The French Democracy

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This article is about the film about the French government. For French government in general, see Government of France.
The French Democracy
subtitles and the three central youths of the film
Game(s)The Movies
Genre(s)Political
Running time13 min.
Created byAlex Chan
Production companyAtomic Prod
Release(s)22 November 2005
Format(s)QuickTime, WMV

The French Democracy is a 2005 English-language French short

2005 civil unrest in France
. Although Chan was restricted by shortcomings and technical limitations in The Movies, he finished the film after four days of production.

The film was uploaded to The Movies Online, Lionhead's website for user-created videos, on 22 November 2005 and was soon covered by American and French press. Although real-time-rendered, three-dimensional computer animation (machinima) had been used in earlier political films, The French Democracy attained an unprecedented level of mainstream attention for political machinima. While acknowledging the film's flaws, such as the grammatically poor English subtitles, commentators praised its clear political message and compared it to films such as La Haine and Do the Right Thing. The French Democracy inspired other politically conscious machinima works and fueled discussion about the art form's potential for political expression. Some raised concerns that video game companies would use their copyrights to control the content of derivative machinima films.

Synopsis

The French Democracy begins with a re-enactment of the real-life 27 October 2005 event that

triggered riots in France: the electrocution of two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré.[1] In the film, the youths attempt to hide from police in a building near an electric power station.[2] In a televised speech, the Minister of the Interior vows to increase efforts to fight crime. Three fictional Moroccan[3] men discuss the recent events and disagree with means used by the police, and feel that blacks are unfairly targeted. They face different forms of discrimination: overnight detention for lack of a passport during an identity check, refusal of employment and housing rental, and police brutality.[2] Angered, the three riot using Molotov cocktails.[3] A white family watches television coverage of the chaos,[3] and the film ends with a dedication to Benna and Traoré, lamenting the loss of the French ideals of freedom, equality, and fraternity.[4]

Background and production

Alex Chan, the creator of The French Democracy, had no previous film-making experience.

Alex Chan, 27 years old at the time of the civil unrest, was a French-born freelance industrial designer whose parents were Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong.[5] Although Chan was successful professionally, he felt that there was racial and cultural discrimination in France, based on his own previous attempts to find housing and violence directed towards him.[2] He lived in Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris,[6] near housing projects where rioting[7] had caused the destruction of cars owned by acquaintances.[2] In the aftermath of the unrest, Chan was dissatisfied, stating that "the media, especially in the United States, ... linked what was happening, the riots, to terrorism and put the blame on the Muslim community".[8] Chan wanted instead to depict "more human"[3] rioters who turned to violence in response to racism.[2] According to Chan, the title The French Democracy is meant to be ironic, in that the youths express themselves by rioting rather than through the political system.[1] He elaborated:

[The French Democracy is] a shortcut made with The Movies technology about the recent events concerning riots in French suburbs. This movie is trying to help people have a better understanding of the origin of these events, as some reasons that pushed all this youth to have such violent acts. As a matter of fact TFD offers a sincere inside view from a French citizen who lives in one of these neighborhoods where the riots took place. This fictional documentary is strongly inspired by real events and reactions and tries to make the spectator think more about how French society could and should potentially be.[9]

Although he had no previous film-making experience,

subtitles. Despite his lack of fluency, he chose English to broaden his audience. Production was also affected by the limitations of The Movies. Restricted to the scenery provided by the software, Chan set the electrocution deaths in a shack. The game's Manhattan-based setting forced him to approximate the Paris Métro with the New York City Subway[12] and to include the Empire State Building in the background.[2] Given the game's choices for skin color, Chan needed to apply the lightest pigment available for blacks to one character.[13]

Reception

Under the pseudonym Koulamata, Chan uploaded the finished film to The Movies Online on 22 November 2005.

Centre Georges Pompidou and at the World Wide Short Film Festival in Toronto.[14]

By Chan's own assessment, The French Democracy is unpolished.[2] The Washington Post found "broken English"[10] in the subtitles, and BusinessWeek deemed them "stilted and ungrammatical".[2] Josh Lee of PopMatters deemed the character animations of The Movies too exaggerated for the film's serious message; he felt that they made the film's depiction of police brutality seem better suited for the silent film comedy series Keystone Cops.[12] Alterités, a French Internet publication about media issues related to immigration, called the characters "très ethnicisés" (very ethnicized).[13]

However, some critics felt that these problems with production quality helped to convey the film's message. In a MétaMorphoses article, Franck Beau considered the film's aesthetic a strong point because, having originated in video games, it completely differed from those of

The Battle of Algiers (1966).[3]

Legacy

Although earlier political machinima films existed, The French Democracy attained an unprecedented level of mainstream attention, according to

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles.[10] Berkeley stated that The French Democracy was a rare exception to machinima's basis in "accepted cinematic and televisual conventions".[21]

The French Democracy was, according to Alterités, "evidence that 'technological innovations are being used to satisfy the thirst for public expression",

the eponymous real-life event.[26] Although initially undecided, Chan eventually became a professional machinima film-maker.[27] His later work includes World of Electors, a series about the 2007 French presidential election.[27]

Writing for

marginalization constrained potential for expression.[28] Marino and others added concerns that, although game developers had condoned machinima, a controversial film could prompt them to control machinima content by enforcing their copyrights.[29]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Totilo 2005
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Matlack 2005
  3. ^ a b c d e R. Lee 2006, 3
  4. ^ Beau 2006, 75
  5. ^ Lowood 2007, 166; Matlack 2005; Hood 2005
  6. ^ a b Lowood 2007, 166
  7. ^ a b c Hood 2005
  8. ^ a b c d Diderich 2005
  9. ^ Alexandria 2005
  10. ^ a b c d Musgrove 2005
  11. ^ Crabtree 2006
  12. ^ a b c J. Lee 2006
  13. ^ a b Abdallah 2005
  14. ^ a b c Lowood 2007, 167
  15. ^ Totilo 2005; Lowood 2007, 167
  16. ^ Lechner 2005
  17. ^ Matlack 2005; Lowood 2007, 167
  18. ^ Beau 2006, 76–77
  19. ^ Beau 2006, 78
  20. ^ Colbourne 2006
  21. ^ Berkeley 2006, 70
  22. ^ Translated and quoted in Lowood 2007, 168
  23. ^ Sotamaa 2007, 395
  24. ^ Quoted in Sotamaa 2007, 395
  25. ^ a b Horwatt 2008, 13
  26. ^ Horwatt 2008, 13; Gish 2008
  27. ^ a b Gubert 2008
  28. ^ a b Varney 2007, 3
  29. ^ Varney 2007, 2; Sotamaa 2007, 395; Coleman & Dyer-Witheford 2007, 943

References

External links

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