http://www.liberation.fr/societe/0101589123-un-prophete-metaphore-de-la-realite-carcerale>).

Quintana, A. “La prison, métaphore du monde qui vient”, Courrier International, 9 March 2010 (accessible at <http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2010/03/09/la-prison-metaphore-du-monde-qui-vient>).

Solomons, J., “Interview: Jacques Audiard”, The Guardian, 6 December 2009 (accessible at http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/06/jacques-audiard-interview-a-prophet?intcmp=239).

Droits d'auteur protégés

The intimidation of Iranian filmmakers by the Iranian Government and Asghar Farhadi’s movie A Separation

I chose to talk about the intimidation of Iranian filmmakers by the Iranian Government after reading in The Guardian that Iran cancelled the ceremony to honour the Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi for the success of his last movie A Separation, on Tuesday 13 March 2012.

Jafar Panahi (Source Reuters)

Since the 2009 presidential elections, Iranian authorities have intimidated many directors who supported the Iran opposition Green Movement. The case of Jafar Panahi, influential filmmaker of the Iranian New Wave movement and peace activist, is an extreme example of this intimidation. In 2009, the director was banned from traveling outside the country after being photographed at the Montreal Film Festival wearing a green scarf. First arrested in July 2009, his passport was revoked and his demand for a visa to travel to the 60th Berlin Film Festival, to participate in the panel discussion on “Iranian Cinema: Present and Future”, was denied. The director was arrested again in March 2010 and detained three months for planning to make a film about the protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election. He was sentenced to six years in prison, plus a 20-year ban from writing, filming, travelling and talking to the press, in January 2011. A Tehran appeals court upheld this sentence on 15 October 2011. I did not manage to find the precise reference of the law upon which he was sentenced (which is not surprising me), but according to the government-run newspaper the director was sentenced “for acting against national security and propaganda against the regime.”[1] 

I knew that Jafar Panahi was sentenced to jail but I shocked to discover that he was banned from creative activities for 20 years. The word “intimidation” appears now to me to be kind of soft and inadequate. As a law student, my first question would be whether the international community is able to do something about it. The sentence was publicly condemned by governments and NGOs, which called for his release. Further, the European Union High Representative, Catherine Ashton, stated she “was disturbed to learn of the 6-year prison sentence”. She calls on Iran immediately to review the sentence and “to put an end to the persecution - whether by detention or other forms of harassment - of these and other members of its artistic community”[2]. Indeed, this sentence is a breach of the International Human Rights Law, precisely the article 19 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The latter states that “[e]veryone shall have the right to freedom of expression” and that “this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice”. Iran signed this treaty on 24 June 1975 and is bound by its engagement. This is unfortunately not the first time that a State does not respect its international engagements and if Jafar Pnahi is still free, it is likely that the Supreme Court will uphold the sentence.

As I mentioned earlier, A Separation’s director, Asghar Farhadi, has also been subjected to intimidation by Iranian authorities. They recently cancelled the ceremony organised to honour him: A Separation received the Golden Bear for best film at the 61^st Berlin International Film Festival, on 15 February 2011, and won the Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Language Film, on 15 January 2012. According to the Guardian, the cancellation shocked the country came “as something of a shock”, even if some “conservative figures close to Iran's leaders have previously criticised the film for insulting the Islamic republic” [3]. They apparently feel concerned “over the film's depiction of domestic turmoil, gender inequality and the desire of many Iranians to leave the country”. In 2010, Asghar Farhadi already faced problems regarding his film. The Iranian authorities banned his shooting of A Separation, after he expressed publicly his support for Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Jafar Panahi (mentioned above), respectively exiled and imprisoned for their filmmaking activities. According to the New-York Times and the Guardian, Asghar Farhadi was allowed to carry on his work after apologising.

A Separation (I am not revealing the plot)

Source: IMDb website

The film takes place in Tehran and starts with a scene introducing a couple, Nader and Simin, during a divorce hearing. Simin wants to leave Iran with her husband and their daughter Termeh, whereas Nader wants to stay to look after his father who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, and refuses to allow Termeh to leave with her mother. The couple separates and Simin decides to move to her parents’ home. Nader hires Razieh, a poor and devout Iranian, to help him looking after his father.

Before watching A Separation, I knew it would be a great movie (and it is) but it was surprisingly not what I was expecting. Without revealing anything, I can simply say that the movie is an engaging “detective movie”. While I was watching it, I was really stressed. I was asking so many questions about the plot: who was telling the truth? Who was the “bad” character? And I could not stop asking my flatmate why the police or the judges were not asking the right questions.  The following day I watched the DVD Bonus and the interview of Asghar Farhadi. It was really interesting as he describes A Separation as “a detective movie, full of enigmas, except that there is no sign of a detective”: “it is the spectator who plays that role”. I understood then why I was asking so many questions. The movie is also really interesting because while I was playing the role of a detective, each of the characters of the movie were also playing a certain role, such as the children who seemed to play the role of judges. Further, as explaining by Asghar Farhadi “each person, based upon their beliefs, their class, and their disposition can have completely divergent views on the objective truth and on the meaning of justice”[4].

Asghar Farhadi (Source: FilmMaker Magazine)

I read in The Guardian that the Iranian conservative figures criticised A Separation because they were feeling concerned “over the film's depiction of domestic turmoil, gender inequality and the desire of many Iranians to leave the country”. The film is indeed dealing with family, social, religious, and justice issues, but while I was watching it I did not understand why the Iranian government feel threatened by Asghar Farhadi’s work. I think I have found a kind of reply to my question in an interview of the director by the review magazine Cineaste:

Cineaste: “Part of the greatness of the film is that it touches upon issues that are problematic in every society. In the press conference, you said that you only want to make films that can be shown in Iran. What aspects of this film speak specifically to the Iranian audience?”

Farhadi: “I will have to answer this last question enigmatically. If you’ve lived in Iran for the last few years, you would know exactly what is Iranian in it, and I don’t think I want to elaborate beyond that.”[5]

I chose not to reveal important details of the plot for the readers who have not seen A Separation yet but I hope this is enough, either to make you want to see it or to watch it again through a “new eye”.

Raphaëlle

If you are interested or feel concerned by the Jafar Panahi case, here is the link to Amnesty International’s action to support him: http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/cases/iran-jafar-panahi

References

A Separation, Asghar Farhadi, 2011.

Child Ben, “Jafar Panahi loses appeal against six-year prison sentence”, The Guardian, 18 October 2011.

Child, Ben “Iran cancels ceremony to honour A Separation director”, The Guardian, 13 March 2012.

Kemp P., “A separation”, Sight & Sound, 2011, 21(7), p. 77.

Rahul H., “Freedom and Its Discontents, An Interview with Asghar Farhadi”, Cineaste, Winter 2011, pp. 40-42.

Yong, William “Iran Lifts Ban on Director, Saying He Issued an Apology”, New-York Times, 3 October 2010.

---

[1] Information provided by the website Iranian.com: http://www.iranian.com/main/2011/oct/jafar-panahi-prison-sentence-upheld

[2] Iran: Statement by the spokesperson of EU HR Ashton on the sentences on Filmmaker Jafar Panahi and Actress Marzieh Vafamehr (accessible at http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/fr/article_11496_fr.htm)

[3] Child, Ben “Iran cancels ceremony to honour A Separation director”, The Guardian, 13 March 2012.

[4] Rahul Hamid, “Freedom and Its Discontents, An Interview with Asghar Farhadi”, Cineaste, Winter 2011, p. 40.

[5] Rahul Hamid, “Freedom and Its Discontents, An Interview with Asghar Farhadi”, Cineaste, Winter 2011, p. 42.

An introduction between Law and Film

To be honest, the idea to create a blog did not come from me. One week ago, my amazing flatmate simply asked me: Why don't you start a blog about films? Perhaps because I'm very often (not to say always) talking about films, so she can have a rest while I'm blogging! Anyway, after a few days of reflexion, here I am, jumping into the blogosphère.



Why "Between Law and Film"? 



By creating this blog, I didn't want to only focus on the broad topics that are law and film. I will share articles, thoughts and try and develop ideas on specific legal issues that I think are important, or about specific films that I think are worth to mention. Perhaps I should mention here, to be sure you will click on the link "Follow this blog", that I swear I'll write about the next Christopher Nolan film The Dark Knight Rises and not too much about law! 



So a blog not only about law or film... but about what exactly? I'll actually try and discuss the relationship and the connections that may exist between law and film. This idea came from my field of studies at the University of Edinburgh, where I'm doing a Master's degree in Law with a specialisation in International Criminal Law; Media and Crime; and Intellectual Property/Copyright. As I thought I was not tired enough, I'm also taking evening lessons in Film Studies (organised by the University). If you mix all these ingredients, you will find my dissertation project, which is precisely to deal with the relationship between Law and Film, a topic that has emerged as an academic field since the late 1980s, mostly within Anglo-American academics. I won't go further on the subject in this first article, but you can find some books and academic references on the page tagged "Bibliography".



What kind of films?




Don't worry, my aim isn't to talk about movies dealing centrally with legal (boring) issues.



The movies I'd like to discuss here can be either directly or indirectly linked with law. The most obvious movies directly linked with law are crime films. Here are some examples, which may be classified regarding their main theme: gangster (The Godfather, The departed, Pulp Fiction), legal drama (12 Angry Men, Erin Brockovich), police drama (Seven, Dirty Harry), superhero (Batman Begins, Spider-Man), murder (Zodiac, The Silence of the Lambs)... 



But I'd also like to share movies where the link with law may be less obvious. I'll only give you two examples here. First, Beyond The Gates, which takes place during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and which is classified by the Internet Movie Database as "Drama" and "History". However, this film deals as well with law, more precisely International Humanitarian Law and the "far-from-perfect" United Nations' Peace and Security system, topics that I've studied during my Master's degrees in Law in France. The other example I've chosen is Gandhi. Although classified as "Biography", "Drama", and "History", for me this movie is clearly linked with law, as Gandhi was first a lawyer, who spend 21 years in South Africa to defend the Indian minority, before becoming the leader of the Indian independence movement.

Thinking Law through Film

So Between Law and Film is a place where I'd like to share information, thoughts on films dealing with crime or justice, as well as civil rights movements, human rights... while trying to develop ideas linked with the law and film academic movement, without looking for a theoretical truth. So I hope you'll enjoy this extension into the blogosphère and that you'll like to participate by commenting and sharing your own ideas.

Raphaëlle

"Et surtout mon corps aussi bien que mon âme, gardez-vous de vous croiser les bras en l'attitude stérile du spectateur, car la vie n'est pas un spectacle, car une mer de douleurs n'est pas un proscenium, car un homme qui crie n'est pas un ours qui danse." 

Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939).