Preview of French Film Festival at IFI
The 2007 French Film Festival takes place at the Irish Film Institute in Temple Bar Dublin from 13 - 22 November. The programme of films is described as 'a year of discovery' introducing new young talent, new landscapes and new stories, but also showcasing recent work from familiar names like Claude Berri, Audrey Tautou, Manoel de Oliveira, Alain Berliner, Jacques Rivette, and Claude Miller.
The festival opens with a bang as Persepolis takes to the screen. What started life as a graphic novel has now become a fill length animated, hand-drawn, black and white feature, chosen as the official French entry for the academy awards. As well as winning the Prix Du Jury at Cannes, the film has been a box office hit in France. Written and co-directed by Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian woman who has lived in France for many years, Persepolis tells the true story of her life in Iran, growing up during the Islamic Revolution. The ‘social guardians' of the revolution make life difficult for this girl who is interested in life outside Iran and alternative culture. For Satrapi this means rock and roll (and Abba). From conflicts with teachers and other authority figures it becomes obvious that the headstrong girl will suffer under the stifling oppression being introduced into Iran. As a last resort her liberal parents send her to Europe to study.
Audrey Tautou stars in Ensemble C'est Tout; an exploration of loneliness, ageing and finding love. Belle Toujours revisits Luis Bunuel's 1967 classic Belle de Jour and is an unexpecting moving and sweet elegy on ageing, sexuality and the power of cinema. Boxes is the feature-length directorial debut from 60's pop icon Jane Birkin and is a bittersweet chronicle of a woman is the midst of crisis, while our closing film Claude Miller's Un Secret traces the life of a Jewish family during and after the Second World War.
This year the IFI is carrying out a retrospective of five works by Nicolas Philibert. The documentary maker may not be well known to Irish audiences, and even many French look confused when his name is mentioned, but if you talk of Etre y avoir recognition dawns. This 2002 film was a rare success for a documentary in the French box office, seen by millions. Set in a one-room school in the Massif Central region of France, the fly-on-the-wall documentary recorded the minute of life in the classroom, capturing the relationship between the single teacher and the 12 students ranging in age from infants up to 12 year olds.
Philibert is renowned for the manner in which he recounts everyday events to make a coherent story, separate from the initial, often simple premise of the documentary. One such example is his new film Return to Normandy. The idea was to go back to the countryside where Philibert worked on a film many years ago to interview the local people who acted in a movie by René Allio entitled ‘Moi, Pierre Rivičre, ayant égorgé ma mčre, ma soeur et mon frčre . . . ,' (translated as I, Pierre Riviere, after slaughtering my mother, sister and brother…).
The movie was based on a true story of a peasant who killed his family and then wrote about it in prison. Local people acted as the murdered family, and in Return to Normandy Philibert meets them, exploring the changes the movie made to their lives. In theis manner he shows us their true lives now, from the carer who feels she learned how to understand others from her acting to the pig farmer, who's life is not much different from the peasant he played in the movie (and which provides graphic shots of the true nature of pig farming). What began as a simple idea of returning to interview the actors turns into a moving examination of the lives of people in the French countryside.
As the purpose of the festival is also about celebrating French film heritage the Irish music ensemble 3pekano will bring their new score for Cocteau's Blood of a Poet to the IFI for a special screening.
Other festival guests include director Nicolas Klotz who will present his new film La Question Humaine and newcomer Céline Sciamma who will be introducing her film Naissance des pieuvres.