Festival Paris Cinema from 3rd July

Text: Aidan Mac Guill 

Image: Paris Cinema

From the 3rd to the 13th of July the Paris Cinema International Film Festival will be taking over the city for your audio-visual delectation. This year there is a particular focus on Japanese cinema, with around 100 Japanese films being screened throughout Paris. The majority of screenings will be at the recession-friendly price of €5. Special guests of the festival will be the actress, activist and Francophile Jane Fonda, the French-American writer & director Eugene Green, divisive Indian-American writer and director M. Night Shyamalan and the almost offensively good-looking French actor and director Louis Garrel, son of the great Philippe Garrel .

'La Nuit du Cinema' at the Forum des Images will kick things off on the 3rd of July, with an adults-only celebration of erotic cinema. On offer throughout the various rooms will be examples of the work of Koji Wakamatsu, leading figure of Japanese erotic cinema in the Sixties; a selection of Ozploitation films; 'One Piece Night', a tribute to the legendary Japanese Toei Animation studio, and the films of Joe Sarno, one of the pioneers of Sixties B-movie sexploitation. It promises to be both a visually fascinating and potentially vaguely uncomfortable experience.

Of the more than 40 premieres on offer over the 10 days, there will be a chance to see some of the award-winners from this year's Cannes Film Festival. Parisian's will get their first look at Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Palme d'Or winning 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives', Chang-Dong Lee's 'Poetry', which picked up the Prix du Scenario for writing, and 'Of God's And Men', Xavier Beauvois' drama centring around a group of French monks living in Algeria, which took home the Grand Prix. Also showing will be Stephen Frear's 'Tamara Drewe' and Michael Winterbottom's controversial 'The Killer Inside Me'. Ten feature length films, short-listed from over 1100, will be competing for the Jury, Audience, Student and Bloggers awards.

At the Cinema Broquante on the 10th of July, cinephiles can wander around a huge market with vintage film posters, old magazines, on-set still photographs and assorted other cinema memorabilia up for grabs at bargain prices. Potentially the most inadvertently entertaining event of the festival could be the M. Night Shyamalan "masterclass". Other highlights include screenings of 'Slaughterhouse 5', George Roy Hill's 1972 adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel, 'Taking Off' by Milos Forman, Frank Capra's 1938 comedy 'You Can't Take It With You', Alan J.Pakula's sinister 'Klute' (for which Jane Fonda won an Academy award) and an entire day devoted to Pixar's 'Toy Story'.

Rounding off the whole festival, on Tuesday July 13th, will be the Cine-Karaoke Ball. A cinematic treasure hunt will lead you to the CentQuatre, where 500 deck-chairs will be laid out in the giant Halle Aubervilliers. A montage of famous musical moments from cinema history will be projected onto a big screen for everyone to sing along with. You can even pick what songs you want played in advance by voting here. Afterwards everyone is invited to dance the night away, with staff from music magazine Les Inrockuptibles on DJ duty.  

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