Performing Place in French and Italian Queer Documentary Film

This book explores the space of queer documentary through the modernist optic of Marcel Proust's 'lieu factice' (artificial place), a perspective that problematizes the location of place in a post-postmodern world with a dispersed sense of the real. The practice of queer documentary in France and Italy, from the beginning of the new millennium onwards, is seen to re-write the coherence of 'place' through a range of emerging queer realities. Proposing the post-queer as a way of contending with the spatial dynamics of these contexts, analysis of key texts positions place as mourned, conceded and intersectional. The performance of place as agency is considered through the notional film, the radical archive of documentary, the enactment of politics, queer indeterminacy and a phenomenology of the object, the frame and queer mobility. The central themes of family, gender, dis/location, in/visibility and re/presentation question blind investment in the integrity of being emplaced.

Contemplates the reasons behind and impact of the rise in production of queer documentary cinema from the year 2000 onwards Explores the intricacies of queer representation in contexts where the universal predominates, particularly under French Republicanism and Italian Catholic conservatism Confronts the role and influence of queer documentary cinema in France and Italy at a time of not only significant media and technological transformation, but also of increased social, cultural and political challenge to traditional values concerning gender and sexuality

Autorentext

Oliver Brett is affiliated with the University of Leicester, UK, where he was awarded his PhD in 2014. His research work focuses on the cinemas of France and Italy, particularly documentary cinema and the representation of queer realities.

Inhalt

1. Contemporary queer cinema in France and Italy: undoing 'place'.- 2. Framing the 'lieu factice': shifting notions of documentary 'place'.- 3. Mourning 'place'.- 4. Forsaking 'place'.- 5. Intersecting 'place'.- 6. Conclusion.