"In her thoughtful and well-researched new study Framing the Nation, Alison Murray Levine argues convincingly that the French government used documentary film to help craft national identity in response to domestic and international crises during the interwar period. In doing so, the author demonstrates that state-sponsored French documentary cinema from the 1920s and 1930s serves as a repository for prevailing official discourses around modernization, urbanization, and colonialism. The author examines those discourses -- and the policy decisions to which they led -- in light of the international growth of documentary film as a flourishing new medium. Indeed, Murray Levine does a great service by situating the French contribution to documentary cinema in its proper place in the history of the medium." Andrew Sobanet, Associate Professor of French, Georgetown University
