The French Democracy
Encyclopedia
The French Democracy is a short 2005 French political film made by Alex Chan using computer animation
from Lionhead Studios
' 2005 business simulation game The Movies
. The plot centers on three Moroccan men who turn to rioting after facing different forms of discrimination. Chan, a French native of Chinese descent, created the film to convey his view that racism caused the riots of the 2005 civil unrest in France
. Although Chan was restricted by shortcomings and technical limitations in The Movies, he finished the film after four days of production.
The film was uploaded to The Movies Online, Lionhead's website for user-created videos, on 22 November 2005 and was soon covered by American and French press. Although real-time-rendered, three-dimensional computer animation (machinima
) had been used in earlier political films, The French Democracy attained an unprecedented level of mainstream attention for political machinima. While acknowledging the film's flaws, such as the grammatically poor English subtitles, commentators praised its clear political message and compared it to films such as La Haine
and Do the Right Thing
. The French Democracy inspired other politically conscious machinima works and fueled discussion about the art form's potential for political expression. Some raised concerns that video game companies would use their copyrights to control the content of derivative
machinima films.
vows to increase efforts to fight crime. Three fictional Moroccan men discuss the recent events and disagree with means used by the police, and feel that blacks are unfairly targeted. They face different forms of discrimination: overnight detention for lack of a passport during an identity check, refusal of employment and housing rental, and police brutality
. Angered, the three riot using Molotov cocktail
s. A white family watches television coverage of the chaos, and the film ends with a dedication to Benna and Traoré, lamenting the loss of the French ideals of freedom, equality, and fraternity
.
Alex Chan, 27 years old at the time of the civil unrest, was a French-born freelance industrial design
er whose parents were Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. Although Chan was successful professionally, he felt that there was racial and cultural discrimination in France, based on his own previous attempts to find housing and violence directed towards him. He lived in Seine-Saint-Denis
, a suburb of Paris, near housing projects
where rioting had caused the destruction of cars owned by acquaintances. In the aftermath of the unrest, Chan was dissatisfied, stating that "the media, especially in the United States, ... linked what was happening, the riots, to terrorism and put the blame on the Muslim community". Chan wanted instead to depict "more human" rioters who turned to violence in response to racism. According to Chan, the title The French Democracy is meant to be ironic, in that the youths express themselves by rioting rather than through the political system. He elaborated:
Although he had no previous film-making experience, Chan decided to make his public statement as a film after he bought The Movies, a business simulation game released by Lionhead Studios on 8 November. After he progressed in the game far enough to unlock the desired film-making tools, he switched to Sandbox mode, in which he completed the film in three or four days. Because Chan had no computer microphone, the film presents dialogue in English subtitle
s. Despite his lack of fluency, he chose English to broaden his audience. Production was also affected by the limitations of The Movies. Restricted to the scenery provided by the software, Chan set the electrocution deaths in a shack. The game's Manhattan
-based setting forced him to approximate the Paris Métro
with the New York City subway
and to include the Empire State Building
in the background. Given the game's choices for skin color, Chan needed to apply the lightest pigment available for blacks to one character.
, BusinessWeek
, USA Today
, and . The Washington Post and MTV
originally created religious connotations by incorrectly labeling Chan's characters as Muslims; they issued corrected stories after Chan complained. In 2006, the film was shown at the Flash Festival at Centre Georges Pompidou
and at the World Wide Short Film Festival in Toronto.
By Chan's own assessment, The French Democracy is unpolished. The Washington Post found "broken English" in the subtitles, and BusinessWeek deemed them "stilted and ungrammatical". Josh Lee of PopMatters
deemed the character animations of The Movies too exaggerated for the film's serious message; he felt that they made the film's depiction of police brutality seem better suited for the silent film
comedy series Keystone Cops. , a French Internet publication about media issues related to immigration, called the characters "" (very ethnicized).
However, some critics felt that these problems with production quality helped to convey the film's message. In a article, Franck Beau considered the film's aesthetic a strong point because, having originated in video games, it completely differed from those of traditional animation
and filming. He argued that the work's power lay in its "" (extreme simplicity) and in the "" (logical operation) of the underlying video game. BusinessWeek wrote that "the combination of amateurish technique and a strong emotional message is oddly moving", and Henry Lowood of Stanford University
similarly thought that the awkward subtitles and cinematography created a sense of authenticity. Lee found a filming precedent in Mathieu Kassovitz
's 1995 work La Haine
, also "lauded for its low-budget aesthetic as much as for its expressions of rage, fear, and alienation". A discussion panel at the AMAS' 2006 Machinima Film Festival compared Chan's work to Do the Right Thing
(1989) and The Battle of Algiers
(1966).
, executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
(AMAS). Based on the interest, Marino considered adding a documentary or commentary category to the AMAS' awards. Xavier Lardy, founder of machinima.fr, stated that no previous machinima work had "such a clear and prominent political message". Others further contrasted The French Democracys serious nature with the prevalence of gaming-related references in other machinima works, such as the Leeroy Jenkins
video and Rooster Teeth Productions
' comedy series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Berkeley stated that The French Democracy was a rare exception to machinima's basis in "accepted cinematic and televisual conventions".
The French Democracy was, according to , "evidence that 'technological innovations are being used to satisfy the thirst for public expression", and Olli Sotamaa felt that the work justified further research into connections between citizenship and video gaming. Peter Molyneux
, chief executive officer of Lionhead Studios, praised Chan's "timely and poignant" work for inspiring other commentary films on American and British society and for "demonstrating the potential power and impact that these films can have". In CineAction
, Elijah Horwatt wrote that Thuyen Nguyen's 2006 An Unfair War, a criticism of the Iraq War, similarly attempts "to speak for those who cannot". Joshua Garrison mimicked Chan's "political pseudo-documentary style" in his Virginia Tech Massacre, a controversial Halo 3
–based re-enactment of the eponymous real-life event
. Although initially undecided, Chan eventually became a professional machinima film-maker. His later work includes World of Electors, a series about the 2007 French presidential election
.
Writing for The Escapist
, Allen Varney
felt that the political awareness was overstated because the percentage of The Movies films that offered social commentary remained small and because the machinima and political communities were mostly separate. He argued that machinima's outstanding copyright issues and possible marginalization
constrained potential for expression. Marino and others added concerns that, although game developers had condoned machinima, a controversial film could prompt them to control machinima content by enforcing their copyrights.
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
from Lionhead Studios
Lionhead Studios
Lionhead Studios is a British computer game development company led by industry veteran Peter Molyneux, and acquired by Microsoft Game Studios in April 2006. Lionhead started as a breakaway from the developer Bullfrog, which was also founded by Molyneux. Lionhead's first game was Black & White, a...
' 2005 business simulation game The Movies
The Movies
The Movies is a business simulation game created by Lionhead Studios for Microsoft Windows and subsequently ported to Mac OS X by Feral Interactive. It was released on November 8, 2005 in North America, and November 11, 2005 in Europe after reaching gold status on October 8, 2005...
. The plot centers on three Moroccan men who turn to rioting after facing different forms of discrimination. Chan, a French native of Chinese descent, created the film to convey his view that racism caused the riots of the 2005 civil unrest in France
2005 civil unrest in France
The 2005 civil unrest in France of October and November was a series of riots by mostly Muslim North African youths in Paris and other French cities, involving mainly the burning of cars and public buildings at night starting on 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois...
. Although Chan was restricted by shortcomings and technical limitations in The Movies, he finished the film after four days of production.
The film was uploaded to The Movies Online, Lionhead's website for user-created videos, on 22 November 2005 and was soon covered by American and French press. Although real-time-rendered, three-dimensional computer animation (machinima
Machinima
Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation...
) had been used in earlier political films, The French Democracy attained an unprecedented level of mainstream attention for political machinima. While acknowledging the film's flaws, such as the grammatically poor English subtitles, commentators praised its clear political message and compared it to films such as La Haine
La Haine
La Haine is a 1995 French black-and-white film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. It is commonly released under its French title in the English-speaking world, although its American VHS release was entitled Hate. It is about three teenage friends and their struggle to live in...
and Do the Right Thing
Do the Right Thing
Do the Right Thing is a 1989 American dramedy produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee, who is also a featured actor in the film. Other members of the cast include Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, and John Turturro. It is also notably the...
. The French Democracy inspired other politically conscious machinima works and fueled discussion about the art form's potential for political expression. Some raised concerns that video game companies would use their copyrights to control the content of derivative
Derivative work
In United States copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work .-Definition:...
machinima films.
Synopsis
The French Democracy begins with a re-enactment of the real-life 27 October 2005 event that triggered riots in France: the electrocution of two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré. In the film, the youths attempt to hide from police in a building near an electric power station. In a televised speech, the Minister of the InteriorMinister of the Interior (France)
The Minister of the Interior in France is one of the most important governmental cabinet positions, responsible for the following:* The general interior security of the country, with respect to criminal acts or natural catastrophes...
vows to increase efforts to fight crime. Three fictional Moroccan men discuss the recent events and disagree with means used by the police, and feel that blacks are unfairly targeted. They face different forms of discrimination: overnight detention for lack of a passport during an identity check, refusal of employment and housing rental, and police brutality
Police brutality
Police brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer....
. Angered, the three riot using Molotov cocktail
Molotov cocktail
The Molotov cocktail, also known as the petrol bomb, gasoline bomb, Molotov bomb, fire bottle, fire bomb, or simply Molotov, is a generic name used for a variety of improvised incendiary weapons...
s. A white family watches television coverage of the chaos, and the film ends with a dedication to Benna and Traoré, lamenting the loss of the French ideals of freedom, equality, and fraternity
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for "Liberty, equality, fraternity ", is the national motto of France, and is a typical example of a tripartite motto. Although it finds its origins in the French Revolution, it was then only one motto among others and was not institutionalized until the Third...
.
Background and production
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
er whose parents were Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. Although Chan was successful professionally, he felt that there was racial and cultural discrimination in France, based on his own previous attempts to find housing and violence directed towards him. He lived in Seine-Saint-Denis
Seine-Saint-Denis
- Culture :A number of hip hop artists come from the Seine-Saint-Denis, including one of the first major hip-hop groups in France, NTM, as well as Lord Kossity, or more recent acts such as Tandem or Sefyu.- Miscellaneous topics :...
, a suburb of Paris, near housing projects
Public housing
Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the...
where rioting had caused the destruction of cars owned by acquaintances. In the aftermath of the unrest, Chan was dissatisfied, stating that "the media, especially in the United States, ... linked what was happening, the riots, to terrorism and put the blame on the Muslim community". Chan wanted instead to depict "more human" rioters who turned to violence in response to racism. According to Chan, the title The French Democracy is meant to be ironic, in that the youths express themselves by rioting rather than through the political system. He elaborated:
[The French Democracy is] a shortcut made with The Movies technology about the recent events concerning riots in French suburbs. This movie is trying to help people have a better understanding of the origin of these events, as some reasons that pushed all this youth to have such violent acts. As a matter of fact TFD offers a sincere inside view from a French citizen who lives in one of these neighborhoods where the riots took place. This fictional documentary is strongly inspired by real events and reactions and tries to make the spectator think more about how French society could and should potentially be.
Although he had no previous film-making experience, Chan decided to make his public statement as a film after he bought The Movies, a business simulation game released by Lionhead Studios on 8 November. After he progressed in the game far enough to unlock the desired film-making tools, he switched to Sandbox mode, in which he completed the film in three or four days. Because Chan had no computer microphone, the film presents dialogue in English subtitle
Subtitle (captioning)
Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...
s. Despite his lack of fluency, he chose English to broaden his audience. Production was also affected by the limitations of The Movies. Restricted to the scenery provided by the software, Chan set the electrocution deaths in a shack. The game's Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
-based setting forced him to approximate the Paris Métro
Paris Métro
The Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...
with the New York City subway
New York City Subway
The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, a subsidiary agency of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and also known as MTA New York City Transit...
and to include the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
in the background. Given the game's choices for skin color, Chan needed to apply the lightest pigment available for blacks to one character.
Reception
Under the pseudonym Koulamata, Chan uploaded the finished film to The Movies Online on 22 November 2005. Some viewers praised it, but others criticized the poor subtitles or the portrayal of police action against minorities. According to , criticism was stronger in France than elsewhere. Lionhead's selection of The French Democracy as a "hot pick" led to redistribution from other Internet sites, followed by coverage in mainstream media—including The Washington PostThe Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, BusinessWeek
BusinessWeek
Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, and . The Washington Post and MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
originally created religious connotations by incorrectly labeling Chan's characters as Muslims; they issued corrected stories after Chan complained. In 2006, the film was shown at the Flash Festival at Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
and at the World Wide Short Film Festival in Toronto.
By Chan's own assessment, The French Democracy is unpolished. The Washington Post found "broken English" in the subtitles, and BusinessWeek deemed them "stilted and ungrammatical". Josh Lee of PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
deemed the character animations of The Movies too exaggerated for the film's serious message; he felt that they made the film's depiction of police brutality seem better suited for the silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
comedy series Keystone Cops. , a French Internet publication about media issues related to immigration, called the characters "" (very ethnicized).
However, some critics felt that these problems with production quality helped to convey the film's message. In a article, Franck Beau considered the film's aesthetic a strong point because, having originated in video games, it completely differed from those of traditional animation
Traditional animation
Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...
and filming. He argued that the work's power lay in its "" (extreme simplicity) and in the "" (logical operation) of the underlying video game. BusinessWeek wrote that "the combination of amateurish technique and a strong emotional message is oddly moving", and Henry Lowood of Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
similarly thought that the awkward subtitles and cinematography created a sense of authenticity. Lee found a filming precedent in Mathieu Kassovitz
Mathieu Kassovitz
Mathieu Kassovitz is a French director, screenwriter, producer and actor, best known for his Cannes-winning drama La Haine. Kassovitz is also the founder of MNP Entreprise, a film production company....
's 1995 work La Haine
La Haine
La Haine is a 1995 French black-and-white film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. It is commonly released under its French title in the English-speaking world, although its American VHS release was entitled Hate. It is about three teenage friends and their struggle to live in...
, also "lauded for its low-budget aesthetic as much as for its expressions of rage, fear, and alienation". A discussion panel at the AMAS' 2006 Machinima Film Festival compared Chan's work to Do the Right Thing
Do the Right Thing
Do the Right Thing is a 1989 American dramedy produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee, who is also a featured actor in the film. Other members of the cast include Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, and John Turturro. It is also notably the...
(1989) and The Battle of Algiers
The Battle of Algiers (film)
The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 war film based on occurrences during the Algerian War against French colonial occupation in North Africa, the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo...
(1966).
Legacy
Although earlier political machinima films existed, The French Democracy attained an unprecedented level of mainstream attention, according to Paul MarinoPaul Marino
Paul Marino is a film director, producer, animator, voice actor, and author currently focused on machinima, the art of using engines from video games to create films. He is a co-founder and the executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences , a non-profit organization formed in...
, executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
This is a list of film festivals dedicated to machinima, the use of real-time 3-D engines in filmmaking. The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences regularly holds such festivals, and recognizes exemplary machinima works through awards nicknamed the Mackies.-Machinima Expo:The is an annual...
(AMAS). Based on the interest, Marino considered adding a documentary or commentary category to the AMAS' awards. Xavier Lardy, founder of machinima.fr, stated that no previous machinima work had "such a clear and prominent political message". Others further contrasted The French Democracys serious nature with the prevalence of gaming-related references in other machinima works, such as the Leeroy Jenkins
Leeroy Jenkins
Leeroy Jenkins, sometimes misspelled Leroy Jenkins and often elongated with numerous additional letters, is an Internet phenomenon named for a player character created by Ben Schulz in Blizzard Entertainment's MMORPG, World of Warcraft. The character became popular due to a video of the game that...
video and Rooster Teeth Productions
Rooster Teeth Productions
Rooster Teeth Productions is a production group from Austin, Texas that specializes in the creation of live action shorts, animated peices and machinima, or films created using real-time, interactive engines from computer and video games. The name Rooster Teeth is a euphemism for Cockbite, an...
' comedy series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Berkeley stated that The French Democracy was a rare exception to machinima's basis in "accepted cinematic and televisual conventions".
The French Democracy was, according to , "evidence that 'technological innovations are being used to satisfy the thirst for public expression", and Olli Sotamaa felt that the work justified further research into connections between citizenship and video gaming. Peter Molyneux
Peter Molyneux
Peter Douglas Molyneux OBE is an English computer game designer and game programmer. He created the God games Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Black & White, among others, as well as business simulation games such as Theme Park and more recently, the RPG series Fable.Despite the success of his games,...
, chief executive officer of Lionhead Studios, praised Chan's "timely and poignant" work for inspiring other commentary films on American and British society and for "demonstrating the potential power and impact that these films can have". In CineAction
CineACTION
CineAction is a Canada-based film magazine, published three times a year, edited by an editorial collective that included critic Robin Wood...
, Elijah Horwatt wrote that Thuyen Nguyen's 2006 An Unfair War, a criticism of the Iraq War, similarly attempts "to speak for those who cannot". Joshua Garrison mimicked Chan's "political pseudo-documentary style" in his Virginia Tech Massacre, a controversial Halo 3
Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
–based re-enactment of the eponymous real-life event
Virginia Tech massacre
The Virginia Tech massacre was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. In two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart, the perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people...
. Although initially undecided, Chan eventually became a professional machinima film-maker. His later work includes World of Electors, a series about the 2007 French presidential election
French presidential election, 2007
The 2007 French presidential election, the ninth of the Fifth French Republic was held to elect the successor to Jacques Chirac as president of France for a five-year term.The winner, decided on 5 and 6 May 2007, was Nicolas Sarkozy...
.
Writing for The Escapist
The Escapist (magazine)
The Escapist is an online magazine covering video games, gamers, the gaming industry, and gaming culture. Published by the Themis Group, it was edited by Julianne Greer up to June 30, 2009, then by Russ Pitts through September 2011, and is currently edited by Steve Butts. The Escapist was first...
, Allen Varney
Allen Varney
Allen Varney is an American writer and game designer born in St. Louis, Missouri. He has a dual B.A. in English and History from the University of Nevada, Reno....
felt that the political awareness was overstated because the percentage of The Movies films that offered social commentary remained small and because the machinima and political communities were mostly separate. He argued that machinima's outstanding copyright issues and possible marginalization
Marginalization
In sociology, marginalisation , or marginalization , is the social process of becoming or being made marginal or relegated to the fringe of society e.g.; "the marginalization of the underclass", "marginalisation of intellect", etc.-Individual:Marginalization at the individual level results in an...
constrained potential for expression. Marino and others added concerns that, although game developers had condoned machinima, a controversial film could prompt them to control machinima content by enforcing their copyrights.