Sandrine Grenier wins the 2025 Innovation Award from the University of Montpellier
LEARNING DIFFERENTLY: LAW AND CINEMA
UM Innovation Award 2025 from the Social Sciences Research Cluster
▶ The project " Learning Differently: Law and Cinema" takes place within the framework of an annual course and is intended to be divided into several sub-projects, one per academic year. The aim is to provide a different approach to law and to convey academic knowledge that students find difficult in an indirect and fun way. Cinema was chosen as a tool to facilitate this teaching, with the aim of conveying legal knowledge and/or facilitating methodological understanding through the production of aesthetic images. It was implemented during the 2023-2024 academic year.
" Learning Differently: Law and Cinema" is led by Sandrine Grenier, Senior Lecturer in Private Law at the University Institute of Technology (IUT) in Béziers, Marketing Techniques Department, member of LICeM, and Sandy Blanco, Professor of Cinema and Audiovisual Studies at the IUT in Béziers.
To date, the project has two variations:
La Chrysalide de Satin Rouge (Medium-length film)
Les arrêts en images (Short films)
▶ The Red Satin Chrysalis
The first is the production of a medium-length film in theGiallo genre, an Italian crime film that was hugely successful in the 1970s, marked by its very distinctive aesthetic that has endured in films and advertisements. Armed with a solid understanding of the main principles of criminal proceedings and having watched major films on the subject, the students immersed themselves in the issues surrounding criminal trials with the production of the medium-length filmLa Chrysalide de Satin Rouge.The film is based on cross-disciplinary work (law and audiovisual media, commercial communication), which allowed students to immerse themselves in the writing and production of a film sequence and to perfect their legal knowledge by mastering the criminal trial process. Designed to be innovative and interactive, the audience can become, for a moment, a jury and be invited to participate.
This project was carried out with the aim of bringing together multiple partners, all volunteers, institutional or private, for mutual enrichment and influence (among other things: to provide filming locations or costumes: the cities of Agde, Béziers, Pézenas, and Montpellier; the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Montpellier; the Judicial Court of Béziers; the Court of Appeal of Montpellier; the Montpellier Bar Association; the Centre Sud Law School; and the fashion houses Caroline Bouvier and Le P'tit Grain de Mil). The idea of bringing together legal, technical, and artistic talents around a common project, as well as showcasing the architectural and cultural heritage of our region, was also a driving force behind the project (filming took place at the Faculty of Law and Political Science in Montpellier, the municipal theater in Pézenas, the Vulliod Museum in Saint-Germain de Pézenas, the Fayet Museum in Béziers, the old cemetery in Béziers, the Hôtel La Prison in Béziers, and the Château Laurens in Agde).
▶ Movie trailer
▶ Stops in pictures
The second approach consisted of working specifically on reading and understanding court decisions, a traditional exercise that is often daunting for beginners and/or non-specialists given the specific nature of the writing style and legal vocabulary used. Faced with these difficulties, the idea of using film to make reading a decision more accessible and to encourage students to understand the legal issue raised and the solution applied by the judges was once again proposed. For the moment, six judgments have been chosen by the students and turned into short films of less than four minutes (three judgments from the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation, one from the Social Chamber, and two from theFirst Civil Chamber).
▶ Three rulings are available online:
Moullec, Criminal Division of the Court of Cassation, November 8, 1972
Fragonard, First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, March 24, 1987
Lacour, Criminal Division of the Court of Cassation, November 25, 1962
▶ Three other stops in pictures are in post-production and will soon be posted on the YouTube channel Droit dans l'objectif channel created specifically for the "Law and Cinema" project run by the Marketing Techniques department at the University Institute of Technology in Béziers. They will be available for viewing by other students, who, thanks to a fun approach to the court ruling, will also be able to immerse themselves in reading and understanding it.
▶ The channel Straight to the point
https://www.youtube.com/@DROITetCINEMA
Photos of the award ceremony – credit: Étienne Perra – University of Montpellier
