A week-long Tournées French Film Festival sponsored by the French Department will take place October 23-27, featuring six films with English subtitles. Admission is free and open to the public, and all screenings will take place in Blaustein Humanities Center, Room 210, beginning at 7 p.m.
Film Studies and French department faculty members will be introducing the films before each screening, with a discussion / Q&A following each film.
All showings take place in Blaustein Humanities Building, Room 210, in central campus. (Please note: there are two showings on Tuesday, Oct. 24.) See directions to the College and the campus map.
There will be a wine tasting opening reception with Doug Cook at 6:15 p.m., 3rd floor, Blaustein Humanities Building, before the first film showing at 7 p.m. in Room 210.
Tournées Film Festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, Florence Gould Foundation and Highbrow Entertainment. Additional support provided by the French Department, Information Services, Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts, Gender and Women's Studies, Africana Studies, LGBTQIA Center, Film Studies, and Arabic Studies.
Contact James Austin, jfaus@conncoll.edu, associate professor of French, for more information. Austin lectures frequently on Proust and on film in the United States and internationally. He is also an associate faculty member in the Film Studies Department.
"La mort de Louis XIV" ("The Death of Louis XIV")
Monday, Oct. 23
Wine Tasting Opening Reception with Doug Cook: 6:15 p.m., 3rd floor, Blaustein Humanities Center. All are welcome.
Film screening: 7 p.m.
Directed by Albert Serra, 2016. Introduction by Ronan Chalmin, Senior Lecturer of French. Playing Louis XIV at the end of his life, surrounded by obsequious courtiers and chiaroscuro lighting, New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud reaches new heights, using his aura as a legend of cinema to cast the long shadow of a fading Sun King. A warts-and-all depiction of the frailty of a feared monarch, inspired by the memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon. In French. More about "La mort de Louis XIV."
“La noire de” (“Black Girl”)
Tuesday, Oct. 24
Film screening: 4:15 p.m.
Directed by Ousmane Sembène, 1965. Introduction by Alexis Mozeleski, Class of 2019, International Relations/Religious Studies Major Diouana, a young woman living in Senegal, dreams of discovering France, and goes there expecting to be a nanny, instead finding herself a maid for a French household in a rather poor (and racist) working environment. Masterful filmmaker Sembène gives us a short but dense work, a human-scaled, anti-colonialist tragedy, rich in symbolism. In French and Wolof. 59 min. More about “La noire de.”
“Voir du Pays” (“The Stopover”)
Tuesday, Oct. 24
Film screening: 7 p.m.
Directed by Delphine & Muriel Coulin, 2016. Introduction by Ari Rotramel, Vandana Shiva Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies. Two young French female soldiers, returning from serving in the war in Afghanistan, stop at a resort hotel in Cyprus for a few days of decompression with the other members of their military unit. With quasi-anthropological detail, the film treats both sexism and the consequences of asymmetric, globalized war. In French. 102 min. More about “Voir du Pays.”
“Quan on a 17 ans” (“Being 17”)
Wednesday, Oct. 25
Film screening: 7 p.m.
Directed by André Téchiné, 2016. Introduction by James Austin, Associate Professor of French. Seventeen-year-old Damien, good student but outsider, fights with Thomas, a biracial boy whom his mother invites to live with them. Soon Damien finds he is in love with Thomas in this coming of age and coming out tale by eminent director André Téchiné. In French. 116 min. More about “Quan on a 17 ans.”
“A peine j’ouvre mes yeux” (“As I Open my Eyes”)
Thursday, Oct. 26
Film screening: 7 p.m.
Directed by Leyla Bouzid, 2015. Introduction by Julia Reilly, Class of 2019, International Relations/French Double Major, Arabic Minor. Fresh out of high school, eighteen-year-old Farah pursues her dream of singing in a band in politically charged concerts that displease the authorities. Set in Tunisia just months it began the Arab Spring and ousted its dictatorship, this debut film gives us both the portrait of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, and an insightful, complex look at life under a repressive political regime. In Arabic. 102 min. More about “A peine j’ouvre mes yeux.”
“Avril et le monde truque” (“April and the Extraordinary World”)
Friday, Oct. 27
Film screening: 7 p.m. Reception follows to close the festival in style!
Directed by Christian Desmares & Franck Ekinci, 2015. Introduction by Benjamin Williams, Visiting Assistant Professor of French. April sets off to find her missing chemist parents in this animated adventure that ushers the viewer into a dystopic steampunk landscape and alternate reality in which the Bonapartes still rule France, electricity was never discovered, trees are a distant memory, and a steam-driven cable car connects Paris to Berlin. Based on the work of the graphic novelist Tardi. In French. 103 min. More about “Avril et le monde truque.”
