Cork French Film Festival 2014 by Peter Beatty

th CORK 5 2

L A V I T S E F M L I F H C N FRE 4 1 0 2 H C R A M 2 -9 nd

PRESENTS...

THE SOUND OF FRENCH CINEMA

filmfestival.com

www.corkfrench

PAGE /

S E I R I U Q N E / S G N I K BOO INFORMATION:

BALLYMALOE

FESTIVAL OFFICE Phone : 021 4310677 culture@alliancefrancaisecork.com www.corkfrenchfilmfestival.com Festival brochures and general information GATE CINEMA On North Main street Box Office: 021 4279595 www.corkcinemas.com Evening tickets (after 6pm) €9.50/€8.50 ‘conc’ Daytime screenings (before 6pm) €6.50/€6 ‘conc’ Festival membership included in the ticket

’S NT

EVENTS: ST.

ENGLISH MARKET (Princes street, Cork)

IC ATR ST P TH M

AIN

ST.

. ST

VA N

ST.

LLI

AIN

’S Q

O’ SU

UA Y

ST.

All Event Bookings: Festival Office: 021 4310677 or festival website: www.corkfrenchfilmfestival.com or ProMusica, Oliver Plunkett Street, Cork RIVER LEE HOTEL Western Road Bookings: Paula Cogan 021 4937712 or paula_cogan@doylecollection.com

ENGLISH MARKET

ST.

NOR

PRIN ST.

TLE

THE GATE

CIT - CORK SCHOOL OF MUSIC STACK THEATRE (Union Quay, Cork)

RIVER LEE

All venues: telephone/credit card bookings HOTEL will be subject to handling charge & UCC Concessions available to senior citizens, students and unwaged All venues have disabled access to all public areas SCHOOL SCREENINGS GATE CINEMA Comme Une Image (Look At Me) De Battre Mon Coeur S’est Arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) Monday 3rd to Thursday 6th March at 11am For education packs see page 39 For all group bookings in the Gate e-mail: corkcinemas@eircom.net All bookings must be confirmed in writing by email, with contact details attached. EARLY BOOKING RECOMMENDED

STACK THEATRE T.

S K’S

CAS

ST. FIN BARRE’S CATHEDRAL (Bishop Street, Cork)

PAU L

BALLYMALOE RESTAURANT & THE GRAIN STORE (Shanagarry, County Cork)

ST. FIN BARRE’S CATHEDRAL

ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE DE CORK

PATRON OF THE 25 CORK FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL th

Nora Callanan President, the Board, and Festival Team at Alliance Franรงaise de Cork are deeply honoured that His Excellency, Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland is Patron of the 25TH CORK FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL

His Excellency Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland

PAGE /

LORD MAYOR’S WELCOME TO THE 25th CORK FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL Congratulations to Cork French Film Festival celebrating 25 years of bringing the best of French cinema to Cork. Cork French Film Festival opens the Festival season each year and is one of the first major festivals in Cork’s busy cultural calendar, attracting local, national and international audiences. I would like to acknowledge the excellent work of Nora Callanan President, the Festival Curator, festival team and volunteers, for bringing to Cork cinematic events of the highest standard as well as a host of film personalities from France and other European countries. I also wish to commend the Alliance Française de Cork for its commitment to the Festival, and for the outstanding work it does in promoting the French language and culture as well as nurturing FrancoIrish bonds in our City. Finally, I am delighted to welcome this year’s Cork French Film Festival guests, artists, film-makers and visitors coming to Cork to participate in this exciting quarter century edition!

French Film Festival auquel je souhaite un très grand succès.

Je tiens à ce que le Conseil Municipal de la Ville continue cette collaboration étroite avec le Cork

Cllr. Catherine Clancy Lord Mayor of Cork

SPECIAL GUEST: ROSALIE VARDA-DEMY ‘J’étais venue avec Agnès Varda en 2011 pour une rétrospective de ses films et une exposition de ses photographies dans la Wandesford Quay Gallery. Aujourd’hui je suis heureuse de revenir présenter une intégrale Jacques Demy pour la 25ème édition du Festival. De beaux moments de cinéma en perspective pour un public chaleureux et passionné!’ Rosalie Varda-Demy Février 2014

PAGE /

Nora Callanan Festival Director

Paul Callanan Festival Curator

Vytenė Laučytė Festival Manager

Susanna Fabris Festival Coordinator

INTRODUCTION Alliance Française de Cork is proud to roll out the red carpet for the 25th Cork French Film Festival, marking the quarter century of this belle aventure... These past 25 years have surely been a magical journey, avec des moments extraordinaires et des souvenirs inoubliables, en compagnie de Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Claude Carrière, Claudie Ossard, Christophe Lambert, Pierre Etaix, Agnès Varda and many more… who have over these many years captivated Cork audiences.

and Stack Theatre, and will give a masterclass at UCC O’Riada Hall. We welcome back the talented Cork composer Irene Buckley, with a specially commissioned live–score for Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher, performed by special guest organist James McVinnie, who has collaborated with composers such as Philip Glass, and performed at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton while organist at Westminster Abbey.

For this anniversary edition, we are deeply honoured to have His Excellency Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, as Patron. While Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, his visionary influence was central to the development of the film industry in Ireland. President Higgins is a vital presence on Ireland’s cultural landscape as a distinguished poet and academic, and it is an immense privilege that he should accord the festival his patronage.

The festival will be officially launched by Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Catherine Clancy and Rosalie Varda-Demy, Artistic Director of Ciné-Tamaris, Paris, and daughter of the late Jacques Demy.

To celebrate this special anniversary edition, Paul Callanan, Festival Curator, has prepared a gloriously vibrant programme around a musical leitmotif celebrating the Art of the Soundtrack with superb screenings, ciné-concerts, education programme, masterclasses, conferences, Q&As, competitions... and a man with an accordion! This anniversary edition invites you into the cinematic world of Jacques Demy with a comprehensive retrospective, all splendidly restored on new digital prints. Among our guests this year, we are delighted to welcome to Cork Neil Brand, world-renowned silent film pianist and BBC presenter, to perform two unmissable ciné-concerts at the English Market

The sound of French Cinema will echo again in May, when we present the legendary Michel Legrand in Concert in Cork; check our website for more details. We express our deep gratitude and appreciation to the Arts Council, Cork City Council, Ireland Fund of France, Ciné-Tamaris, Institut Français, Peugeot, Johnson&Perrott, and all our sponsors and venues. An enormous thanks to our outstanding and dedicated festival team, all our wonderful volunteers, and all who have helped to make this festival happen! Mille mercis, to you, our ever loyal public, for the enormous support you have given the Cork French Film Festival in its 25 year-journey. Laissez-vous emporter par la musique du 7ème art! Nora Callanan, Festival Director PAGE /

FEATURES

OPENING FILM THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (Les Parapluies De Cherbourg) 19.00 Sunday 2rd March / GATE / Presented by Rosalie Varda-Demy A work that belongs in the pantheon, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a masterpiece, to be seen and savoured many times. Art-designed from stem to stern (watch the wallpaper!), choreographed with MGM musicals in mind, and awash in Michel Legrand’s stirring, melodic score, Umbrellas is exuberant, enchanting, and unbearably poignant - but it is also dark, modern and acute about both family and class relations. France 1964 | 90 min | Digital Restoration Winner of Palme d’Or, Cannes 1964 Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel Language: French with English subtitles PAGE /

Catherine Deneuve plays the yearning Geneviève, who falls in love with handsome auto mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), to the despair of her ambitious, widowed mother (Anne Vernon). When Guy is drafted for service in the Algerian war, the film turns into a rhapsody of absence, longing, and loss. For all the apparent sugar and spice of Legrand’s memorable score and for all the candycoloured wallpaper, Demy’s social observation in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg couldn’t be more clear-eyed. CFFF is delighted to welcome special guest Rosalie Varda-Demy, daughter of Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda, to present this screening.

CLOSING FILM ATTILA MARCEL – IRISH PREMIERE

21.00 Sunday 9th March / GATE / Presented by Paul Callanan, Festival Curator Paul lives in a Paris apartment with his aunts, two old aristocrats who have raised him since he was two and who dream of seeing him become a virtuoso pianist. His life is made up of the same daily routine, between the grand piano in the living room and his aunts’ dance class where he works as their accompanist. Cut off from the outside world, Paul has aged without ever having lived... Until the day he meets Madame Proust, a new-age eccentric from the fourth floor. A sip of mysterious tea, a Madeleine cookie, a few notes of evocative music, and her clients, including Paul, are sent on a trip reliving their most deeply suppressed memories. With her, Paul will uncover his past and find the key to live his life at last.

After the success of his animation features (The Triplets Of Belleville), Sylvain Chomet’s first live action film is a smooth transition and as esoteric and whimsically poetic as all his previous work. A modern fairytale taking its inspiration from a song written by Chomet for his earlier film Triplets, with nods to his beloved Jacques Tati and Jacques Demy. France 2013 | 103 min Director: Sylvain Chomet Cast: Guillaume Gouix, Anne Le Ny, Bernadette Lafont, Helene Vincent Language: French with English subtitles

PAGE /

LE MILLION

14.00 Monday 3rd March / GATE In 1929-30, when Hollywood was stymied by the arrival of talkies, a Frenchman named René Clair set about reinventing the movies for the world of sound. An impoverished artist discovers he has purchased a winning lottery ticket at the very moment his creditors come to collect. The only problem is, the ticket is in the pocket of his coat... which he left at his girlfriend’s apartment... who gave the coat to a man hiding from the police... who sells the coat to an opera singer who uses it during a performance. By turns charming and inventive, René Clair’s lyrical comedy masterpiece had a profound impact on not only the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin, but on the American musical as a whole.

BETTY BLUE 37°2 Le Matin

France 1931 | 81 min | B&W Director: René Clair Cast: Annabella, René Lefèvre, Jean-Louis Allibert, Paul Ollivier, Constantin Siroesco Language: French with English subtitles

21.00 Monday 3rd March / GATE A landmark in French cinema, Betty Blue is an uninhibited and tumultuous story of an obsessive relationship that descends into madness. Laid-back handyman Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) spends his time doing odd jobs on beach-front chalets making chilli and harbouring dreams of becoming a writer. His life is turned upside down with the arrival of the beautiful but volatile Betty. They begin a romance fuelled by intense passion but as Betty turns increasingly violent and self-destructive, Zorg tries desperately to halt her slide into insanity. Jean-Jacques Beineix’s odyssey of obsession, volatile passion and neurotic lust is one of the great cult films of the 1980s. The lush cinematography by JeanFrancois Robin is enhanced by Gabriel Yared’s beguiling score and an indelible signature melody.

PAGE /

France 1986 | 185 min (Director’s Cut) | Cert 18 Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix Cast: Jean-Hugues Anglade, Béatrice Dalle, Gérard Darmon, Consuelo de Havilland, Clémentine Célarié, Vincent Lindon Language: French with English subtitles

UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME

FEATURES

14.00 Tuesday 4th March / GATE / Presented by Julia Fabry (Ciné-Tamaris) A chance encounter leads to a tentative romance in Claude Lelouch’s Academy Award winning Un homme et une femme, a sublime exploration of a love between two people with enough emotional baggage and personal demons to inhibit their chances of happiness. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis Duroc, a racing car driver, who by chance meets Anne Gauthier (Anouk Aimée) at the boarding school both of their children attend, and offers her a ride back to Paris. They are each single parents coping with the tragic deaths of their spouses, although in their initial meeting, Anne gives the impression that her husband (Pierre Barouh) - a movie stunt man - is still very much alive. The film features one of the finest soundtracks of the 1960s by composer Francis Lai, bringing together French pop, jazz, and Brazilian bossa nova.

France 1966 | 102 min | Cert PG Director: Claude Lelouch Cast: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Pierre Barouh, Valérie Lagrange Language: French with English subtitles

JACQUOT DE NANTES

16.15 Tuesday 4th March / GATE / Presented by Rosalie Varda-Demy Inspired by the stories and memories of her husband Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda creates an affecting and enlightening portrait of the artist as a young boy, exploring the inspiration for Demy’s films in the everyday world of his Nantes upbringing. Filming in the places of Jacquot’s youth - his father’s garage and the family kitchen where life was indeed all singing, if not all dancing; the rural home where Demy and his brother spent the war years - Varda beautifully employed Nantes residents as her non-professional actors. Varda’s conceit is to have everything that feeds Jacquot’s creative world - the puppet shows, the movie posters, Snow White (on whom he has a crush), a flamboyant aunt from Rio - in the saturated colour of his own later movies, clips from which are relevantly interspersed here. But ironically, it is the black-and-white in which Varda so richly and skillfully evokes French life in the forties that feeds our own insatiable cinephilia.

France 1991 | 118 min Director: Agnès Varda Cast: Philippe Maron, Edouard Joubeaud, Laurent Monnier, Brigitte De Villepoix Language: English and French with subtitles

PAGE /

THE BIG BLUE Le Grand Bleu

FEATURES

21.00 Tuesday 4th March / GATE Inspired by the life of the famous deep-sea free diver Jacques Mayol, the film recounts the rivalry between the champion and his greatest challenger, Enzo Molinari. Enzo and Jacques are childhood friends who always shared a love of diving. After Jacques’ father dies in a diving accident, the two lose contact. Now an adult, Enzo sends for Jacques, who is living in the Peruvian Andes, and insists that he competes for the world title. The competition mounts when Jacques’ girlfriend Jonana (Rosanna Arquette) arrives from New York and pleads for the risk-taking to stop. Events take an unexpected turn, leading to a mysterious conclusion. Luc Besson’s marvellously filmed underwater epic features a classic 80’s synthesized score by Eric Serra. The pair formed an enduring partnership with the composer scoring all of Besson’s best known features (Subway, Nikita, Léon, The Fifth Element).

France 1988 | 168 min Director: Lud Besson Cast: Rosanna Arquette, Jean-Marc Barr, Jean Reno Language: English and French with subtitles

AMÉLIE

18.30 Wednesday 5th March / GATE A film perhaps as equally well known for its soundtrack as it is for its alluring cinematography and quirky direction. Amélie (Tautou) loves life’s small pleasures: breaking the hard crust of her crème brulée with a spoon, plunging her hand in a bag of grains at the greengrocer, and skimming stones on the Canal Saint Martin. After returning a long-lost childhood treasure to a former occupant of her apartment, she sets out on a mission to anonymously bring magic into the lives of others. The comic fable swaggers with a Gallic charm complemented wonderfully by Yann Tiersen’s warmly nostalgic and whimsical accordion score.

France 2001 | 120 min Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Cast: Audrey Tautou, Dominique Pinon, Jamel Debbouze, Mathieu Kassovitz and Rufus Language: French with English subtitles PAGE /

NENETTE ET BONI

21.00 Wednesday 5th March / GATE / Presented by Jonathan Broda (Eicar, Paris) Teenage siblings Nenette and Boni were raised apart as a result of their parents’ ugly divorce. Working as a pizza chef, Boni spends most of his days immersed in sexual fantasies about the baker’s wife and his nights hanging out with local hoods. He is enraged when his younger sister suddenly turns up having run away from boarding school and seven months pregnant. A tender portrait of two damaged lives shot with an intimacy of expression that makes it one of Claire Denis’ most sensitive and humane films. Tindersticks have enjoyed a long-standing collaboration with Denis, scoring six of her ten features, including the last five. Their music blends perfectly with her visual style that likes to breathe and her patient way of framing her subjects.

SAME OLD SONG On Connaît La Chanson

France 1996 | 100 min | Cert 15 Director: Claire Denis Cast: Grégoire Colin, Alice Houri, Jacques Nolot, Vincent Gallo Language: French with English subtitles

14.00 Thursday 6th March / GATE / Presented by Jonathan Broda (Eicar, Paris) Winner of seven César Awards, Same Old Song is a charming, romantic musical comedy directed by Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour). The film revolves around two Parisian sisters caught in a web of dysfunctional relationships and romantic confusion. In a tribute to Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective), Resnais has his characters lip-sync to fragments of musical recordings from Josephine Baker, Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf, Johnny Halliday and contemporary pop songs, allowing them to express their innermost thoughts and feelings. Set against the glittering Paris skyline, Same Old Song is a captivating and playful round-robin game of romance.

PAGE /

France, UK, Switzerland, Italy 1997 | 120 min Director: Alain Resnais Cast: Agnes Jaoui, Pierre Arditi, Sabine Azema, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Jane Birkin Language: French with English subtitles

THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED De Battre Mon Coeur S’est Arrêté

FEATURES

21.00 Thursday 6th March / GATE / Presented by Jonathan Broda (Eicar, Paris) Tom (Romain Duris) is destined to follow in his father’s footsteps in the sleazy and sometimes brutal world of the real estate business. But a chance encounter leads him to believe that he can become, like his mother, a concert pianist. In earnest, he starts preparing for the audition with a virtuoso Chinese pianist. She doesn’t speak a word of French, so music is their only exchange. But pressures from the ugly world of his day job soon become more than he can handle. Alexandre Desplat’s psychological score underpins a standout performance by Romain Duris making this one of the most memorable and striking character studies in recent French cinema.

France 2005 | 107 min Director: Jacques Audiard Cast: Romain Duris, Niels Arestrup, Aure Atika, Emmanuelle Devos Language: French with English subtitles

ANNA

14.00 Friday 7th March / GATE The first colour broadcast to appear on French television, Anna is an ultra-chic pop art musical comedy written specifically for screen siren Anna Karina, featuring a soundtrack of tunes by legendary French composer Serge Gainsbourg, who also stars. The starry-eyed storyline follows a man obsessively searching for the woman he sees in a photograph, though little does he know she’s hiding behind horn-rimmed glasses in the same advertising agency where he works. A truly charming time capsule of late 60s French savoir faire, Anna is a deeply satisfying sojourn into the psychedelic mod-pop style of musical, and a heartfelt valentine to its titular lady.

France 1967 | 87 min Director: Pierre Koralnik Cast: Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, Marianne Faithfull, Serge Gainsbourg Language: French with English subtitles

PAGE /

FEATURES 8 WOMEN

16.15 Friday 7th March / GATE Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Fanny Ardant star in François Ozon’s highly stylised murder mystery musical set in the 1950’s. A wealthy industrialist is found murdered in his home while his family gathers for Christmas. The house is isolated in a snow storm and the phone lines have been cut. Eight women are his potential murderers: his calculating wife, his two mischievous daughters, his meddling mother-in-law, his neurotic sister-in-law, his sexy sister, the faithful family cook and the sultry new maid. One of them is guilty and each has a motive. Which one is it? France 2001 | 103 min | Cert 15 Director: Francois Ozon Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Beart, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert Language: French with English subtitles

THE NIGHT IS YOUNG Mauvais Sang

21.00 Friday 7th March / GATE / Presented by Jonathan Broda (Eicar, Paris) A young street punk who runs away from home inadvertently ends up helping two elderly criminals in a plot to steal a virus from a futuristic lab. Along the way he falls head over heels in love with Anna, the younger lover of one of the criminals, played by a luminous Juliet Binoche. The film is filled with astounding sequences including the infamous scene in which our hero, realising his love for the mysterious Anna, runs down the street in a largely uninterrupted single tracking shot, skipping, jumping and cartwheeling to the sound of Bowie’s Modern Love. France 1986 | 110 min | Cert 18 Director: Leos Carax Cast: Michel Piccoli, Juliette Binoche, Denis Lavant, Julie Delpy Language: French with English subtitles PAGE /

ELECTROMA

16.15 Saturday 8th March / GATE Daft Punk’s Electroma is an odyssey of two robots who journey across a mythical American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become human. Their symbolic quest, which takes them from endless two lane highways to small idyllic towns to the arid desert, finds Daft Punk once again resisting conformity and developing new ways to highlight their inventive vision. With its breathtaking cinematography, innovative filming techniques, and above all its underlying search for humanity within a dystopian environment, Daft Punk have delivered a film that finds a common thread with their previous work while exploring new horizons as directors of their first feature film.

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP

France USA 2006 | 94 min | Cert 15 Director: Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo Cast: Peter Hurteau, Michael Reich, Helena Stoddard Perlo Vita, Marie Sabouret, Robert Hossein Language: English

21.00 Saturday 8th March / GATE Stephane (Gael García Bernal) works for a calendar production company and makes up for the monotony in his life through his vivid dreams. When he falls in love with his next-door neighbour, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), he realises that he will have to try to wake himself up and take control of his imagination if he wants to capture his dream girl. Filmmakers such as Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) come from a singular pedigree - sheer delight comes in the form of zany contraptions, off-the-wall humour, quirky character interactions and delirious invention. Throughout are symbols from his music video work such as stop frame animation, childhood trauma, toys and the White Stripes, but here Gondry reveals a little more of himself - perhaps an autobiographical account close to his own past. PAGE /

France/Italy 2006 | 95 min | Cert 15 Director: Michel Gondry Cast: Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Monique Hennessy, Jean Desailly Language: English and French

FANTASTIC PLANET La Planète Sauvage

FEATURES

16.15 Sunday 9th March / GATE René Laloux’s mesmerising psychedelic sci-fi is a landmark of European animation. Based on Stefan Wul’s novel Oms en série, Laloux’s breathtaking vision immediately drew comparisons to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. La Planète Sauvage tells the story of “Oms”, human-like creatures, kept as domesticated pets by an alien race of blue giants called “Draags”. The story takes place on the Draags’ planet where an Om called Terr manages to escape enslavement and begins to organise an Om revolt. The imagination invested in the surreal creatures, music and sound design, and eerie landscapes, is immense and unforgettable. The direction of René Laloux, the incredible art of Roland Topor, and Alain Goraguer’s brilliant complementary score (much sampled by the hip-hop community) all combine to make La Planète Sauvage a mind-altering experience.

France/ Czechoslovakia 1973 | 72 min | Cert PG Director: René Laloux Language: French with English subtitles

PAGE /

E V I T C E P S O R RET

S E U Q JAC Y M E D “To love cinema is to love Jacques Demy” Agnès Varda

PAGE /

Jacques Demy with Jeanne Moreau, on the set of La Baie des Anges (1962)

One of the most gifted filmmakers to emerge during the French New Wave, Jacques Demy (1931–1990) created a fascinating body of work, characterised by its bittersweet sensibility. Masterfully choreographed camera movements and a penchant for colourful decorative elegance are trademarks of Demy’s cinematic style. At the center of many of his films is music: Demy’s collaborations with composer Michel Legrand give another distinctive quality to his melancholic tales of love. From the spectacular opening glissando of Bay of Angels, in which the electrifying score accompanies a tracking shot along the French Riviera, to the sung-through recitative of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or the expressive dance numbers of The Young Girls of Rochefort, Demy’s cinema is one of harmony and grace.

His use of location shooting in the towns of Nantes, Cherbourg and Rochefort reveal his love for locale. Demy’s world is steeped in tender emotion, his eye for cinema an extension of his love of life. This comprehensive Demy retrospective includes his early shorts from the fifties and several of his lesser-known works from the seventies and eighties as well as his best-known films, all presented in restored versions. Essential to this series are three films directed by Agnès Varda, made shortly after Demy’s death, in which she offers a privileged perspective on her husband’s aesthetic sensibilities and achievements.

PAGE /

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (OPENING FILM) Les Parapluies De Cherbourg

19.00 Sunday 2nd March / GATE / Presented by Rosalie Varda-Demy Jacques Demy pays loving homage to the Hollywood musical in a sixties-chic paradise of pop art and colour. Catherine Deneuve is the fresh and beautiful 16-year-old Genevieve, pining away in her mother’s umbrella shop. When she falls in love with the charming local auto mechanic, Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), worlds collide. The young couple who, in their innocence, believe that love can overcome all obstacles, face many of them, including Genevieve’s disapproving mother, an unexpected pregnancy, and Guy’s induction into the French Army. Joy and melancholy suffuse every aspect of the film, which explores both the transience of love and the persistence of affection - motifs that Demy would further develop in his follow-up musical, The Young Girls of Rochefort.

France 1964 | 90 min | Digital Restoration Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel Language: French with English subtitles

LOLA

18.30 Monday 3rd March / GATE / Presented by Rosalie Varda-Demy Demy’s ravishing debut film was so masterful that everything he made after looked back in some way to its world and almost mythical characters. A bittersweet love story that pays homage to everyone from Cocteau, Sternberg, Bresson and Ophüls to Gene Kelly. Cabaret singer Lola (Anouk Aimée) is ditched by her sailor boyfriend, but manages to sustain the belief that he will one day return for her and their child. In the exhilarating fairy-tale ending, Lola gets her wish and much, much more. Beautifully shot in black and white this groundbreaking film was described by Demy as a ‘musical without music’. In his third feature and biggest hit, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy settled on life’s disappointments; here at least one major character gets exactly what she wants, and the effect is no less poignant.

PAGE /

France/Italy 1961 | 91 min Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden, Alan Scott Language: French with English subtitles

BAY OF ANGELS La Baie Des Anges

CQ RETROSPECTIVE: JA

UES DEMY

18.30 Tuesday 4th March / GATE / Presented by Rosalie Varda-Demy Compulsive gambler Jeanne Moreau aims her manic schemes and eyes at a naive young bank clerk in this sun-drenched, nicotine-stained ode to the gamblers and losers of the French Riviera. First seen walking proudly along the Monte Carlo boardwalk in the film’s justifiably famous opening, the glamorous but fraying Jackie (Moreau) is more comfortable in the less blinding enclosure of a casino, where a clueless bank clerk soon falls for her. The film is set amongst the whirl of roulette wheels, the constant click of chips, elegance and effortless cool, all framed by the radiant black-and-white camerawork of Jean Rabier and the music of Michel Legrand. Towering above it all in white boas and heavy makeup is Moreau, capable of making even borderline-psychotic addiction look enthralling in a bravura demonstration of star power on the rampage.

France 1962 | 85 min | Digital Restoration Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Claude Mann, Paul Guers Language: French with English subtitles

THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT Les Demoiselles De Rochefort

18.30 Thursday 6th March / GATE / Presented by Julia Fabry (Ciné-Tamaris) The Young Girls of Rochefort stars Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac (Deneuve’s reallife sister) as musically inclined twin sisters Delphine and Solange, whose mother Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux) pines for the memory of her former fiancé, the unfortunately named Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli). The three women, and the men who desire them, cross paths, fail to connect, misunderstand and misconstrue each other, but in the triumphant finale, as in a Handel opera, discover that love is indeed attainable. Demy’s exuberant tribute to Hollywood musicals fills the widescreen frame with sisters in matching bonnets, lovesick sailors in bellbottoms, and Gene Kelly suavely embodying An American in Rochefort. Lush, lovely, light-hearted, afloat on a cloud, The Young Girls of Rochefort is its own Easter parade.

France 1967 | 124 min | Digital Restoration Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Catherine Deneuve, George Chakiris, Françoise Dorléac, Gene Kelly, Jacques Perrin, Michel Piccoli, Danielle Darrieux Language: French with English subtitles PAGE /

MODEL SHOP

18.30 Friday 7th March / GATE / Presented by Julia Fabry (Ciné-Tamaris) As beautiful and moving as any of Demy’s films, Model Shop may finally secure the reputation it so richly deserves in this superlative restoration. Demy updates the fate of Lola (Anouk Aimée), the French prostitute who gave his first feature its name in 1961, who has moved to Los Angeles and works in a “model shop,” where lonely men go to snap photos of beautiful women. Replacing Demy’s original star Harrison Ford, Gary Lockwood (2001: A Space Odyssey) plays a would-be architect who pursues Lola like some holy grail through the City of Angels. Misunderstood or dismissed upon its release, Model Shop was Demy’s only American film. It shows a fine outsider’s sense of LA atmosphere and Aimée is supernal as the lost and longing Lola.

France/US 1969 | 91 min | Digital Restoration Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Anouk Aimée, Gary Lockwood, Alexandra Hay Language: English

A ROOM IN TOWN Une Chambre En Ville

18.30 Saturday 8th March / GATE Demy’s triumphant comeback after a decade working outside France brilliantly refashions the all-sung musical form of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg for darker, more political purposes. Set during the 1955 shipyard strikes in Demy’s hometown of Nantes, Une chambre en ville stars Danielle Darrieux as a widowed former baroness who now must rent a room to a metalworker to make ends meet. Her tenant falls in love with her daughter (Dominique Sanda, wandering the streets naked under a mink coat) but she is married to a neurotic, impotent but successful TV salesman (Michel Piccoli). Demy devises another of his beautiful, telling visual designs (a dark, luxuriant palette of claret and blue) and stages potent sequences of street violence.

PAGE /

France 1982 | 90 min | Digital Restoration Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Dominique Sanda, Danielle Darrieux, Richard Berry, Michel Piccoli Language: French with English subtitles

DONKEY SKIN (FAMILY SCREENING) Peau D’ane

CQ RETROSPECTIVE: JA

UES DEMY

14.00 Sunday 9th March / GATE

A resplendent restoration of one of Demy’s most opulent films, a work that still exerts a powerful hold on French popular culture. Making her third appearance for Demy, Catherine Deneuve plays a double role in this spectacular mounting of Charles Perrault’s (creator of Cinderella) 17th century fairy tale. After his dying queen (Deneuve) makes him swear that he may only remarry a woman as beautiful as she, a widowed king embarks on a search that turns up only one possible candidate: his own daughter. The princess manages to stall the incestuous marriage by making extravagant demands, until she is finally forced to flee disguised under a donkey skin. A dream cast, including Jean Marais as the king and Delphine Seyrig as the princess’ fairy godmother, surrounds the delectable Deneuve, and Demy tosses in some startling anachronisms before supplying a classic happy ending.

France1970 | 90 min | Digital Restoration Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais, Jacques Perrin, Delphine Seyrig, Micheline Presle Language: French with English subtitles

PARKING

18.30 Sunday 9th March / GATE / Presented by Julia Fabry (Ciné-Tamaris) Demy pays homage to Cocteau in this rock ‘n’ roll update of Orphée, a film that has been little seen since its debut. Orpheus (Francis Huster) is a singer-composer who lives with Eurydice (Keiko Ito), a Japanese sculptress, in a château near Paris. When Eurydice is found dead from an overdose, the anguished Orpheus starts receiving strange phone messages from the beyond, and decides he must enter the Underworld (a parking lot) to retrieve his beloved. Reportedly inspired by The Doors (Jim Morrison was a friend of Demy and Varda), Demy’s foray into contemporary pop culture displays many of his hallmarks - a remarkable use of colour (red and green especially), a Michel Legrand score, a mythic/fairy-tale setting, a preoccupation with mortality - and cleverly refashions a beloved work to his own unique aesthetic.

France 1985 | 92 min | Digital Restoration Director: Jacques Demy Cast: Francis Huster, Laurent Malet, Keiko Ito, Gérard Klein, Marie-France Pisier, Jean Marais, Hughes Quester Language: French with English subtitles PAGE /

DEMY SHORTS

JACQUES DEMY’S SHORT FILMS 14.00 Wednesday 5th March / GATE

LE SABOTIER DU VAL DE LOIRE Jacques Demy’s first short evokes the French neorealist tradition of Demy’s mentor Georges Roquier in its finely detailed portrait of a week in the life of a clog-maker in the Loire Valley. None other than Maurice Pialat called Demy’s debut, the chronicle of a week in the life of a sabotier (clog-maker) in the Loire Valley, “the best French film since 1950”. Georges Sadoul said that with Lola “Demy gave the New Wave its neorealism”, and we can see here the roots of Demy’s cinema in the French neorealist approach of his mentor Georges Roquier (Farrebique). This being Demy, it’s no surprise that the film is in many ways about death: the aftermath of WWII, the death of a craft and way of life, the death of the shoemaker’s friend, and the sabotier’s own imminent mortality.

France 1956 | 23 min Director: Jacques Demy Language: French with English subtitles

LE BEL INDIFFERENT Jacques Demy’s first fictional short is a very personal adaptation of the play Jean Cocteau had written for Edith Piaf in the early years of WWII. Demy staked out his territory of love spurned, lost, and regained in his first fiction film. Jeanne Allard stars as a woman obsessed by Emile, her “bel indifférent”, as she awaits him, attuned to every sound that enters her small hotel room; a night of jealousy, rage, forgiveness, and suicide threats ensues.

France 1957 | 29 min Director: Jacques Demy Language: French with English subtitles

PAGE /

CQ RETROSPECTIVE: JA

UES DEMY

ARS A complex, evocative portrait of Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney, the pastor of Ars, whose humble and loving life led to sanctification. Severe on his parishioners, his sermons stern and unforgiving, Vianney felt himself a coward, worthy only of permanent residence in the confessional. The title suggests that the film is about place, and Demy’s eye for wintry land and streetscapes is very fine.

France 1959 | 18 min Director: Jacques Demy Language: French with English subtitles

LA LUXURE (LUST) Demy’s contribution to the omnibus film The Seven Deadly Sins (which also included segments by Godard and Chabrol) is characteristically oriented towards his childhood memories of Nantes, specifically the market where Demy and his friends gathered to smoke. Through a series of free associations, Demy is led from that insignificant sin to the baroque visions of hell in Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights.

France 1961 | 14 min Director: Jacques Demy Language: French with English subtitles

PAGE /

AV SHORTS I HEAR A NEW WORLD: CONTEMPORARY VIDEO ART FROM FRANCE & IRELAND CURATED BY MIKE GLENNON 14.00 Saturday 8th March / GATE

5.46AM

A selection of experimental video art pieces which explore the relationship between music and the moving image. Many of these works are collaborative pieces between filmmakers and composers or sound artists while others are the sole creation of audio-visual artists. Electro-acoustic, electronic, acoustic and found sounds feature strongly as do abstract, surrealist and digitally manipulated imagery.

A selection of different public spaces in Paris, one metre underwater, offering a surrealist and serene view of the city.

INVISIBLE PINK UNICORN CLUB

REGARD FRAIS (FRESH LOOK)

This music video is a sequel of sorts, to a previous video made for Slow Place Like Home (There Go The Lights Again). Continuing a people-less, nocturnal, supernatural theme shot on a Dart ride through Dublin City.

Born in 1954 in Paris, Didier Feldmann produces surrealist animation films and impressionist images based on the precept that film can be a media of pure sensation and emotion without the need for narrative. He takes photographs too. www.videopaper.net

By Jukes Hackett / Slow Place Like Home Ireland | 2013 | 4.48 min

By Olivier Campagne & Vivien Balzi Music by Bruce Tillet France | 5.46am 2011 | 3.45 min

By Didier Feldmann Digital Fresh Air Music : Zoe Keating / One cello x 16 / Coda France | 2013 | 4.47 min

PAGE /

ARE YOU FOR REAL?

AUTO-TRIPTYCH

Mike Glennon is a composer and intermedia artist from Limerick whose work has featured at exhibitions in Ireland, USA, Columbia and Wales. Using a 15 second found footage fragment of television static and inteference, Are You For Real? seeks to locate the common ground between beauty and noise.

Parisian artist Véronique Mouysset’s philosophical reflections and thoughts about the confrontation between cultures brings together image, sound and electro-acoustic music. Auto-triptych is based upon a personal video art piece Autopsy (1993). Phrases such as “identity crisis”, “rise in racism”, “climate of insecurity” and “gender dimension” resonate.

By Mike Glennon Ireland | 2013 | 9.55 min

By Véronique Mouysset Music by Franck Gelibert France | 2011 | 3.35 min

NOTHING HAPPENS LIKE WE IMAGINE

ROTATION OF THE EARTH

Compacted, contracted, kneaded, accelerated, multiplied, concatenated, unleashed, blown up, torn apart, tormented... the ‘slices of life’ knead the human throughout life, love and death.

Composer Irene Buckley and interactive visual sound designer Furry use Foucault’s Pendulum at the Pantheon, Paris as the inspiration for the sound and images behind Rotation of the Earth. The pendulum is a simple mechanical device conceived as proof of planetary rotation.

By Bob Kohn France | 2012 | 2 min

By Furry & Irene Buckley Sound Composition: Irene Buckley Visual Composition: Furry Ireland | 2013 | 5.36 min PAGE /

SHORTS

UNDER TWILIGHT

SILK CHROMA

Baby-sitter, barman, clothes and handcrafts salesman, videotape operator, assistant director, editor, mime, auction sales assistant, journalist, artist and filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Périot creates beauty and/ or destruction with music by Patten.

Silk Chroma is an abstract ambient visual music work, a collaboration between visual music artist Maura McDonnell and composer Linda Buckley. Inspired by the novella Silk by Alessandro Baricco, it uses text as a conceptual framework for the creation of a ‘visual music’ colour presentation with an accompanying electro-acoustic musical composition using synthesized timbres.

By Jean-Gabriel Périot Music by Patten France | 2006 | 5 min

By Maura McDonnell / Linda Buckley / Dermot Furlong Ireland | 2011 | 11.20 min

LYSTEM

IMPRESSIONS DE LA MER

Lystem is a reflection on the digital image, on its immaterial and sterile nature. Étienne de Massy uses a process of accumulation and sets the image to different rhythms and arrangements that build up a narrative. The frame by frame imagery has been assembled to the music of Nicolas Bernier.

De La Mer is an audio-visual composition using a solo piano composition incorporating the harmonic innovations of the French impressionists and an original ink drawing which uses the golden ratio to determine the position of subjects within the picture.

By Étienne de Massy Visuals by Étienne de Massy Music by Nicolas Bernier Canada | 2013 | 4.36 min

By Anthony Wigglesworth Ireland | 2013 | 7.18 min

PAGE /

S E I R A T N E M U DOC THE WORLD OF JACQUES DEMY

16.15 Monday 3rd March / GATE / Presented by Rosalie Varda-Demy Imperative for any Demy fan, this penetrating portrait of the director made by his wife, Agnès Varda, interweaves clips from Demy’s films with insightful and entertaining interviews with many who worked with him, a veritable aristocracy of French cinema. Catherine Deneuve’s fond remembrance centres on the fact that Demy was the first director she ever met; Anouk Aimée speaks about how she now feels indivisible from Lola, the character she embodied in two Demy films. Michel Piccoli relishes telling about the terrifying finale of Une chambre en ville. Michel Legrand, Jean Marais, Dominique Sanda, Danielle Darrieux, Jeanne Moreau, Harrison Ford (the intended star of Demy’s Model Shop), and a dozen more all offer their reminiscences of Demy, and Varda even manages to include footage of her friend Jim Morrison visiting a Demy set.

France 1995 | 91 min Director: Agnès Varda Cast: Anouk Aimée, Richard Berry, Nino Castelnuovo Language: French with English subtitles

EL GUSTO

16.15 Wednesday 5th March / GATE / Presented by Dr. Patrick Crowley A beautiful rhythmic cocktail of Andalusian, Berber, Arabic and Flamenco traditions, chaabi music was the heart and soul of cosmopolitan Algiers in the 1940s. When the war of independence tore apart the peaceful Muslim and Jewish communities that came together to play this joyful, sometimes scandalous music, its greatest practitioners were flung back to France or scattered across an austere and increasingly authoritative Algeria. When filmmaker Safinez Bousbia discovered some old photographs in an antique shop in Algiers, she spent the next several years tracking down a group of friends kept apart for five decades to stage an extraordinary reunion concert. In association with French Department UCC. PAGE /

Ireland 2011 | 88 min Director: Safinez Bousbia Language: French with English subtitles

THE YOUNG GIRLS TURN 25 Les Demoiselles Ont Eu 25 Ans 16.15 Thursday 6th March / GATE / Presented by Julie Fabry (Ciné-Tamaris) A thrilling companion to The Young Girls of Rochefort, Varda’s ebullient documentary revisits that classic on its 25th anniversary. Returning to Demy’s film and its setting, reuniting some of its stars, and considering (in very Demy-like fashion) what changes time has wrought in the meantime, the film is far more than an update. Varda magically intercuts extracts from Rochefort, portions of a home movie she shot on set, material from a “making of” film by Belgian director André Delvaux, scenes of a Demy celebration in Rochefort in which a street was named in his honour, and interviews with town inhabitants, composer Michel Legrand, press attaché Bertrand Tavernier and Catherine Deneuve.

France 1993 | 66 min | Cert 18 Director: Agnès Varda Language: French with English subtitles

GIRL RISING - LORD MAYOR’S SCREENING

11.30 Saturday 8th March / GATE / Presented by Gillian Keating, President, Cork Chamber of Commerce From Academy Award-nominated director Richard E. Robbins, Girl Rising journeys around the globe to witness the strength of the human spirit and the power of education to change the world. Viewers get to know nine unforgettable girls living in the developing world: ordinary girls who confront tremendous challenges and overcome nearly impossible odds to pursue their dreams. Prizewinning authors put the girls’ remarkable stories into words, and renowned actors such as Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchette and Liam Neeson give them voice. Special screening for International Women’s Day proudly sponsored by Intel.

USA 2013 | 101 min Director: Richard E. Robbins Language: English PAGE /

EVENTS

THE RED BALOON, WITH LIVE SCORE BY CHRISTOPHE ROHR Followed By Four Course Dinner With Wine At River Lee Hotel

19.00 / Tuesday 4th March / River Lee Hotel / Price: €25 / person for dinner, wine and screening Albert Lamorisse’s exquisite The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children’s films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world’s harsh realities finally interfere. With its glorious palette and allegorical purity, the Academy Award–winning The Red Balloon has enchanted movie lovers, young and old, for generations. This unique and magical screening with live score by renowned French accordionist Christophe Rohr is followed by fine French dining at the River Lee restaurant.

PAGE /

Bookings: Paula Cogan, River Lee Hotel - 021 4937712 or email paula_cogan@doylecollection.com The Red Balloon France 1956 34 Min Director: Albert Lamorisse Cast: Pascal Lamorisse, Georges Sellier, Vladimir Popov, René Marion

THE SILENT PIANIST SPEAKS WITH NEIL BRAND Silent Film Show And Supper A La Parisienne At The English Market 19.00 / Wednesday 5th March / English Market / Price: €30 After co-starring with Paul Merton in the UK tour of Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns, Neil Brand, the ‘doyen of silent film pianists’ (BBC Radio 4) presents his own critically acclaimed show. The Silent Pianist Speaks left both audiences and critics at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in awe of the great filmmakers of the Silent Era and the magic of the accompanists who breathed life and sound into their work. As well as taking a humourous glance at his own globetrotting 25-year career, Neil Brand investigates how music works with film, invites the audience to score a love scene and culminates by accompanying a clip ‘sight unseen’ whilst simultaneously describing his reactions to it.

The result is a hilarious, sharp and ultimately moving show about cinema and music which pays tribute to the musicians of the silent era through the observations of one the world’s finest exponents. Bookings: Online: www.corkfrenchfilmfestival.com Tickets: Pro Musica & Festival Office Festival Office: 021 4310677 Early booking advised

PAGE /

EVENTS

AN ITALIAN STRAW HAT Silent Film With Live Piano Score By Neil Brand

20.00 / Thursday 6th March / Stack Theatre, CIT – Cork School of Music / Price: €16/14 (conc) René Clair’s delectable satire on middle-class pretension is one of the great landmarks of French silent cinema. Albert Préjean stars as a hapless bridegroom whose journey to his own wedding is interrupted when his horse chews up a woman’s hat. She demands a replacement, which is easier said than done, and the groom is soon tangled up in a series of comic misunderstandings. An Italian Straw Hat is more than farce though, it uses the absurd premise as a route into a sly attack on bourgeois narrow-mindedness. With few inter-titles and plenty of visual humour, An Italian Straw Hat is a classic of silent cinema so expertly timed and so elegantly directed that farce becomes ballet. Neil Brand accompanies the film with a live piano score for a truly unmissable evening. Neil has been accompanying silent films for nearly 30 years, regularly in London at the Barbican and National Film Theatre, and at film festivals around the world.

Training originally as an actor, he has made his name as a writer/performer/composer, scoring BFI releases for silent cinema such as The Ring by Alfred Hitchcock, avant-garde cinema and Russian preSoviet cinema. He composed an orchestral score for Hitchcock’s newly restored Blackmail (1929) as well as a jazz score for the 1927 Anna Mae Wong movie Piccadilly which premiered live in 2003 at the Lincoln Centre, New York and the Barbican concert hall in 2004. He is the presenter of BBC’s acclaimed series, The Sound of Cinema. Bookings: Online: www.corkfrenchfilmfestival.com Tickets: Pro Musica & Festival Office Festival Office: 021 4310677 Early booking advised France | 1927 | 95 Min Director: Rene Clair Cast: Albert Préjean, Geymond Vital, Olga Tschechowa PAGE /

Ballymaloe proudly celebrating 50 years warmly congratulate Cork French Film Festival on its 25th edition

Shanagarry, County Cork, Ireland Ph: +353 21 4652531 Fax: +353 21 4652021 res@ballymaloe.ie www.ballymaloe.ie

PAGE /

EVENTS

LE MÈPRIS Candlelit Supper With Guest Composer Laurent Levesque

18:00 / Friday 7th March / Ballymalloe Grainstore / €45 or €10 for screening only (at 20.30) CFFF celebrates the 50th anniversary of Ballymaloe House with a special screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s sublime epic Le Mèpris. A screenwriter finds his marriage falling apart as he attempts to get started on a film version of the The Odyssey.

perform a musical introduction to the film, a homage to master Georges Delerue. Levesque has composed film scores for French directors such as Costa Gravas (Amen), Agnès Varda (Beaches of Agnès) and Cedric Klapisch (Paris).

Jean-Luc Godard’s sardonic look at the world of filmmaking boasts superb performances by Michel Piccoli as a compromised writer, Brigitte Bardot as his bored wife, Jack Palance as a manipulative American producer and Fritz Lang as himself, about to film Homer’s Odyssey in Capri. Raoul Coutard’s sun-kissed camerawork is enhanced by the beauty and poignancy of Georges Delerue’s classical score.

Bookings: Online: www.corkfrenchfilmfestival.com Tickets: Pro Musica & Festival Office Festival Office: 021 4310677 Early booking advised

CFFF is delighted to welcome special guest composer and pianist Laurent Levesque who will

France | 1964 | 107mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Featuring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Georgia Moll, Fritz Lang Language: English and French with subtitles

PAGE /

EVENTS THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER With Live Score By Irene Buckley 20.00 / Saturday 8th March / St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral / Price: €16/14 (conc) A visual masterpiece of the macabre, Epstein’s Gothic fantasy is a viscerally compelling and profoundly unsettling meditation on the relationship between life, art and death. As his beloved wife Madeleine succumbs to a mysterious illness, Sir Roderick Usher invites his old friend Allan to his castle for support. He arrives to find Roderick consumed with completing a painting of Madeline, something that seems to draw the life out of her with every brush stroke he makes. Once the picture is finished, Madeleine collapses, and her physician confirms she is dead. After a solemn funeral, a ghostly presence invades the house of Usher... Composer Irene Buckley has created an ethereal lament for voice, electronics and organ (James McVinnie) to accompany cinema’s first true Gothic horror. This premiere performance of her new score will be set amongst the atmospheric surroundings of St. Finbarre’s Gothic architecture and performed on its newly restored organ, the largest in Ireland. Buckley’s exquisite pieces traverse a dynamic region between classical composition and contemporary electronic music. Her critically acclaimed score for Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc has astounded audiences at festivals internationally and been described as “pure cinema magic, a once in a lifetime experience that sent shivers down the spine” (A. Hunter, Director, Glasgow Film Festival). James McVinnie pursues a diverse career as an organist and keyboardist. He was organist at Westminster Abbey where he played for state occasions including the recent Royal Wedding. He has performed with leading European ensembles and composers such as Philip Glass and is becoming PAGE /

increasingly known for his collaborations with musicians such as Beth Orton, Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire) and The National. His debut album Cycles has been released by influential Icelandic label the Bedroom Community. Bookings: Online: www.corkfrenchfilmfestival.com Tickets: Pro Musica, Plugd Records & Festival Office Festival Office: 021 4310677 Early booking advised France | 1928 | 64 min Director: Jean Epstein Cast: Jean Debucourt; Marguerite Gance; Charles Lamy

EDUCATION

SCHOOL SCREENINGS

LOOK AT ME Comme Une Image 11.00 / Monday 3rd - Thursday 6th March / GATE Lolita is a young student singer with self-esteem issues: she obsesses about being overweight, questions whether she’s good enough to make it professionally as a chanteuse and endures a far from harmonious relationship with her father, Étienne. Things are further complicated by the fact that his waif-like partner, Karine, is half his age and looks more like Lolita’s glamorous sister. A wonderfully witty and observant comedy-drama from writer-director Agnès Jaoui. For education pack contact festival office: 0214310677 or culture@alliancefrancaisecork.com France 2004 | 111 min | Cert 12A Director: Agnès Jaoui Language: French with English subtitles

THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED De Battre Mon Coeur S’est Arrêté 11.00 / Monday 3rd - Thursday 6th March / GATE A man finds his heart and soul torn between loyalty to his family and a need to be redeemed from his violent lifestyle in this powerful drama. Tom loves music, and longs to have a career as a concert pianist, like his mother. However he supports himself working as a debt collector for his gangster father. Will Tom continue to lead a life of crime and cruelty, or will he pursue his dream of becoming a pianist? For education pack contact festival office: 0214310677 or culture@alliancefrancaisecork.com

France 2005 | 107 min | Cert 15A Director: Jacques Audiard Language: French with English subtitles PAGE /

Alliance Française de Cork

Proud to present the 25th Cork French Film Festival

Class for all levels and objectives Pre-school, Primary, Secondary, Third Level, Corporate Training, and Individual Tuition

Extensive media library with French cinema classics. Day and evening classes

The only language school in Cork which is an accredited Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Paris DFP diploma exam centre. All our tutors are French natives, officially trained and qualified examiners and instructors.

Cork’s authentic link with France since 1947

Enterprise House, 36 Mary Street, Cork +353 21 4310677

www.alliancefrancaisecork.com PAGE /

EDUCATION MASTERCLASSES SOUNDTRACK WITH NEIL BRAND - Presented by Dr Mel Mercier

13:00 Wednesday 5th March / O’Riada Hall, UCC Music Dept, Sunday’s Well / Admission Free Neil Brand explores the work of the great movie composers, and demonstrates their techniques. Neil Brand is regular piano accompanist for silent film productions at London’s National Film Theatre and La Cinematheque Français in Paris. He has also composed orchestral scores for the newly restored silent films Underground (1928), directed by Anthony Asquith and Blackmail (1929) by Alfred Hitchcock. He has written radio plays and composed music for television and radio and is the presenter of the BBC’s The Sound of Cinema, a series celebrating the art of the cinema soundtrack. In association with Music Department UCC.

THE FIRST AVANT-GARDE With Jonathan Broda (Eicar, International Film School, Paris) 17:00 Thursday 6th March / Windle Screening Room, Windle Building, UCC / Admission Free The artistic trends of the 1920’s - Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism - intersect and nourish each other in a Paris that attracts artists from all disciplines and cultures. The rise of patrons and independent production companies pave the way for the prolific experimentation of French authors such as Abel Gance, Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac, René Clair, Marcel Herbarium and Jean Renoir. The School of Paris also attracts the likes of Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, Dimitri Kirsanoff and Carl Th. Dreyer. A dense and intense period where cinema rose out of the fairgrounds to become a poetic craft - a new language just being invented. In association with the Film Studies and French Departments UCC.

PAGE /

RONAN O’GARA - THE FRENCH CONNECTION

‘Un grand bonjour Parisien! Je vous souhaite un magnifique Cork French Film Festival. Have a ‘try-tastic’ 25th edition!’ Ronan O’Gara Currently on the coaching staff of French rugby team Racing Metro

Photo by John Daly, Inspire Studios

PAGE /

WE WISH TO THANK THE FOLLOWING VENUES: ENGLISH MARKET

GRANT AIDED BY:

MAIN SPONSORS:

SPONSORS:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS His Excellency, Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, Cllr Catherine Clancy, Lord Mayor of Cork, Una McCarthy (Arts Council), Gillian Keating (President, Cork Chamber of Commerce), Mark Whitteker (Johnson&Perrott), Des Cannon (Peugeot), Rosalie Varda-Demy (Ciné-Tamaris), Kevin Cullinane (Cork Airport), Tony Barry (Barry’s Tea), André Cointreau (Cordon Bleu), Michael Barry (Michel Lynch Wines), Valerie Mouroux (Institut Français), Liz Meaney & Maeve Dineen (Cork City Council), Jean-Pierre de Launoit (Président Foundation Alliance Française), John Mullins and Brendon Keating (Port of Cork), Helen Lambert (Ireland Fund of France), Dr Mel Mercier (UCC), Dr. Paul Hegarty and Dr Pat Crowley (UCC), Geoffrey Spratt (CIT - CSM), Julia Fabry (Ciné- Tamaris), Metrodome, Failte Ireland, Jean Cocteau Comite, Eoin O’Connor (Carlton Screen Advertising), IFI, Margaret Green and Theresa Murphy (Gate Cinema), Ronan O’Gara (Racing Metro), Martin Dier (St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral), Gillian Culhane (Aerlingus),

John X Miller (Cork Vision Centre), the Allen Family (Ballymaloe), Rory Allen (The Grain Store), Niamh Sweeney (Alliance Française de Cork), Marc O’Sullivan (Irish Examiner), Paul Walsh (Intel), 96FM, PJ Gibbons (Social and Personal), Peter Beatty (design), Alexandra Bloom, Etienne Van Vrede (Hayfield Manor), Paula Cogan (The River Lee Hotel), Joe Kennedy (Imperial Hotel), Katie Sloane (Cork International Airport Hotel), Des Donnelly (Gresham Metropole), Zuzana Lukacova (The Clarion), Kay Harte (Farmgate), Michael and Eileen Flemming (Flemings Restaurant), Claire Nash (Nash 19), Catherine Ryan (Isaacs Restaurant), Dee Delany (Electric), Jason O’Sullivan (Soberlane), Mags O’Connor, (The Cornstore) Gerard McCarthy Photography, Brian Terry Photography, Musgrave, Isabelle Sheridan (On the Pig’s Back), Benny McCabe, Brian MacDomhnaill, Evan Manifattori, Claire Keogh, national and local media, our wonderful team of volunteers, and all who have helped us to make this festival happen. Merci à toutes et à tous! PAGE /

GATE

MON 3RD

TUE 4TH

WED 5TH

11.00

School Screenings

14.00

Le Million

Un Homme et Une Demy Shorts Femme

Same Old Song

Anna

AV Shorts

Donkey Skin

16.15

The World of Jacques Demy

Jacquot de Nantes

The Young El Gusto Girls Turn 25

8 Women

Electroma

Fantastic Planet

Lola

Bay of Angels

The Girls of Model Shop Rochefort

A Room in Town

Parking

18.30

SUN 2ND

Umbrellas of Cherbourg (19.00)

21.00

Betty Blue The Big Blue

Amélie

THURS 6TH

FRI 7TH

SAT 8TH Girl Rising (11.30)

The Beat The Night is The Science Nenette & Boni That My Heart Young of Sleep Atilla Marcel Skipped

RIVER LEE HOTEL

19.00

The Red Balloon

ENGLISH MARKET

19.00

The Silent Pianist Speaks

CIT – CORK SCHOOL OF MUSIC, STACK THEATRE

20.00

An Italian Straw Hat

BALLYMALOE GRAIN STORE

18.00

Le Mepris

ST. FIN BARRE’S CATHEDRAL

20.00

SUN 9TH

The Fall Of The House Of Usher