|
|
Welcome to April in Paris, Hartford's 5th Annual Festival of
French and Francophone Films !
April in Paris takes a provocative look at war through the lens
of French cinema, from the military triumphs of Napoleon to the
present day plague of terrorism. The Fifth Annual Festival will
open with a rare screening of a 70mm print of Abel Gance's silent
masterpiece, Napoleon. Other highlights will include Jean Renoir's
classic La Grande Illusion, a double feature of New Wave director
Alain Resnais' Muriel and Night and Fog, a new print of the newly
relevant Battle of Algiers, and the Hartford premiere of 9-11-01,
the highly controversial French production of eleven international
filmmakers' response to the attacks of September 11.
|
| Sunday, April 4 |
| 5:00 pm |
NAPOLEON
(in 70MM) (France, 1927) Written and directed by Abel
Gance. With: Albert Dieudonne, Vladimir Roudenko, Antonin
Artaud. Don't miss the chance to see a rare 70mm print
of Abel Gance's masterpiece of silent cinema! A panorama
of French history, from Revolution to Napoleon's epic
battles for empire. Musical soundtrack by Carmine Coppola.
235 min.
|
|
|
| Monday, April 5 |
| 7:30
pm |
NIGHT AND FOG showing
with MURIEL 7:30
MURIEL (France, 1963) Director: Alain Resnais. Screenplay:
Jean Cayrol. Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kerien,
Nita Klein. A double feature of films by New Wave director
Alain Resnais begins with Muriel: in a Boulogne apartment,
two people are trapped in the past: Delphine Seyrig dreams
of a lost lover, while her young nephew is consumed with
memories of war in Algeria. 115 min.
NIGHT AND FOG (Nuit et Brouillard) (1955) This 31-minute
documentary of the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz
and Majdanek remains the most starkly eloquent witness
to the unimaginable tragedy of the Holocaust. |
| |
|
|
|
| Tuesday,
April 6 |
| 7:30
pm |
LUMUMBA
(Haiti/France/Belgium) Directed by Raoul Peck. Cast: Eriq
Ebouaney, Alex Descas, Theophile Moussa. Haitian director
Raoul Peck has refused to let the world forget Congolese
rebel Patrice Lumumba, whose battle with Belgian colonialism
and U. S. self-interest is still in play. 115 min. |
| |
|
|
|
| Wednesday,
April 7 |
| 7:30
pm |
SAFE
CONDUCT (Laissez-Passer) (France, 2003) Directed by Bertrand
Tavernier, based on the book by Jean Devaivre. Cast: Denis
Podalydes, Jacques Gamblin, Marie Gillain. Bertrand Tavernier's
bittersweet true story of a screenwriter and a director
in Nazi-occupied Paris, who are faced with the ambiguous
choice of resistance or collaboration. 170 min. |
| |
|
|
|
| Thursday,
April 8 |
| 7:30
pm |
LUCIE
AUBRAC (France, 1997) Written and directed by Claude Berri,
based on the book by Lucie Aubrac. Cast: Carole Bouquet,
Daniel Auteuil, Patrice Chereau. While most war movies
do not have a woman as the main character, this impassioned
film on Resistance fighter Lucie Aubrac breaks the mold.
Her struggle against Nazism fills in one of the gaps on
the lives of women in wartime. 116 min. |
| |
|
|
|
| Friday,
April 9 |
| 7:30
pm |
THE
BATTLE OF ALGIERS (Italy, 1965) Special Sneak Preview!
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo. Based on a book by Yacef Saadi.
Cast: Jean Martin, Brahim Haggiag, Yacef Saadi. This devastating
film on Algeria's guerrilla war of independence from France
has new relevance: last year, the Pentagon offered a private
screening to its employees involved in the "war on
terror." The new, restored print of The Battle of
Algiers will begin a special one-week engagement at Cinestudio,
beginning Friday April 16! |
| |
|
| 9:55 pm |
BEAU TRAVAIL (France,
1999) Director: Claire Denis. Cast: Gregoire Colin, Denis
Lavant, Michel Subor. Claire Denis uses the bare bones
of Melville's Billy Budd to create a fevered meditation
on an all-male warrior society, set in a French Foreign
Legion outpost in the East African enclave of Djibouti.
90 min. |
|
|
| Saturday,
April 10 |
| 2:30
pm |
GRAND ILLUSION
(La Grande Illusion) (France, 1938) Written and directed
by Jean Renoir. Cast: Erich von Stroheim, Pierre Fresnay,
Jean Gabin. It's no surprise that Nazi propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels pronounced Grand Illusion "Cinematic
Public Enemy No. 1." Jean Renoir's masterwork about
the wary relationship between an aristocratic French POW
and a German officer during World War I strips away the
conceit that war is anything but brutal. 95 min. |
| |
|
| 7:30
pm |
SEPTEMBER
11 (France, 2002) A Hartford Premiere. French producer
Alain Brigand asked 11 directors from around the globe
to respond to the September 11 attacks by each making
a film that runs exactly 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame
long. Provocative, unexpected, and heartbreaking, September
11 has never been widely released in the U.S. The filmmakers:
Claude Lelouch, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Ken Loach,
Sean Penn, Mira Nair, Amos Gitai, Youssef Chahine, Danis
Tanovic, Samira Makhmalbaf, Shohei Imamura, and Idrissa
Ouedraogo. 134 min. |
| |
|
|
|
|
