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L'Hôtel Particulier: Une Ambition Parisienne

Image: Gaumont
Text: Hannah O'Brien

Hôtels particuliers have been glorified by French literature, bringing us the haunting image of the luxury and beauty of Parisian life. The wonderful L’Hôtel Particulier: Une Ambition Parisienne exhibition at Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine invites us to step into the private realm of these hotels. Through a combination of stunning paintings, busts of the original occupants, re-models, striking murals, interactive touch-screen guides and a detailed documentary, visitors are invited to learn about the origins and historical importance of these impressive buildings.

As someone who was sceptical as to whether they would enjoy such as an exhibition, I cannot avoid declaring my delight at what I saw. This exhibition contains the rare balance between written fact and visual information. Each section offers new treats and secrets to be uncovered. It is filled with a sufficient amount of priceless paintings and quaint artifacts to make even the lowliest of historians squeal with delight. This exhibition doesn’t just give us examples of wonderful art and architecture, but it allows us to envisage the society, the people and above all the splendour of a Paris long lost, but whose traces are indelibly etched on the fabric of this great city.

In other words I had become so intoxicated by the grandeur and mystique of this lifestyle that I had forgotten about the people of the hôtel particulier.

Film Review: Les Hommes Libres

Image: Pyramides Distribution
Text: Susie Kahlich

History, as they say, is written by the winners. Certainly that’s true when it comes to war. Of course, whichever side wins not only gets to write the history, but also gets to be the hero and take all the heroic credit for itself. But as we’ve seen over the years—especially when it comes to WWII—from Schindler’s List to Inglorious Bastards to Valkyrie, the unlikely and unsung heroes of war can come in every color, country, and guise… and will probably never stop coming.

That’s a good thing, because as much as war tears the world apart, it also brings unlikely factions together, factions that have themselves seem to have forgotten they were ever on the same side.

Among these is the little-known story of the Great Mosque of Paris. During the German Occupation of Paris in WWII, the Muezzin and his fellow Muslims turned the Great Mosque into an underground railroad for Jewish families, children and resistance fighters, providing refuge for resistance fighters in its underground caves and tunnels, and false identify papers for Jewish families, claiming them as Muslim and helping to arrange safe passage out of France and away from the death camps.

November Film Events

Image: Elena Rossini  
Text: Susie Kahlich

On 2 November, independent filmmaker Elena Rossini presents her work-in-progress, The Illusionists, a feature-length documentary that explores the commodification of the body and the marketing of unattainable beauty around the world. From Vogue to Jenny Craig, global companies work hard to market the “Official Body” for women – an idealized, unattainable image that is sold from Los Angeles to Tokyo with very little relation to what real women look like, yet producing a profound effect on real women’s lives. A networking cocktail hosted by European Professional Women’s Network precedes and follows Ms. Rossini’s presentation.  Net proceeds go to the completion of The Illusionists and promoting this important dialog.

European Professional Women's Network
Deloitte (auditorium)
185 av de Charles de Gaulle
92524  Neuilly sur Seine
Métro: Pont de Neuilly (line 1)
Reserve your spot here.

 

From 3-8 November, the 11^th Festival Resonances focuses on the new form of social revolution begun by the Arab Spring.  Cell phones, Twitter, Facebook and the use of digital technology and social networking tools were effectively used as a call to arms, a way to document change as it’s happening and make the world witness.  Yet what is the role of the images and tweets and updates that live on when the revolution is over? A selection of films, roundtable discussions and a preview of Tous au Larzac by director Christian Rouaud and an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

Magic Cinéma de Bobigny
Rue du Chemin Vert 93000 Bobigny
Métro: Bobigny Pablo Picasso (line 5)

 

Guess what?  It’s Documentary Month! The Bibliothèque Centre Pompidou features a retrospective of the work of cool Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann, the BPI opens the month with screenings of Metal and Melancholy, Underground Orchestra, Crazy and El Ovido, as well as a selection of her short films and works made for television.  Begins 5 November.

Centre Georges Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou, 75004 Paris
Métro: Rambuteau

 

Documentaries and features from Japan are on the menu this month at La Cinémathèque Française. Founded in 1986 by Tetsujiro Yamagami, Productions Siglo produces documentary films and fiction devoted to the social problems of Japan often neglected by mainstream film: pollution, poverty, alcoholism and the environment. 

La Cinémathèque Française
51, rue de Bercy 75012
Métro: Bercy

 

Forum des Images hosts Aprés-midi des Enfants in November, and just to keep it relatable to les petits Parisiens, the Forum leads children through the world’s greatest cities, from Prague to Dakar, Rome to St. Petersburg and all points in between.  Start from home with a screening of the delightful Ratatouille on 2 November.

Forum des Images
Porte St Eustache, 75001
Métro: Chatelet-Les Halles

Paris on Film: Paris vu par…

Image: Les Films du Losange    Text: Christophe Dumay

This is the first in a monthly series about Paris on Film: a cinematic tour of Paris by a lifelong Parisian (and film buff) to explore and discover the world’s most beautiful film set.

In 1963, after a few years of intense movie-going, 23-year-old Barbet Shroeder decided to put together a production of six short films about Paris, each one set in a different neighborhood of the city. He managed to convince a rag-tag team of artists to joing his project for little or no money: up-and-comers Godard, Chabrol and Rohmer, Jean Rouch (one of the founders of cinema vérité), Jean Daniel Pollet as the “one of a kind” film poet, and Jean Douchet, film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma.

The segments were shot throughout 1964, each director working independently of the others with no overarching theme or direction other than Paris itself. Shot on 16mm with a small crew, a limited time period and, of course, on a tight budget, each film was then blown up to 35mm. All six films were then spliced together and edited by the inimitable Jackie Raynal (Raynal would go on to an activist of underground cinema in New York City, and eventually film curator at the now legendary Bleecker Street Cinema and Carnegie Hall Cinema.)

By now you’re probably thinking that the project sounds like one of those weak europuddings where your expectations about those famous names on the poster crash against the tepid mediocrity of the money-makers posing as independent film with a dull thud. You couldn’t be more wrong!

Paris vu par… (English title: Six in Paris) is a classic of the nouvelle vague, but more than that it is a window to the ever-changing yet timeless nature of Paris and Parisians.

The film starts with Saint-Gemain des prés. The camera wanders through the tiny streets between the boulevard Saint Germain and the Seine, rue Saint-Benoit, rue de l’Échaudé, rue de Seine , the École des Beaux-Arts, the Église Saint-Germain des prés – actually the remains of a former eleventh century abbey and the oldest church in the city . Almost everything that you see in the film is still there: you can stay in the Hotel du pas de Calais, enjoy a coffee at the café Bonaparte (same blue and red striped canopy still shades the glass front), and have a decent meal at a decent price at Le Petit Saint-Benoit around the corner.

The second short, Gare du Nord, is a 17-minute sequence with only two cuts , shot on hand –held camera, where the producer himself acts as the bad guy (the conservative husband who is sooo down to earth ). The segment starts like a documentary: a couple has an argument for breakfast, the wife finally leaving for work and walking to her office along rue Lafayette, over the criss-cross bridge that spans the railroad tracks of Gare du Nord. Nothing spectacular here… or so it seems. But it’s as she heads to her office that the story catches up with you, and the man she meets along the way and the things he goes on to say to her are both brilliant and desperate, against all odds and still valid today. A true gem.

Rue Saint-Denis is where the third film takes place. When this segment was first shown in cinemas, the audience laughed so hard Schroeder moved the segment to third position so as not to mislead audiences into thinking the entire film was as comedy. The plot is simple: a rather shy guy hires a prostitute, who shows up at his room with an appetite… for dinner. She insists on eating before their transaction can commence… and winds far more interested in a good meal than the services she’s hired for. Hilarious! And so French!

Place de l’Étoile is where the great Rohmer shot his story. There is not a small touch of irony in Rohmer’s voiceover explaining that the Place is not meant for pedestrians but for the rush of metroplitan traffic, which in 1964 looks practically pastoral compared to today’s traffic around the Arc de Triomphe. For you literature buffs, see if you can spot Philippe Sollers as the customer who’s reading his paper in the tie shop.

Godard didn’t really want to shoot his segment, so he got Albert Maysles (of Grey Gardens fame) to do it. Montparnasse has changed considerably since 1964, and Godard’s segment gives us a peek into the past, before the area became dominated by the Tour Montparnasse and the large shopping mall that evokes nothing so much as De Gaulle’s nose on a flattened face.

Chabrol shot the last segment in La Muette, the wealthy neighborhood next to the Bois de Boulogne. Titled The Dumb, a rich kid ignored by his parents decides to wear earplugs whenever he’s in their presence to tragic effect. We don’t see a lot of the quartier but the bourgeois life taking place inside the apartment is the thing to watch… because it’s so true!

Despite the fact that each director shot his own segment with no idea what the others were doing (they only saw the entire film after Raynal made her final cut), an intangible link exists among these stories that envelopes the viewer, allowing you to step directly onto the sidewalks of Paris (beware of the dog poo!) as if you were part of the scene.

Paris vu par... is available on DVD through Amazon, at FNAC and at Forum des Images.

Is there a film set in, around or about Paris that you’d love to see reviewed? Send us your suggestions!

METROPOLIS: Rise of the Machines

Text: Susie Kahlich

The most iconic sci-fi film of all time... only 83 years in the making.

In 1927, the German studio Universum Film A.G. (UFA) premiered Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s machine-driven parable of a dystopian future where the demand for new technology and goods literally sacrifices the working classes for the benefit of executives oblivious to the human cost of their own greed. Plus ça change, eh?

While heavy-handed in the symbolism department and somewhat plodding plot-wise, the film is a technical and artistic marvel that has influenced filmmakers from Kurosawa to Kubrick, Burton to Besson, and has become the most iconic science fiction film ever made.  The film reached a whole new generation when music producer Giorgio Moroder restored, re-cut and tinted the footage to a rock soundtrack, ultimately creating the music video that would encapsulate the changes that swept the world with the protests in Tianamen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the USSR.

Recently restored to its original 153-minute length, La Cinémathèque Française opens its exhibition of Metropolis this week, with original stills, equipment, props and costumes, script pages and musical score to tell an even more incredible story behind Metropolis and its restoration – where National Treasure meets Bladerunner, with a little bit of Blow-Up thrown in.

The original 153-minute version of Metropolis was sold to Paramount who promptly cut it down to 89 minutes and, for good measure, revamped the story from an examination of class struggle into a futuristic Romeo and Juliet story in an effort to make the film more commercial.  Their efforts not only succeeded, it is this truncated version that lived on in the popular consciousness for many years.  But by the 1980s, technology finally caught up with film historians’ curiosity, and the long, arduous efforts at restoring the film to its original version began.

I say long and arduous because, at the time of its production, the technology to produce multiple negatives of motion picture film simply didn’t exist.  Lang and his crew got around this obstacle by shooting every single scene on 4 cameras set side by side to, in effect, create four original negatives of Metropolis.  One negative—and the best preserved—was sold to Paramount who, as mentioned, hacked it up to suit their own vision.  The edited footage and the remaining negatives were long thought to be lost or too corrupted to restore, although multiple efforts have been made over the years. 

In addition, having only the rearranged Paramount version to go by, the original order of shots and sequences, music cues, and title cards have been in dispute for years.  Basically, no one really knew what Metropolis was supposed to look like.  Fritz Lang wasn’t any help: he died in 1976, long before any true restoration efforts were possible, but had distanced himself from the film during his lifetime anyway, citing the film as “silly and stupid,” not to mention horrified by the Nazi fascination with the film's propaganda potential.

The 1984 version, while popular with disaffected teens already suffering from Reagan, Thatcher and yuppies, enraged historians both within and outside of the film world, and raised debate about the validity of repackaging the past to suit the present versus preserving the integrity of a work of art. 

In 2001, a 125-minute version of the film was reconstructed using still photographs and title cards where original footage was missing.  Screened at that year’s Berlin Film Festival, this was thought to be the definitive version of Metropolis, the only one in existence closest to the original 153-minute film.

But as it turns out, that day in 1927 when the 153-minute negatives were offered up for sale, there was another buyer in the room – one that UFA, Fritz Lang and all of history completely forgot about.  An Argentinean distributor purchased one of the negatives, took it back to Buenos Aires and…  stuck it in a drawer and forgot all about it. 

Until 2008, that is, when it was discovered by the curator of Buenos Aires Museo del Cine.  Although in some places terribly corrupted, the Argentine negative was the sole remaining, complete version of Metropolis in the world, and served as a blueprint to end the questions of sequences, shots, music cues and, ultimately, the actual plot and storyline.  Spearheaded by the Murnau Foundation, the restoration took about one year and was completed through digital technology specially designed for the project.  Not only have shots been restored (including a breathtaking bird’s eye shot of the Tower of Babel), but entire subplots and characters.  After 83 years, Metropolis is finally complete.

The exhibit at La Cinémathèque Française takes an in-depth look at the making of Metropolis, as well as the incredible story of the film’s restoration, in a multi-media presentation that combines film footage, production stills, actual props and costumes, and a recreation of the birth of the iconic Machine Maria (by which I was delightfully reminded of my favorite sideshow at New York’s Coney Island).  Not just for film buffs, the exhibit is a fantastic look at technology, German Expressionism, and of course the historical context and prescience of Metropolis, where progress both destroys and restores.

The fully restored version of Metropolis is being screened at MK2 cinemas beginning 19 October.

Metropolis: L’Exposition runs from 19 October through 29 January 2012 at La Cinémathèque Française, and includes discussions, live events and an accompanying retrospective of Fritz Lang’s body of work.

La Cinémathèque Française, 51 Rue de Bercy 75012 Metros 6 and 14

20 Questions

Photo: Joe Wilkins

Kartik Singh is a screenwriter and director living in the 15^th.  Of Indian heritage, he was raised in the US and moved to Paris in 1996 to study film and never left.  He received a post-graduate diploma from the Sorbonne for his first film, and his subsequent work has been broadcast on Arte and Canal Plus.  He is currently working on his second feature film.

1. What initially inspired you to move to Paris? 

I took French from 6^th to 12^th grade, and it gave me an initial taste for the culture.  Since then, learning French has been a passion for me.  Coming here, I have been able to experience the pleasure of speaking this beautiful language on a daily basis.  I also love having access to so much art and culture.  My first contact with Paris was like a communion with European cinema - so much deeper and more meaningful than the Spielberg-driven 1980’s I grew up with. 

2. Earliest Paris memory?

My very first night in Paris, I had just arrived on a train from Amsterdam into Gare du Nord.  I took a cab to the youth hostel where I was staying in the 13^th, and Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” came on the radio and I asked the driver to crank it.  We crossed the Seine and I got to see the beauty and the potential of Paris by night.  Magical.

3. Best neighbourhood you've ever lived in?

Le Marais – always bustling, central, and on a day like Sunday, it’s buzzing with activity when other neighborhoods are dead.

4. What's the best meal you've eaten in Paris?

Charlie’s at Daumesnil.  Breathtaking and unlikely view of Paris.  Great French meal, great wines, great company.

5. Sexiest moment you've had in Paris?

Well, being with a French woman for the first time qualifies for sure.  I’ll just leave it at that.

6. What do you hate most about living in Paris?

There is a kind of Parsian who is totally blasé, completely underwhelmed by everything going on around them; who complains, is never happy and is shrouded in pessimism and negativity.  Coming into contact with this type of person is my least favorite thing in Paris.

7. Who's your favourite Parisian -- be they living or dead, real or fictional?

Terrence Malick.  I would like to think his two decades in Paris between Days of Heaven and Thin Red Line had something to do with making him an even greater filmmaker.

8. Favourite cinema?

The Filmothèque in the Latin Quarter, on rue Champollion.

9. Right bank or left bank? And why?

Left.  St. Germain des Pres, Jardin de Luxemboug, Rue Cler, La Butte aux Cailles….

10. Favourite Caviste?

My guy on rue Paul Barruel who lets me taste everything – it’s always happy hour at his place!

11. Where do you go to escape the city?

India.

12. Where are the best looking girls or boys in Paris and why? 

Les Halles-Montorgeuil.  It’s a kind of crossroads of folks from different economic means, it’s young, it’s hip, it’s got really cool cafés and bars that are always full.

13. Where do you get your news?

I don’t.  I’m on a low information diet, which may explain my optimistic disposition.  If something’s up or in the air, I’ll ask people about it in a café.  When I’m interested in a subject, I like to read about it in a book after the fact, when deeper analysis weighs in.  I love not following news.  I love living in my own world.

14. Favourite museum?

Musée Rodin.  Love the garden.

15. Favourite shop? 

Papeterie Graphi Dessin.  It’s a stationary store on rue de Vaugirard in the 15^th.  They have everything I need in the way of pens and notebooks – since I do a lot of writing by hand, it’s a fun place to get new stuff.  They stock these handmade notebooks from Italy called Mazzoli that are my favorite.

16. Who's the most stylish Paris personality?

Sometimes I wonder if this man is even real or I just imagined him: I believe he’s an artist; he’s very striking; his dark Indian complexion is contrasted by short silver hair cut and a salt and pepper beard.  And he only wears the color white -- always the coolest stuff: oxfords, dungarees, trench coats, raincoats, blazers, vests: all white.  With his trim build, everything looks good on him.  I have been seeing him around for as long as I’ve been here.  But I’ve never had the nerve to talk to him.  Afraid he might not live up to the person I imagine him to be.

17. What is your favourite film that is set in Paris?

Le Ballon rouge.

18. What about Paris most inspires you?

It’s a crossroads of culture.  People from everywhere are coming and going.  That gives it a palpable energy.

19. What makes someone a Parisian?

To come and spend time here and know this place has meaning for you – that makes you a Parisian.

20. What's your favourite French word? (Swear words allowed!)

Merde.  Have loved it since I learned it in junior high.  It’s got that ‘r’ in it that took me a long time to get.

L'Apollonide: secrets of a house of pleasure

Image: toutlecine.com

Text: Tristan Stansbury Worthington

Fin de siècle would seem to be something of a fashion in visual media at the moment: first Maison Close, Canal+'s successful television series about a 19th-century Parisian brothel and now L'Apollonide: souvenirs d'une maison close, Bertrand Bonello's new film... about a 19th-century Parisian brothel. Given the boost Mathieu Almaric's Tournée gave to Paris's burlesque scene, can we expect this new trend to pass from the silver screen to the city's streets, with establishments of debauched delectation illuminating their discreet red lanterns on every corner?

Unlikely, for as the film initially deftly, but ultimately heavy handedly demonstrates, institutions such as l'Apollonide belong to a bygone era of rustling silk skirts and crisp linen, of tight-laced corsets and repressed sexual urges, when men were men and women were objects for their sexual gratification. Indeed, the film recounts the last few months of this idealised house of pleasure, crossing from the 19^th century's Age of Romance to the 20^th century's Era of Science. With an exquisite aestheticism, Bonello brings the atmosphere of this cloistered world, this convent for the demi-monde, to life. If Huysmans could have made cinema, this is what his films would have looked like: the mood is dreamy and impressionistic, a two-hour-long ocular treat (for those of us not made uncomfortable by excessive displays of bared flesh and physical intimacy), rich not only visually, but also in terms of its cultural, literary and historical references. Huysmans probably wouldn't have chosen the same soundtrack as Bonello, however, with the latter seemingly trying to inject an edgy note into his period confection with bellowing 60's funk. The effect is jarring, and therefore could be seen to be in keeping with the film's non-linear and at times downright delirious structure. Unfortunately it is a step too far in the direction of “look at me I'm actually doing something different” which at times seems to seize Bonello. The same goes for his bizarre occasional use of split screens more appropriate for a 1970s thriller.

Throughout the film, time jumps, slows down and repeats itself in a seemingly endless cycle of champagne-coiffing and client-satisfying, of dressing and being undressed. But don't for a minute think there's anything bawdy about it : almost every moment is one of exquisitely torpid languor or indolent grace, sharply offset by an act of acute violence and the mortal blow of venereal disease that mark the brothel's history, though even these Bonello manages to endow with heady sensuality. The lack of narrative structure is smoothly handled as the focus effortlessly shifts from one girl to another, to the brothel's intriguing Madame (enchantingly portrayed by Noémie Lvovsky), to the daily running of such an enterprise, to some of the key moments in the life of the community, one thread intertwining with a second, or breaking off suddenly to be replaced by another only re-emerge again. All this within the walls of the brothel, giving the film an extraordinary intimacy, bordering on the claustrophobic, for although many enter, only once do we leave the house's opulent interior of velvet and silk for an afternoon in the country and a breath of freedom - chaperoned, naturellement, by the all-seeing, all-knowing Madame.

Relationships within the film are key: the girls seem prey to some form of Stockholm syndrome, whereby they develop a mother-daughter bond with their Madame who, while she appears to display genuine affection for her employees (read: slaves), is nonetheless the one who keeps them imprisoned in an endless spiral of debt they can never pay off. Among themselves, there is a strong sense of camaraderie and a surprising lack of rivalry. With their clients, the boundaries between a working relationship and real caring become painfully blurred. Yet while within the film relationships are complex, it is its aesthetic aspect that dominates, offering the audience little opportunity to develop any emotional engagement with this band of imprisoned Amazons. Surprising, given the extraordinary talent displayed by the actresses. Most notable among them has to be Alice Barnole, with her sensitive, fragile performance as “la Juive”, a mysterious beauty who, following her mutilation at the hands of a favourite client, becomes “the smiling woman”, the brothel's lackey and occasional freak-show attraction, all the while retaining incredible grace and poise.

Perhaps it is just this eternal grace and poise, even in the victim of a cruel mutilation who spends the rest of her days scrubbing corsets and cooking stews, this jaded languor that pervades the film which make it so emotionally cold. Perhaps the one antidote to this overly heightened aestheticism is Clotilde, powerfully portrayed by Céline Salette: an inelegant waif in ill-fitting bustiers whose descent into an opium-induced delirium colours the film's disjointed denouement, as the brothel breathes its final, beautiful breath. Yet somehow even Clotilde's rather clichéd story fails to incite even the most reflexive of sympathetic reactions.

The absence of emotion is, granted, a pity. But nonetheless the film is undoubtedly a success merely in terms of its outstanding artistry, as a dreamlike journey through Bonello's fantastical evocation of a late-19th-century brothel and the decadence of a bygone era. At least, it would have been, had Bonello not been tempted to end the film with a sudden lurch from period reverie to harsh reality in a grainy two-minute documentary-style portrayal of the sex trade along the periphérique of modern-day Paris. This obscure move, which comes completely out of the blue in a film that up to that moment is completely devoid of any social or political commentary whatsoever, means one can't help but wonder whether it is, rather than an idealised vision, rather some kind of deluded nostalgia for the Golden Age of Prostitution. A Golden Age, which if now is lost forever, was probably never golden, and most likely only exists in the product of Bonello's admirably active imagination.

Film Review: Melancholia

Image: Magnolia Pictures    Text: Susie Kahlich

Leave it to Lars von Trier to make a disaster flick anything but.

One of the best things about living in Paris is that films hang around in the cinema a lot longer than they do in other major cities.  In the US, you have about 10 days to catch something on a big screen; in Paris, you have about two months.

All the better to catch the final week’s run of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, released in Paris over the summer and winding up its run at most cinemas this coming Tuesday.

We all know by now that some films will hold up just as well on our giant television screens or even our oversized computer monitors, and so we can wait for the digital stream or DVD or however you like to get your movies.  But some films are so much better relished through the size and scope of a theater screen, through the surround-sound speaker system and through the collective experience only to be had in the company of an audience.  Melancholia is one of these films.

Melancholia is the tale of two sisters, Justine (Kirstine Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and how they each deal with the news of impending doom. Most disaster films assume the disaster is inevitable, and the story is usually one of how we go about preparing to die and, often, a story of mankind's intelligence and wit overcoming the forces of nature. The difference with Melancholia—and the shot in the arm the disaster genre needs—is that we don’t know that the disaster is inevitable.  It remains a question all the way through the film, ratcheting up the tension and giving us perhaps a more quiet but far more intense ride. Lars von Trier employs the secret of all good horror directors: the real fear is the unknown.

Film Review: This Must Be the Place

 

Image: Medusa Distribuzione

Text: Susie Kahlich

Generation X is having a mid-life crisis all over the world.

 

Director Paolo Sorrentino’s film This Must Be the Place takes its title from the Talking Heads song “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” off their seminal concert album Stop Making Sense. Featuring a performance of the song by David Byrne himself, the film won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

Written by Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello, This Must Be the Place stars Sean Penn as Cheyenne, an aging, retired and disaffected rock star who adopts his father’s lifelong quest to hunt down and revenge himself on the Nazi soldier who tormented him during WWII.

Film Festival Season Underway

 
Photo: L'Etrange Festival 2011 official poster 

Text: Susie Kahlich

September is the official start of film festival season, kicked off with the granddaddy of them all, the Venice Film Festival, now in its 68th year. But if you can’t get to Venice, France has its own clutch of festivals to keep film-lovers busy this month and beyond:

It’s the French version of The Sundance Film Festival at the 37^th Deauville Festival du Cinéma Américain.  Just a 2-hour train ride from Paris, catch the newest from indie faves Todd Solondz (Dark Horse) to up-and-comers Amy Wendel (All She Can) and Andrew Okpeaha Maclean (On the Ice).

Closer to town is the L’Étrange Festival, bringing film from all four corners of the globe to Forum des Images.  In addition to Grindhouse Night, Sushi Typhoon Night and A Night with Rutger Hauer (!), the festival features a Carte Blanche series with selected films introduced by filmmakers you really want to meet: Julien Temple, Liliana Cavani and J-P Mocky.

La Cinémathèque Francaise continues its cool fall programming with a retrospective of the films of Nanni Moretti. Known as the Italian Woody Allen, his films are a sharp, often moving and almost always funny take on the realities of modern Italian and European life. A musical journey through the key moments of the work of the filmmaker featuring the Orchestra Nazionale dei Conservatori takes place 10 September at MC93 in Bobigny, with the director himself in attendance and narrating.