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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz (1995)
Description: Dr. Emile Chabal navigates the contemporary echoes – and explosions – of French colonialism, through Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 film La Haine.
Through the dangerous escapades of the young Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, La Haine explicitly depicts life in the French banlieue (‘suburbs’, or ‘projects’) - from aggressive altercations with the police and everyday racism, to social marginality and spatial exclusion. Kassovitz shows France as a damaged, post-colonial nation, unable to fulfil its promise of liberation and integration, echoing the fundamental contradiction at the heart of French colonialism.
PRESENTER: Dr. Emile Chabal, reader in History and former director of the...