One of the key outcomes I required for each class over the years was that students think about their filmmaking as a reflection of, and intimate encounter with, their time in France, whether Tours or Paris. Thus, the first film I screen each year is Chronique d’un été (Chronicle of a Summer, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960). (You may recall, Nadine Michau at Tours had studied with the great Rouch.) The film sets the stage to introduce to students to ways in which to conceptualize how cinema not only records the here and now (cinéma verité); moreover, the film asks filmmakers and critical thinkers how to render the here and now through a cinematic lens. What are the events going on around them? What are the ideological implications for transforming ‘real-world’ events into cinematic representation?

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In 2023, we arrived in Paris just following the murder of a young Muslim man, Nahel Merzouk. at the hands of the police. The MeToo movement had taken on a new energy in France as reports of well-known male figures in the government and media industries were accused of rape and molestation against women. Much to digest. Made up of students from CSI, University of Chicago, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn College’s Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, Queens College, USC, and DePaul University, the 2023-cohort and their wide-ranging areas of expertise in film was well-prepared to take on these events in their films that they set out to make.