THE TOURNeES FESTIVAL-New French Films on Campus

The Tournées Festival is a program of FACE, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring contemporary French cinema to American college and university campuses.  The Alvin Sherman Library is a receipent of a Tournées Festival grant to show five films this fall. They are:

October 9:
Des Hommes Et Des Dieux (Of Gods and Men)
Director: Xavier Beauvois. 2010 (120 min.)
A sublime tale of faith and doubt based on a real incident, Of Gods and Men chronicles the story of eight French Trappist monks living in an impoverished Algerian village. When faced with threats of violence from fundamentalist terrorists and the Algerian military, the monks must decide whether to seek safety or risk their lives and stay with the local villagers who have come to trust them and rely on their aid.

October 16:
L'Illusionniste (The Illusionist)
Director: Sylvain Chomet. 2010 (80 min.)
Chomet’s follow-up to 2003’s The Triplets of Belleville is another exquisitely animated film, based on an unproduced script by the French comic genius Jacques Tati, in which a struggling magician befriends Alice, a poor cleaning girl who follows him to Edinburgh. Although neither the magician nor his young charge speak each other’s language, The Illusionist beautifully shows the ways people understand each other nonverbally.

October 23:
Joueuse (Queen to Play)
Director: Caroline Bottaro. 2008 (96 min.)
Hélène, a dutiful, middle-aged wife and mother and hard-working maid at an exclusive resort in Corsica undergoes a powerful transformation when she discovers a love of chess. Fascinated after observing an amorous couple’s game as she changed the sheets in their room, Hélène teaches herself to play. In unlocking the intricacies of chess, Hélène revitalizes her life, which had previously been little more than mere routine.

October 30:
Potiche
Director: François Ozon. 2010 (103 min.)
Potiche (which translates as “trophy wife”) stunningly recreates the world of the 1970s in telling the story of potiche Suzanne’s transformation from submissive housewife to intrepid leader. As Suzanne – wonderfully played by the reigning queen of French film Catherine Deneuve – breaks free of her coddled life, she realizes, just like many other women who discovered feminism in the 1970s, that the personal really is political.

November 6
Un Prophète (A Prophet)
Director: Jacques Audiard. 2008 (149 min.)
Malik, a 19-year-old French-Arab, enters prison as an uneducated naïf and is thrust into rigidly defined social system rife with corruption, cronyism, and racism. Director Audiard’s intricate study of the bloody rules and rituals behind bars never once glorifies the shocking violence that becomes a rite of passage for Malik. A Prophet instead offers a clear-eyed examination of the ambiguous figure Malik cuts in maneuvering the laws and loyalties of the violent prison world.

All films are in French with English subtitles.

These film showings are free and open to the public.

Support for the Tournées Festival is provided by:

The French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs /The Centre National de la Cinématographie/The Florence Gould Foundation /The Grand Marnier Foundation /highbrow entertainment.                                                        www.facecouncil.org