Swagger:
Online Opération Sentinelle Film Series with Director Q&A Next Friday 2/23 at 5pm CST!
Sponsored by the Department of Journalism and Creative Media Industries, the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures, the Film & Media Studies Program of the Department of English and the Humanities Center of Texas Tech University.
Since 2015, the War on Terror has come to Paris with Opération Sentinelle, the state of emergency France enacted after the January 2015 Île-de-France terror attacks and further strengthened after the November 2015 Paris attacks. Critics have noted how Opération Sentinelle’s surveillance laws resonate with those of the United States after 9/11. In this atmosphere of paranoia, Arab, Brown, and immigrant populations have been legally and socially targeted as potential threats. The Online Opération Sentinelle Film Series looks at astonishing recent French cinema that traces the impacts of such wide-ranging legal transformations. Each screening period will culminate with a filmmaker Q&A over Zoom. Registrants to the Zoom Q&A will be sent a link via email to watch the movie beforehand.
The first film of the series is Olivier Babinet’s acclaimed Swagger (2016). In it, drones float over the banlieue, the projects, of Paris. Silently, they watch the sons and daughters of immigrants. Such images of dystopia punctuate Swagger, a uniquely poetic documentary about the dreams and nightmares of banlieue youth during France’s ongoing state of emergency. Babinet’s marriage of documentary and science fiction reveals the toll of such a vigilant gaze upon teenagers who fight to be recognized on their own terms. Babinet ultimately crafts a powerful portrait of resistance as these teenagers find ways to turn the state’s eye into a spotlight—one that transforms these youths, potential enemies of the state, into swaggering stars full of brilliant life.
Next Friday 2/23 at 5pm CST, Dr. Fareed Ben-Youssef will moderate a Q&A with Babinet!
Link to register for the Zoom Q&A with the director:
https://texastech.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJArdeutrzwoE91G3TJVxGtiroBFYDbKvQHT
Upon registration, attendees will immediately receive a Zoom link for the Q&A as well as a link to watch Swagger.
Swagger Trailer:
https://youtu.be/HNniWa-uM2E?si=egtPPkuIrzc5QDv1
Speaker Bios:
Fareed Ben-Youssef is Assistant Professor in Film & Media Studies in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. He has frequently published on the intersections between surveillance studies and popular cinema including in his book No Jurisdiction: Legal, Political, and Aesthetic Disorder in Post-9/11 Genre Cinema (SUNY Press, 2022). He is also the Film Review Editor of Surveillance & Society.
A collector of unusual moments, characters, and rhythms, director/writer Olivier Babinet creates alternate realities that are relatable, yet electrified with the charge of surrealism and fiction. His 2016 film Swagger was part of the ACID (Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion) sidebar selection at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
