"The French Connection:  
A French Film Week in Louisiana"

presented by

The Centenary Film Society
of
Centenary College of Louisiana
Friday, March 18 to Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Robinson Film Center
617 Texas Street
Shreveport, Louisiana


The Centenary College Film Society invites everyone to join us in celebrating Louisiana's unique connection to France and Francophone culture during "French Film Week."  


Our series of films includes a musical romance (Chansons D'Amour/Songs of Love); a Hitchcockian thriller (Roman de Gare/Crossed Tracks); two animated family-friendly films (Azur et Asmar/Azur and Asmar and Un Village Au Panic/A Town Called Panic);  and two dramas which explore France's complicated past during World War II (Un Secret/A Secret) as well as its multi-cultural present (35 Rhums/35 Shots of Rum).   


On Friday evening, March 18, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm
at the Robinson Film Center there will be a wine and cheese reception  to kick off “French Film Week,”
with brief remarks by Joseph Dunn, Audiovisual
and Artistic Attaché at the French Consulate in New Orleans, and Dana Kress, Professor of French
 at Centenary College and recipient of the 2011 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities
 “Humanist of the Year” award.  


Admission to the reception is $10 (at the door) and a variety of French wines will be available at a cash bar.    
  
 
All films in the “French Film Week” are open to the public at regular Robinson Film Center admission prices.

For further information, go to www.robinsonfilmcenter.org. 


For further information about this series, contact Jefferson Hendricks, Faculty Advisor, Centenary College Film Society (jhendric at centenary dot edu)
or Anna Medica, Student President (amedica at centenary dot edu)


CFS Logo

Screening times:
(click on film titles for further information)


Friday, March 18:    
3:00     Un Secret/A Secret
5:15     Roman de Gare/Crossed Tracks
6:00 - 7:30 pm       Reception (Robinson Film Center 2nd floor)  
7:45     Les Chansons D'Amour/Love Songs


Saturday, March 19:  
1:00     Azur et Azmar   
3:15     Panique Au Village/A Town Called Panic
5:15     35 Rhums/35 Shots of Rum
7:30     Roman de Gare/Crossed Tracks
9:45     Les Chansons D'Amour/Love Songs


Sunday, March 20:  
1:00      Azur et Azmar   
3:15     Panique Au Village/A Town Called Panic
5:30     Un Secret/A Secret
7:45     35 Rhums/35 Shots of Rum


Monday, March 21: 
5:15:    Roman de Gare/Crossed Tracks
7:30     Les Chansons D'Amour/Love Songs


Tuesday, March 22:
5:15:    Un Secret/A Secret
7:30     35 Rhums/35 Shots of Rum


Wednesday, March 23:
5:15     Azur et Azmar   
7:30     Panique Au Village/A Town Called Panic


Thursday, March 24:
5:15    Les Chansons D'Amour/Love Songs
7:30   Un Secret/A Secret
 

About Centenary College of Louisiana:
Centenary College is a private, four-year arts and sciences college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Founded in 1825, it is the oldest chartered liberal arts college west of the Mississippi River and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Centenary is one of 16 colleges and universities constituting the Associated Colleges of the South and has been recognized as “One of the Best 371 Colleges” by the Princeton Review and one of “America’s Best Colleges” and one of “America’s Best Private Colleges” by Forbes.com. In 2008 Centenary College celebrated 100 years in Shreveport and Bossier City.
 



About the Robinson Film Center:
The Robinson Film Center is a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit arts organization located in Shreveport, Louisiana.   Its mission is to provide a venue for independent, international, and classic cinema while serving as a resource for film production and media education. In addition to daily film programming, the Robinson Film Center offers film and media production classes for all ages and provides a variety of resources and facilities to the region’s growing film industry.




Co-sponsors for this event:
The French program at Centenary College;  Les Éditions Tintamarre of Centenary College; and the Consulate General of France in New Orleans.  

This “French Film Week” is part of a larger series of French films shown by the Centenary Film Society at the Robinson Film Center during the academic year of 2010-2011 and “The French Connection: A French Film Week in Louisiana” is presented also as part of The Tournées Festival of the French-American Cultural Exchange and generously supported by the Florence Gould Foundation, the Grand Marnier Foundation, and highbrow entertainment.


 







Love Songs

Les Chansons D'Amour   (Love Songs)

France, 2008.  Dir.  Christophe Honoré.  Cast:  Louis Garrel , Ludivine Sagnier, Clotilde Hesme, Chiara Mastroianni.   100 minutes.  In French with English subtitles.  Unrated.   
 
Les Chansons D'Amour (Love Songs) is a modernist musical about love and loss in Paris that centers around a young couple, Ismael and Julie, who in the hope of sparking their stalled relationship, enter a playful yet emotionally laced threesome with Alice. When tragedy strikes, these young Parisians are forced to deal with the fragility of life and love. For Ismael, this means negotiating through the advances of Julie's sister and a young college student – one of which may offer him redemption.
 
“An attractive and talented young cast brings this graceful film alive in all its tenderness and emotion.”  Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

Screenings:
Friday, March 18 @ 7:45 pm
Saturday, March 19 @ 9:45 pm
Monday, March 21 @ 7:30 pm
Thursday, March 24 @ 5:15 pm












  Roman de Gare
Roman de Gare  (Crossed Tracks)  
 
France, 2008.  Dir.  Claude Lelouch.     Cast:  Fanny Ardant, Dominique Pinion.  103 minutes.   In French with English subtitles.   Rated:  R.  
 
Best-selling author Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant)  is researching unlikely places to find characters for her next bestseller. As luck would have it, a serial killer with a penchant for magic tricks has just escaped from a high-security prison…providing the perfect source material for an intricately plotted, Hitchcockian-like mystery.  Deceptively layered and intriguingly misleading, Roman de Gare is an homage to the French genre of the same name, a genre that refers to popular, easy-to-read novels.  
 
“Roman De Gare, a thriller by Claude Lelouch, features murder, duplicity, romance and revenge along with enough red herrings and plot reversals to intrigue suspense fans. The result is infectiously enjoyable.”  Richard James Havis,  Hollywood Reporter

Screenings:  
Friday, March 18 @ 5:15 pm
Saturday, March 19 @ 7:30 pm
Monday, March 21 @ 5:15 pm
Azur and Asmar
Asur et Asmar   (Asur and Asmar)  


France/Belgium, 2007.  Dir.  Michel Ocelot.  Voices:  Cyril Mourali,  Rayan Mahjoub,  Karim M’Ribia.  90 minutes.  In French and Arabic with English subtitles.  Rated PG, but appropriate for all ages.     
 
Michel Ocelot, best known for 1998’s Kirikou and the Sorceress, has proven himself to be one of the most gifted animators working in film today; his stories, though made for children, easily appeal to adults as well. Combining cut-out and CGI animation, Ocelot’s fourth animated feature tells the story of two boys raised as brothers. Blonde, blue-eyed, white skinned Azur and black-haired, brown-eyed, dark-skinned Asmar are lovingly cared for by Asmar's gentle mother, who tells them magical stories of her faraway homeland and of the beautiful, imprisoned Fairy Djinn waiting to be set free. Time passes, and one day Azur's father, the master of the house, provokes a brutal separation. Azur is sent away to study, while Asmar and his mother are driven out, homeless and penniless.

Years later, as a young adult, Azur remains haunted by memories of the sunny land of his nanny, and sets sail south across the high seas to find the country of his dreams. Arriving as an immigrant in a strange land, Azur is rejected by everyone he meets on account of his "unlucky" blue eyes, until finally he resolves never to open those eyes again. The once-beautiful child clad in gold is reduced to a blind beggar. Yet, blind though he is, little by little and step by step, he discovers a beautiful and mysterious country. Meanwhile, back in her homeland, Azur's nanny has become a wealthy merchant and Asmar has grown into a dashing horseman. Reunited but now as adversaries, the two brothers set off on a dangerous quest to find and free the Fairy of the Djinns. Ocelot incorporates visual elements and techniques inspired by medieval illuminations and Arabic art, including mosaics and meticulously rendered architectural details.
 
“Gorgeous and mesmerizing, Azur & Asmar never stops delighting with its ornamental detail, range of color, and exotic story.”  Tom Keogh, Seattle Times
 
Screenings:  
Saturday, March 19 @ 1:00 pm
Sunday, March 20@ 1:00 pm
Wednesday, March 23 @ 5:15 pm











 Panique au Village
Panique au Village   (A Town Called Panic)  
 
Belgium/Luxembourg/France, 2009.  Dirs.  Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar.   Voices:  Stéphane Aubier, Jeanne Balibar.   75 minutes.   Unrated, but appropriate for all ages. 
 
The giddy, chaotic pace in Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s first feature, a marvelous fantasia made using meticulously detailed stopmotion animation and a cast of 1,500 plastic-toy figures, never lets up for a second. Gleefully defying all logic, A Town Called Panic finds its heroes, Horse, Cowboy, and Indian, living together harmoniously, with Horse partial to taking long, soapy hot showers. After a mistake involving an onlin order of 50 million bricks, the trio travels to the center of the Earth, where they battle an evil giant-robot penguin and find a mysterious underwater universe. During their far-flung adventures, incurable romantic Horse tries to impress an orange-maned mare, Madame Longrée, the town’s devoted music teacher.  Seemingly inspired by the manic energy of the Marx brothers and old Warner Bros. cartoons, A Town Called Panic celebrates the playful, nonstop anarchy of childhood imagination. 

"Like a very lo-fi Toy Story with the vibe of a live-action Terry Gilliam cartoon and the addled craziness of SpongeBob SquarePants; it's funny for adults and children alike in a refreshing, barking mad sort of way."  Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Screenings:
Saturday, March 19 @ 3:15
Sunday, March 20 @ 3:15
Wednesday, March 23 @ 7:30

 








     Un Secret
Un Secret   (A Secret)  

France, 2008.  Dir. Claude Miller.  Cast:  Cécile de France, Ludivine Sagnier, Julie Depardieu, Mathieu Amalric.  110 minutes.  In French with English subtitles.  Unrated.  
 
Un Secret  follows the saga of a French family in post-World War II Paris. François, a solitary, imaginative child, invents for himself a brother as well as the story of his parents` past. But on his fifteenth birthday, he discovers a dark family secret that ties his family`s history to the Holocaust and shatters his illusions forever. Adapted from Philippe Grimbert`s celebrated truth-inspired best-selling novel, Memory.  
 
“Both a gripping mystery and an ever-timely reminder of the terrible power of repression and silence.”  Ken Fox, TV Guide
 
Screenings:
Friday, March 18 @ 3:00 pm
Sunday, March 20 @ 5:30 pm
Tuesday, March 22 @ 5:15 pm
Thursday, March 24@ 7:30 pm
35 Shots of Rum
35 Rhums    (35 Shots of Rum)  


France, 2008.  Dir. Claire Denis.  Cast:  Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Nicole Dogué, Grégoire Colin.  100 minutes.  In French with English subtitles.  Unrated.  
 
A quiet yet beautiful story set in Paris's 18th arrondissement between a widowed father, Lionel, and his university-student daughter, Joséphine, 35 Shots of Rum is director Claire Denis’s warmest, most radiant work.   Honoring the father and daughter's extreme closeness while suggesting its potential for suffocation,  35 Shots of Rum reveals the inevitable and necessary pain of children leaving home to start their own lives.   
 
“35 Shots of Rum is visual poetry, but poetry that examines the human condition with insight and illumination.” Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
Screenings:  
Saturday, March 19 @ 5:15 pm
Sunday, March 20 @ 7:45 pm
Tuesday, March 22 @ 7:30 pm