Specialized Resources
A week-long Tournées French Film Festival sponsored by the French Department will take place October 21-25, featuring six films with English subtitles. Admission is free and open to the public.
Located in Blaustein 210 (map)
Receptions:
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, Film Studies, CISLA, Classics/Arabic Studies and LQBTQIA Center. Contact: james.austin@conncoll.edu.
Monday, October 21
Film screening: 7 p.m.
Directed by Laurent Tirard, 2018.
Intro. by Olha Vasyliv, Class of 2023
Set during the Napoleonic Wars and interspersing social commentary with farce, this period piece features the comedic talents of Jean Dujardin (Captain Neuville) and Mélanie Laurent (Élisabeth Beaugrand), who are both rivals and accomplices in maintaining the glorious identity of the great Captain Neuville. In French. 90 min.
Tuesday, October 22
Film screening: 4:15 p.m.
Directed by Jean Vigo, 1934.
Intro. by Julie Blazar, class of 2020.
In this classic film of French cinema, with touches of surrealism and anarchism, radically original director Jean Vigo conveys the early exuberance of married life, poetic images of life on and along the Seine, and the comedic and dreamlike aspects of daily life together. In French. 89 min.
Tuesday, October 22
Film screening: 7:00 p.m.
Directed by Claire Simon, 2016.
Intro. by Madeline Vanech, Class of 2023 & Omid Azodi, Class of 2023
Trailer with English subtitles
Introduction TBA
Claire Simon will delve into the daily life of the Parisian cinema school called the Fémis, where a specific Republican ideal of excellence is practiced. They all dream of joining the prestigious Parisian film school but only 60 will be chosen. It’s a time for hope but also for fear. In French. 121 min.
Wednesday, October 23
Film screening: 7:00 p.m.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. (2018)
Intro by James Austin, Associate Professor of French
Introduction TBA
Jean-Luc Godard, the revolutionary New Wave director of Breathless (1960), breaks new ground here, both formally through intense work on often-saturated images, and intellectually through the complex thoughts conveyed. Delivering a meditation on humanity, cinema, and especially on the relationship of the West to the Arab world, creating breathtaking associations between images from classic films and news footage, The Image Book is a film from the future that relegates the rest of cinema to the past. In French. 84 min.
Thursday, October 24
Film screening: 7:00 p.m.
Directed by Jean-Philippe Gaud, 2018.
Intro. by Hicham Zemmahi, Visiting Instructor of Arabic.
Introduction TBA
Elias works at a tiny store in the Moroccan village of Tazzeka, mostly making couscous. Under the influence of his grandmother’s cooking and a French cookbook, Elias has become a chef of truly great talent, who dreams of preparing rack of lamb in Paris. Once in the French capital, however, he works as an undocumented day laborer, fearing both the police and returning home a failure. Can his dream ever succeed? Tazzeka describes the immigrant experience in a warm yet unvarnished manner. In French. 95 min.
Friday, October 25
Film screening: 7:00 p.m. -- Reception to Follow the Screening of BPM at close of Festival
Directed by Robin Campillo, 2017.
Intro. by Xia Morrison, Class of 2021
Introduction TBA
Early 1990s. With AIDS having already claimed countless lives for nearly ten years, Act up-Paris activists multiply actions to fight general indifference. Nathan (Arnaud Valois), a newcomer to the group, has his world shaken up by Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), a radical militant, who throws his last bits of strength into the struggle. In French. 143 min.