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New Orleans Film Society

French Film Festival

Stay tuned for more information about 15th Annual New Orleans French Film Festival!
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14th Annual New Orleans French Film Festival
July 8-14, 2011, at the Prytania Theatre (5339 Prytania Street)

Presented by the New Orleans Film Society and the Consulat Général de France à la Nouvelle-Orléans
at the Prytania Theatre with support from NOLA Francaise

Tickets are $7 for NOFS members / $9 general admission (with the exception of the noon classic An American in Paris, which is $5 for everyone. Tickets are available at the Prytania box office or online here.

To download the festival poster (with the complete schedule), click here.
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Opening Night Film: GAINSBOURG: A Heroic Life
screens Friday, July 8, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, July 10, at 5:00 p.m.
About the film: Taking the best from La Vie En Rose and Amelie, renowned comic book artist Joann Sfar’s Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a completely original take on one of France’s greatest mavericks, the illustrious and infamous Jewish singer-songwriter, Serge Gainsbourg (Eric Elmosnino). Born Lucien Ginsburg to Russian-Jewish parents, Sfar follows him from his precocious childhood in Nazi-occupied Paris, to his beginnings as small time jazz musician and finally pop superstar. Along the way he romances many of the era’s most beautiful women, including Juliette Greco (Anna Mouglalis), Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta) and Jane Birkin (Lucy Gordon). Employing a witty surrealistic style and a soundtrack that includes many of the musician’s greatest hits, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a quintessential time capsule to ’60’s Paris.

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An American in Paris
screens Friday, July 9, at noon and Saturday, July 10, at noon and Wednesday, July 13, at noon
About the film: In the scandalously popular new Woody Allen film, Midnight in Paris, Allen surrogate Owen Wilson swoons over his encounters with the literati and glitterati of the 1920s, an age that the character has long envisioned as a so-called “Golden Age.” And, in the course of events, he comes to realize that such halcyon periods are usually those just before one’s majority and, alas, with all traces of unpleasantries conveniently teased out. (How true, how true.) Nonetheless, we all harbor treasured illusions (delusions?) about a time in the past when we would have found things, well, more to our liking. For many moviegoers, it isn’t Paris in the Twenties that causes them to sigh deeply, but Paris After The War–that is, the Paris After the War depicted in movies such as An American in Paris with Gene Kelly, easel in hand, skipping jauntily down the Champs Elysee and in his Pierrot costume romancing an insouciant Leslie Caron at the Beaux Arts ball and jette-ing all over the place to the music of George Gershwin. No, it really wasn’t quite like that…but we’ll always have “Paris,” An American in Paris that is, and, for a couple hours, an exquisite illusion. 115 minutes. Directed by Vincente Minnelli.

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L’amour Fou
screens Saturday, July 9, at 2:30 p.m. and Monday, July 11, at noon
Co-presented by NOLA Fashion Week.
About the film: The public life of Yves Saint Laurent was as extravagant as it was decadent. As a design prodigy (he took over designing for the house of Christian Dior at age 21) and then the grand couturier of a fashion empire, he influenced fifty years of style-but few are familiar with the private life of the legend. Pierre Bergé, the man with whom YSL shared four decades of his life and love, reflects on the equally extravagant history of their personal relationship. Their three lavishly-furnished houses (in Paris, Normandy and Marrakech) are toured. Framed around the 2009 auction of the fabulous, priceless art collection amassed by the couple over several decades (including works by Brancusi, Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Mondrian), this extraordinary documentary provides an unprecedented look at the life of a mythic personality, whose personal life matched his public for elegance, extravagance and passion. L’Amour Fou is a must see for fans of documentary film and fashion die-hards alike. With appearances by Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger and Catherine Deneuve; directed by Pierre Thoretton.

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The Names of Love (Le nom des gens)
screens Saturday, July 9, at 5:00 p.m.
About the film: Baya Benmahmoud (Sara Forestier), a young, extroverted liberal, lives by that old hippie rallying cry “make love, not war”–quite literally: she sets about to convert gentlemen of the right wing persuasion not by appealing to principles of Aristotelian logic but from the more immediately compelling vantage point of – to put it somewhat indelicately – being a good lay. Unorthodox, perhaps, but as it turn out, highly effective – until she meets Arthur Martin, a Jewish middle-of-the-road scientist. Bound by common tragic family histories (the Algerian War and Holocaust under Vichy), the duo improbably fall in love. Amid the bubbly amour, humorous lasciviousness and moments of sheer madness, filmmaker Michel Leclerc injects satirical riffs on such hot-button sociopolitical issues as Arab-Jewish relations, anti-Semitism, immigration, and racial and cultural identity. Winner of France’s 2011 César Awards for Best Actress (Forestier) and Best Original Screenplay (co-written by director Michel Leclerc).

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The Rules of the Game (La regle du jeu)
screens Sunday, July 10, at 2:30 p.m.
About the film: Widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made (and ranked in Sight and Sound magazine’s most recent poll of international critics as numero deux in the history of world cinema, right behind the inevitable Citizen Kane, not too shabby), Jean Renoir’s masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners. On the eve of WWII, a gaggle of the swells of French Society are gathered at the country estate of a marquis for a weekend of amusements and, less amusing, to hunt grouse and rabbit; but soon it is the masters and servants begin chasing and shooting at each other. The Rules of the Game is “derived” from Alfred de Musset’s Les Caprices de Marianne. With the marvelous Marcel Dalio as the Marquis and Renoir lui-meme as his copain, the irrepressible Octave. Chanel did the costumes and Cartier-Bresson served as assistant director. Although the original negative was destroyed during WWII, the version NOFS is screening as this year’s French film classic is the fully reconstructed version.

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Mozart’s Sister (Nannerl, la soeur de mozart)
screens Monday, July 11, at 7:30 p.m.
About the film: Written, directed, and produced by René Féret, Mozart’s Sister is a re-imagined account of the early life of Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart (played by Marie Féret, the director’s daughter), five years older than Wolfgang (David Moreau) and a musical prodigy in her own right. Originally the featured performer, Nannerl has given way to Wolfgang as the main attraction, as their strict but loving father Leopold (Marc Barbe) tours his talented offspring in front of the royal courts of pre-French Revolution Europe. Approaching marriageable age and now forbidden to play the violin or compose, Nannerl chafes at the limitations imposed on her gender. But a friendship with the son and daughter of Louis XV offers her ways to challenge the established sexual and social order.

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Love Crime (Crime d’amour)
screens Tuesday, July 12, at 7:30 p.m.
About the film: Pitched at last year’s Toronto Film Festival as a cross between Dangerous Liaisons and Working Girl, the late Alain Corneau’s Love Crime (sounding more delicious in the original French as Crime d’amour) is all about office politics, one of the more virulent forms of political intrigue that even those most adverse to such things can scarcely avoided. Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier) is the young ingénue assistant, while Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is the older woman, a senior executive in a multinational company doing deals around the world. At first they are friendly. Christine, the able executive, is happy to pass the grunt work along to the up-and-coming Isabelle as she learns the ropes. But when Christine starts to take credit for Isabelle’s ideas, and a fellow worker bee begins to fuel Isabelle’s growing doubts about Christine’s duplicitous “all-for-one” attitude, the ground is prepared for all out war. And all out war certainly ensues.

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Film Socialisme
screens Wednesday, July 13, at 5:30 p.m.
About the film: A major event, the first feature in six years by the still-an-enfant-terrible-after-all-these-years Jean-Luc Godard, director of the seminal New Wave film A bout de souffle (Breathless) and the prophetic work, Weekend. In this late and latest work by the master, M. Godard journeys across the Mediterranean and beyond, offering nothing less than a state of the European Union address. Set aboard a cruise ship, at a gas station and all across the continent, the film layers quotes, conversations, animals, YouTube and Patti Smith into a collage that’s provocative, beguiling and pure Godard. As per usual with late period Godard, Film socialisme is chock full of startlingly beautiful images counterposed to a Godardian knot of Deep Think pensees. In an age where even our finest auteurs grovel before an audience of eternal post-adolescents, M. Godard defiantly–and brilliantly–offers no sop.

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Rapt
screens Wednesday, July 13, at 7:30 p.m. and Thursday, July 14, at noon
About the film: Nominated for four Cesar Awards (including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor), director Lucas Belvaux’s edge-of-your-seat thriller–inspired by the 1978 kidnapping of French industrialist Edouard-Jean Empain–features a career-defining performance by Yvan Attal (Munich, My Wife Is an Actress) as Stanislas Graff, a millionaire playboy who is abducted and held for ransom for 60 days. Brutally mutilated, humiliated by his captors, Graff patiently waits for his wife Françoise (Anne Consigny) and his associates to pay the ransom. Outside, his world collapses as the press reveals a double life he had successfully kept private: lavish parties, mistresses, gambling debts. Rapt is, in essence, two films: on the one hand, it’s a socio-political thriller of the kind made familiar by Costa-Gavras (Z) and, on the other, it’s a psychological study of a creature of power during and after his seizure by ransom-hunters, and the effects of the kidnap on those close and not so close to him.

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PREVIOUS FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL LINE-UPS

The 13th Annual French Film Festival took place August 6-10, 2010, at the Prytania Theatre.
Films screened included:

The 12th Annual French Film Festival took place July 10-12, 2009, at the Prytania Theatre.
Films screened included:

The 11th Annual French Film Festival took place July 11-13, 2008 at the Prytania Theatre.
Films screened included:

NOFS thanks the Consulat General de France a la Nouvelle-Orleans for their generous ongoing support.