Beau travail

Name: Beau travail
Price: 26.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9781839027130

Corinn Columpar (University of Toronto, Canada)

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English

BFI Publishing
11 June 2026

Film theory & criticism; Film movie guides & reviews; Feminism & feminist theory; Gender studies: men; Gay & Lesbian studies

Series: BFI Film Classics

Beau Travail (1998) is Claire Denis' bold, sensuous masterpiece. Loosely based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor (1924), the film explores the complexities of desire, identity, and power within an all-male group of French Foreign Legionnaires stationed at a coastal outpost in the former colony of Djibouti, in East Africa.

The film cemented Denis' position as a leading auteur and visual poet. In this book, Corinn Columpar positions the film as a cinematic bid for freedom. She examines its formal innovations - particularly the use of the gaze, voice, and movement - to explain how Denis produces exhilarating possibilities narratively, affectively, and ideologically, while also situating the film within the histories of art cinema and postcolonial filmmaking.

By: Corinn Columpar (University of Toronto Canada)
Imprint: BFI Publishing
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 188mm, Width: 134mm, Spine: 6mm
Weight: 160g
ISBN: 9781839027130
ISBN 10: 1839027134
Series: BFI Film Classics
Pages: 96
Publication Date: 11 June 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction: ‘Maybe freedom begins with remorse’ 1. Pretexts: The Freedom to Associate Ideas 2. Encounters: The Freedom to Choose Your Side 3. Collaborations: The Freedom to Experiment Notes Credits

Corinn Columpar is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is the author of Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World on Film (2010). She is co-editor of There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond (2009) and Mothers of Invention: Film, Media, and Caregiving Labor (2022). She has published widely on feminist film theory, embodiment and representation in journals including Camera Obscura, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and Women Studies Quarterly.