The French film industry's current financial crisis and its impact on creation: the example of Jacques Doillon's Raja (2003)

Although Jacques Doillon is amongst the major film-makers in France, his recent project found no financing in spite of its relative cheapness. According to Doillon, this was because his scenario did not fit within the light-entertainment focus of financiers. Indeed, funding films that do not conform to a Hollywood model has become a particularly fraught issue in France. Frustrated in his original ambition, Doillon then embarked on the filming of Raja in Marrakech (Morocco). This film depicts the unsuccessful love story between a blasé, middle-aged Frenchman (Pascal Greggory) and Raja, one of his maids played by the newcomer Najat Benssallem. One of the first temptations is to read the film as a parable for the power relationship between rich industrialized countries in the North and emerging nations in the South. Our article however proposes a different interpretation of the narrative: in our view, the film can also be seen as an allegory for the conflict-ridden relationship between film-makers and their financiers in a world where return upon investment is the paramount criterion for the selection of scenarios

The globalization of crime control - the case of youth and juvenile justice Neo-liberalism, policy convergence and international conventions

The concept of globalization has gradually permeated criminology, but more so as applied to transnational organized crime, international terrorism and policing than in addressing processes of criminal justice reform. Based on a wide range of bibliographic and web resources, this article assesses the extent to which a combination of neo-liberal assaults on the social logics of the welfare state and public provision, widespread experimentation with restorative justice and the prospect of rehabilitation through mediation and widely ratified international directives, epitomized by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have now made it possible to talk of a global juvenile/youth justice. Conversely it also reflects on how persistent national and local divergences, together with the contradictions of contemporary reform, may preclude any aspiration for the delivery of a universal and consensual produc