Screening Reality: French Documentary Film During the German Occupation: 25 (Modern French Identities) - Tapa blanda

Between 1940 and 1944 in German-occupied France, the previously disregarded documentary or film de complement took on a new and more prominent role for cinema audiences. Film programmes were obliged for the first time to show documentaries as well as the main feature. Vichy Government support and encouragement made documentary a vehicle for the palatable promotion of policy whilst ostensibly appearing neutral and didactic. Key to this task was the fostering of a climate in which documentary film could be appreciated in its own right, and so it was that special series of high quality documentaries were screened first in Paris and then across France. In 1943 a Government-sponsored Documentary Film Congress acknowledged that these screenings were - au service de la France et du Marechal. This book relates the films to their historical context with reference to other propaganda materials of the period, to indicate how this might have been achieved."

Steve Wharton is Senior Lecturer in French and Communication at die University of Bath, and previously lectured in French Studies at the University of Manchester. He works on contemporary gay activism in Britain and France, and Vichy propaganda and the heritage du passe.