In France, Artists Have Sounded the Warning Bells for Years : "So life often imitates art. Yet with the recent uprisings in some French immigrant neighborhoods, this cliche came with a new twist: art, in the form of movies and rap music, has long been warning that French-born Arab and black youths felt increasingly alienated from French society and that their communities were ripe for explosion.
Certainly anyone who saw Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film 'Hate' had no reason to be surprised by this fall's violence. At the time, Mr. Kassovitz's portrayal of a seething immigrant Paris banlieue (or suburb), even his choice of title, seemed shocking and exaggerated. Today, the movie could almost pass for a documentary."
And as a sidenote, Kassovitz also starred in the sugar-coated Paris of Amelie. I'm not drawing any conclusions--just picking the strands from the knot.
