National French Week 2009

This year we will be organizing a Movie Festival with movies shown at the Majestic, free of charge for the public, and shown over a month.  All films will start at 7:00 p.m.

The first film, Azur and Asmar by Michel Ocelot will be shown on October 26th.
Michel Ocelot, best known for 1998’s Kirikou and the Sorceress, has proven himself to be one of the most gifted fabulists working in film today; his animated 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, the white, blue-eyed prince Azur, and the dark-skinned Asmar, both of whom are being raised by Asmar’s mother. Separated by Azur’s father, the boys meet up again several years later in an unidentified Arab country—where Azur’s blue eyes terrify the locals, leading him to feign blindness—in order to free a magical fairy. Deftly yet subtly addressing racism, intolerance, and superstition, Azur and Asmar also dazzles with its sheer beauty: Ocelot incorporates visual elements and techniques inspired by medieval illuminations and Arabic art, including mosaics and meticulously rendered architectural details. As a primer on cultural understanding, few animated films compare with Azur and Asmar, either in storytelling method or visual beauty.

The second film, Roman de Gare by Claude Lelouch will be shown on  November 2nd.
Judith Ralitzer is a successful crime novelist in search of inspiration for her next bestseller. The mysterious disappearance of a university professor coincides with the escape from prison of a notorious serial killer known as the Magician. Huguette, a hairdresser in a swanky Parisian salon, finds herself abandoned on the side of a motorway by her fiancé. Pierre, a passer-by, offers to help her and she accepts, insisting that he pretend to be her future husband when she goes to visit her parents. Is there anything to link these apparently unconnected events...? Pierre turns out to be Judith's ghost-writer. For the next novel he gets inspiration from Huguette's life and the Magician's story. He decides that the book will be published under his own name this time. Furious at first, Judith finally accepts and offers to help in getting it published. Pierre quickly understands that she has a sinister plot in mind to get rid of him. He pulls a few tricks of his own and catches her at her own game. 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.

The third film, A secret by Claude Miller will be shown on November 9th.
A Secret follows the life of a Jewish family in post-World War II Paris. François, the son of Maxime and Tania, is a solitary and imaginative child who invents for himself a brother and the story of his parents’ past. One day, he discovers a dark family secret that shatters his life forever: before the war and well before François’s birth, his father Maxime was married to Hannah with whom he had a son. At a wedding Maxime met Tania, a young, athletic and beautiful swimmer. He felt madly in love but decided to remain faithful to Hannah. When the Nazis invaded France, their Jewish families and friends were deeply divided on what action to take and how they should live their religion and cultural heritage as Jews. Maxime decided to move his family to the free zone and left ahead of them. On her way with her son to meet Maxime, Hannah made a decision that would change her life and that of her family forever, leaving both Maxime and Tania to make difficult choices to survive the war. With the birth of François, the pair started a new family in post-war France, hoping that the existence of Hannah and her son would remain a secret. When François discovers the truth, the family will be forced to revisit their difficult past.