This talk examines the history and practice of converting feature films into mini-series, which has recently been revived by various streaming platforms as a way of boosting ratings and generating more content.…
In 2020, British filmmaker Steve McQueen brought together under the name Small Axe a collection of five autonomous films that have as common elements a place (London, Brixton district), a community under…
The notion of mini-series appears in Japan as the standard format of television dramas. Mostly composed of ten episodes, the series are closed narratives where the initial plot finds its denouement in…
Serial practice often involves a reception that focuses on suspense. But Top of the Lake particularises its treatment of suspense by means of slowdowns in the narrative, constituting a brake on the…
This presentation focuses on the making of French mini-series. Why create a mini-series rather than a series or a feature film? Is it the subject that dictates the format? Or is it…
The Third Day is a mini-series consisting of six episodes. A seventh episode, Autumn, is at the junction between the two parts. It was filmed live on 3 October 2020 during a…
From the very first sequence of Normal People, the dynamic of linking and unlinking between Marianne and Connell, which constitutes the narrative substance of the series, structures the mise-en-scène: in a corridor…
With We Own This City (2022), David Simon returns to his favourite city, Baltimore. Based on Justin Fenton’s barely fictionalised investigation, he offers a mini-series that is as dry in its narrative…
The mini-series follows the caregivers at Memorial Hospital (New Orleans) during and after Hurricane Katrina. The mini-series borrows from disaster films and long-running medical series. Ethically, the miniseries deploys a levelling power…
This talk proposes an exploration of the corpus of mini-series “by” Nicole Kidman, i.e. that she produces and/or interprets: Big Little Lies (2017-2019), The Undoing (2020), Nine Perfect Strangers (2021)… The aim…