Ebook: Exception Taken: How France Has Defied Hollywood's New World Order

When European cinema began a steady decline in the 1980s, France sought to strengthen support for its film industry. Over the following decades, the country lobbied partners in the European Economic Community to design strategies to protect national cinema and to resist cultural free-trade pressures in international trade agreements. These struggles to preserve the autonomy of national artistic prerogatives emboldened other countries to oppose the powerful homogenizing force of Hollywood and question the benefits of accelerated globalization. Promoting commercial cinema and art cinema together, France articulated "a certain idea of cinema" that was expansive and disproved the medium's much-heralded death.

Jonathan Buchsbaum examines the movements that have emerged in opposition to the homogenizing force of Hollywood in global filmmaking. Exception Taken details how France sought to strengthen support for its film industry and designed strategies to protect the audiovisual industries and to resist cultural free-trade pressures.