Les lauréats français du programme Fulbright et des programmes des fondations partenaires de la Commission ont été accueillis mardi 27 juin 2017 par Madame Uzra S. Zeya, Chargée d’Affaires a.i. de l’Ambassade des États-Unis d’Amérique et M. Arnaud Roujou de Boubée, Directeur de la Commission franco-américaine d’échanges universitaires et culturels,

La réception s’est tenue en l’Hôtel de Talleyrand-George Marshall Center.

Parmi les lauréats figure Claire Demoulin (au centre sur la photo), doctorante contractuelle à l’université Paris 8, rattachée à l’IHTP. Claire va séjourner à l’université Yale, de décembre 2017 à août 2018, à l’invitation du professeur Brigitte Peucker, et grâce à la bienveillance de Dudley Andrew, R. Selden Rose Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Film Studies à Yale. Lors de la préparation de sa candidature, Claire a bénéficié de l’aide d’Alice Kaplan, membre du Conseil de valorisation scientifique de l’IHTP, et de Robyn Pront, doctorante à Yale, invitée à l’IHTP au premier semestre 2017-2018, ainsi que d’Anne Pérotin-Dumon.

Voici une présentation, en anglais, de son travail de recherche :

« My research concerns William Dieterle, a German film director who emigrated to the US in 1930. As a European in Hollywood, Dieterle made a series of biographical films about historical figures that form a distinctive body of work. They translate to the screen much about how he suffered from his times and the values he believes in.

I have been drawn to this project because Dieterle’s work is more original than is generally appreciated; and because he has an important place in the larger history of Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s, defined as it was by multiple and often contradictory influences. My initial research questions concern the historical figures that interest him and how he depicts their lives on the screen. What is revealed by these choices both of subject and representation?In my analysis of

Dieterle’s work, I combine aesthetic, history and social science to illuminate the complex relationship between film and society. I address four dimensions of that relationship.

– First, the genre: Dieterle is a pioneering figure of the biographical picture, but he challenges the conventions of the genre. He is less interested in “great men” as such than in stages in their lives that in his directorial hands become paradigms of great causes or ideas that these men embody, as trans-historical and trans-continental characters.

– Second, his view of history: Almost all of Dieterle’s subjects belong to 19th-century Europe, and for him, these specific European men are representative of progressive modern society, whose struggles resonate with his present day. In doing that, Dieterle originally bends European figures into an American merging genre.

– Third point, his European cultural references lead to forceful images when he juxtaposes different artistic media. Just an example: his work on Juarez reads completely differently when you focus on the mise-en-scene influenced by Goya and Manet. He shifts our attention from the non-European Juarez to atrocities perpetrated during the French military invasion. We are in 1939. And it is worth remembering that when America was still officially neutral toward the war in Europe, Hollywood was expected to reflect that stance.

What finally can we learn from the study of analogical texts and images? By incorporating the words of Zola or Pasteur, Dieterle condemns growing fascism in Europe, while circumventing informal censorship. Dieterle’s films link past stories, present urgencies, and future generations. They teach us how cinema can convey political values and sustain the circulation of ideas despite efforts to limit them ».