Biography

Abstract:

This short introduction proposes to look at the growing impact of contemporary biographical films on political life, more particularly on the collective mental representations of political figures. Compared to print biographies, biographical films focus on significant periods of the subjects' lives, and even more on specific issues or debates related to those, to propose discursive statements on certain crucial questions of general interest. Envisaging film biographies through the perspective of their more recent evolution, which goes far beyond the historically situated form still more or less implied by the term "biopic," this introduction goes on to reflect on the different aesthetic perceptions of fictionalization in film and print. Finally, it offers brief summaries of the articles gathered in this cluster.