Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer in the film THE SHAPE OF WATER.[/caption]
The Shape of Water along with Hitman’s Bodyguard lead the nominations for the 19th annual Golden Trailer Awards competition that has emerged as the most recognized event devoted to the artistry of film marketers and companies that create movie trailers, commercials and posters worldwide.
GTA 19 will take place on Thursday, May 31st at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles hosted by comedienne and actress Michelle Buteau (“The Tick,” “Broad City,” “Key & Peele”).
Double lover (L’amant double)
Chloé, a beautiful young woman at a vulnerable time in her life, who begins therapy with Paul, an attractive and mysterious psychologist. Their charged conversations lead to an inevitable romance, and several months later Chloé is in love and living with her new partner. But she gradually comes to suspect that her lover is not exactly the man she thought he was.
Directed by François Ozon
Starring Marine Vacth and Jeremie Renier
Genre(s) Thriller Film
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THE SHAPE OF WATER Leads Nominations for 19th Golden Trailer Awards
[caption id="attachment_25167" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer in the film THE SHAPE OF WATER.[/caption]
The Shape of Water along with Hitman’s Bodyguard lead the nominations for the 19th annual Golden Trailer Awards competition that has emerged as the most recognized event devoted to the artistry of film marketers and companies that create movie trailers, commercials and posters worldwide.
GTA 19 will take place on Thursday, May 31st at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles hosted by comedienne and actress Michelle Buteau (“The Tick,” “Broad City,” “Key & Peele”).
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2018 New Orleans French Film Festival Announces Lineup + Agnès Varda Retrospective
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Back to Burgundy[/caption]
This year, the 21st edition of the New Orleans French Film Festival will kick off earlier than usual, beginning on February 23 and running through March 1, 2018, and will spotlight 17 feature films, 5 shorts, a retrospective of the magnificent Agnès Varda, French-themed live music performances prior to screenings, and special lectures, all in the historic Prytania Theater.
“The New Orleans Film Society’s French Film Festival was founded to engage and celebrate the French influence on our beloved city,” said Fallon Young, Executive Director of the New Orleans Film Society. “That’s why, in New Orleans’ tricentennial year, we are especially pleased that the French Film Festival features the world premiere of a uniquely New Orleans story. Created by a local director, cast and crew, the short film Le Grande Remix depicts New Orleans as a diverse and vibrant city with global cultural influences.”
Feature length films include the most awarded and sought after French films of the year: Back to Burgundy (opening night), Double Lover (closing night), 4 Days in France, After Love, All That Divides Us, Catch the Wind, Félicité, Ismael’s Ghosts, Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge, Montparnasse Bienvenüe, Nocturama, Souvenir, This is Our Land, as well as Jean Luc-Godard’s 1960 classic Breathless. The Agnès Varda retrospective includes three of her films, Le Bonheur (1965), The Gleaners and I (2000), and Faces, Places (2017). The shorts program includes Prestige Ingredients, We Are the Freak Show, The Elusive, Retaliation, and Le Grand Remix.
The only female director of the French New Wave and the only female director to ever receive an honorary Oscar, Agnès Varda (born in Belgium in 1928) has occupied a singular and well-respected role within the film industry since her first film La Pointe Courte in 1956. The French Film Festival presents Agnès Varda: A Retrospective, which includes an under-seen example of her early, formally audacious fiction work Le Bonheur (1965), as well as two of her more recent autobiographical documentaries The Gleaners and I (2000), and Faces, Places (2017) which is a nominee for the Best Documentary at the 90th Academy Awards.
The retrospective program includes a free lecture on Varda (on Sunday Feb 25, at 5pm) from Loyola professor Jean Brager, who will speak on Varda’s journey as a female filmmaker in a male-dominated industry as well as the ways in which her aesthetics paved the way for the Nouvelle Vague. The lecture will be followed by the screening of her latest documentary Faces, Places in which she collaborated with the phenomenal French photographer JR in search of the people and their villages that define rural France and make it what it is.
What’s the connection of Congo and New Orleans? Join a free lecture by Freddi Williams Evans on Wednesday, Feb 28 at 7:15pm which will be followed by a screening of the Congo-set film Félicité. Evans will address the not so well known connections between Congo and New Orleans, as detailed in her essay “Enslaved Africans Perpetuated Cultural and Commercial Practices at Congo Square,” featured in the new book New Orleans & the World: 1718-2018 Tricentennial Anthology.
Louisiana musicians Helen Gillet, Bart Ramsay, Bruce Sunpie Barnes, Thibault, Pascal Valcasara, and George Trahanis will be performing French-themed live music prior to select screenings during the French Film Festival. Performances will begin 30 minutes prior to the start time of the related films.
Opening Night: Back to Burgundy | Friday, February 23 | 7:00-7:30 pm | Bart Ramsay
Shorts Program | Saturday, February 24 | 2:00 – 2:30 pm | Bruce Sunpie Barnes
After Love | Sunday, February 25 | 2:00 – 2:30 pm | Thibault
Ismael’s Ghosts | Sunday, February 25 | 7:15 – 7:45 pm | Pascal Valcasara
All That Divides Us | Tuesday, February 27 | 7:30 – 8:00 pm | George Trahanis
Closing Night: Double Lover | Thursday, March 1 | 7:30 – 8:00 pm | Helen Gillet
FILMS AND SYNOPSES
Back to Burgundy, dir. Cedric Klapisch – Opening Night The latest from French director Cedric Klapisch (L’auberge espagnole) brings together three very different siblings who have inherited their father’s picturesque vineyard in the famous wine region of Burgundy in east-central France. Prodigal son Jean has spent 10 years away in Australia, and he and two siblings, Juliette and Jérémie, are forced to collectively decide if and how to save the family estate. Over the course of four seasons, from harvest through the stages of vinification, they must learn to forgive and trust themselves and one another, blossoming and maturing in step with the wine they make. An absorbing, bittersweet exploration of the complexities of family and winemaking, Back to Burgundy goes down like a fine pinot noir. Double Lover, dir. François Ozon – Closing Night Director François Ozon, French cinema’s “bad boy,” returns to his wild days with this erotic thriller, which screened in competition at Cannes in 2017. The film centers around Chloé, a beautiful young woman at a vulnerable time in her life, who begins therapy with Paul, an attractive and mysterious psychologist. Their charged conversations lead to an inevitable romance, and several months later Chloé is in love and living with her new partner. But she gradually comes to suspect that her lover is not exactly the man she thought he was. Starring Marine Vacth and Jeremie Renier, Ozon continuously deceives and mesmerizes in this this sensual and provocative film about identity, trust, and passion. (Not recommended for younger viewers.) Le Bonheur, dir. Agnès Varda Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse (Claire Drouot), young husband and father François (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Varda’s most provocative films, Le Bonheur examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world. Faces, Places , dir. Agnès Varda Varda, at 89 years old, hits the road in a van with superstar French photographer JR, 55 years her junior, in search of the people and their villages that define rural France and make it what it is. They travel the countryside, inviting villagers to pose for JR’s camera, and the massive prints he produces in the back of the van are then affixed to various buildings. The Gleaners and I, dir. Agnès Varda This delightful documentary is really a self-portrait of Varda, finding her fully embracing the freedom of digital video to craft a personal, political, and casually profound celebration of “gleaners”: those living on the margins of French society who scavenge for its leftovers–taking everything from surplus in the fields, to rubbish in trash cans, and oysters washed up after a storm. 4 Days in France, dir. Jérôme Reybaud On a seemingly ordinary night in Paris, Pierre takes a last look at his lover Paul’s sleeping body, then steals away into the morning light. Where he’s headed, neither of them know. Pierre’s only guide is his Grindr app, leading him on a series of encounters with an indelible cast of characters across the French countryside. Paul sets out after him, using his own phone to track Pierre’s movements in a strange and wonderful game of Grindr cat-and-mouse. A sly and sophisticated take on romance in the 21st century. After Love, dir. Joachim Lafosse Bernice Bejo (Oscar®-nominated for The Artist) and director-turned-actor Cedric Kahn star in this intimate family drama from acclaimed Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse. After 15 years together, Boris and Marie have fallen out of love. After Love depicts the couple’s struggle to divide their assets and sort out custody of their two little girls, a task complicated by the fact that they aren’t married. Bejo and Kahn give unforgettable naturalistic performances in this intelligent and compassionate film. All That Divides Us, dir. Thierry Klifa A bourgeois family in a mansion in the middle of nowhere clashes with slum-dwellers residing in the projects in this engaging film noir starring acting heavyweights Catherine Deneuve and Diane Kruger. Intermingled in the mystery are a possible kidnapping, blackmail, and impossible love. Deneuve plays a mother trying desperately to save her daughter (Kruger) from a questionable relationship. Director Thierry Klifa created “authenticity of place” by shooting the film on location in region of Occitanie. Catch The Wind, dir. Gael Morel Edith, a 45-year-old textile factory worker, sees her life turned upside down by the company’s downsizing measures. Estranged from her son and without any other ties—and desperate to avoid unemployment—she decides to leave her life behind and follow the factory which has been relocated in Morocco. What follows is a revelatory story of immigration told from a new perspective, as Edith leaves France in search of opportunities in Northern Africa. Starring Sandrine Bonnaire from Agnès Varda’s seminal film Vagabond. Félicité, dir. Alain Gomis Félicité is a proud, free-willed woman working as a singer in a bar in the Congo. Her life is thrown into turmoil when her 14-year-old son gets into a terrible accident. To raise the money to save him, she sets out on a breakneck race through the streets of electric Kinshasa, a world of music and dreams. From French director Alain Gomis, Félicité was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and has been shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Ismael’s Ghosts, dir. Arnaud Desplechin The Opening Night selection at Cannes last year, Ismael’s Ghosts stars French screen regular Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) as a film director whose real life develops into a complex, Hitchcockian plot. He’s romantically involved with Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg) but still grieving the loss of Carlotta (Oscar® winner Marion Cotillard), an old flame who disappeared mysteriously twenty years prior. When Sylvia attempts to leave, he must choose between the two and find an ending to the story. Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge, dir. Marie Noëlle Polish actress Karolina Gruszka stars in this sweeping biography of the legendary scientist Marie Curie. Curie courted controversy with her challenging of France’s male-dominated academic establishment with her unconventional romantic life. A pioneer in the study of radioactivity, Curie spent her life setting precedents: she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first person to win it twice. Director Marie Noëlle conjures her epic story in turn-of-the-century Europe in beautiful detail. Montparnasse Bienvenüe, dir. Léonor Serraille Thirty-something Paula has been dumped by her boyfriend after ten years together. Refusing to accept the role of the passive victim, she finds herself on an odyssey through Paris to recapture her independence and composure—a journey filled with rage, a fluffy cat, false identities, and a string of bizarre encounters. Recipient of the Caméra d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Montparnasse Bienvenüe is both unexpected and funny, while relying on an incredible, explosive performance by Laetitia Dosch. Nocturama, dir. Bertrand Bonello Paris is being stalked by a hidden menace. You’d never recognize them. They have no religion, no affiliation, no shared skin. But they’re there, young and angry, drifting through the streets and subways hunting for weakness. And when they find it, they’re going to bring the city to its knees, and drink champagne and dance until the dawn. A film of daring politics, ravishing style, and sublime soundtracking, Nocturama offers up a grim fantasia of terror and excess that will stay with you for weeks. Souvenir, dir. Bavo Defurne Liliane (Isabelle Huppert) lives a modest and monotonous life. By day, she works in an industrial pâté factory, and by night, she sits on the couch and watches TV. One day, a new worker in the factory named Jean (Kévin Azaïs) arrives, and he grows increasingly convinced that he recognizes Liliane from a European singing contest he saw as a child. Was it her? Souvenir is a touching portrayal of a relationship between two people from different generations, coming together to make a life-changing comeback. This Is Our Land, dir. Lucas Belvaux This Is Our Land is a film for our times. Not so loosely based on French politician Marine Le Pen, the plot follows Pauline, an apolitical nurse frustrated by local politics, who is targeted by a far right-wing group to run for office. As her political star rises, inner turmoil sets in as she becomes increasingly dominated by the political machine. Probing issues of immigration and populism, the film is an incisive look at how the Front National political party operates and how it is perceived by the French. Breathless, dir. Jean-Luc Godard There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du Cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same. French Short Films This 100-minute program includes 5 short films representing bold, new cinematic voices. Prestige Ingredients (26min | France | dir. Danielle + Adrian Rubi-Dentzel) A stifled, young Hollywood actress slips into a world of mouthwatering delicacies, sweet heartache, and bitter tears when she takes an unlikely job with an inspired rebel chef in Paris. We Are The Freakshow (10 min | Canada | dir. Fanny-Laure Malo, Philippe Lupien), A bingo game. An allegorical, wild, and humorous portrait. An homage to eccentricity and entertainment, to those things that remain unchanged. The Elusive (18min | Belgium | dir. Ely Chevillot), A complicated mother-son relationship becomes even more complicated when he acts inappropriately with another kid at the pool. Retaliation (26min I France, Benin I dir. Ange-Régis Hounkpatin) When her father is murdered in Benin, 18-year-old Awa is shaken by the brutal actions taken in her community to avenge his death. Le Grand Remix (17min I USA I dir. Austin Alward) Faced with not being allowed back into America if she leaves the U.S. to attend her sister’s wedding, a young African teacher at a French immersion school in New Orleans attempts to dance away her troubles to music is provided by a teenage Vietnamese-American DJ.
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19th Bratislava International Film Festival to Open with “REQUIEM FOR MRS. J.”
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Requiem for Mrs. J[/caption]
The 19th Bratislava International Film Festival will take place from November 9 to 16, under the main theme – the art of film acting. The festival will open with Requiem for Mrs. J. (J. Rekvijem za gospođu, 2017) by the Serbian director and one of the members of the Fiction Competition jury Bojan Vuletić. This tragicomedy tells the story of an unemployed widow, meticulously preparing for her suicide. The film rests on the masterly acting performance of Mirjana Karanović.
The section Cinema Now, a selection of festival hits and highly anticipated new releases, will also feature the Indian film Sexy Durga (2017), which won the Hivos Tiger Award at this year’s festival in Rotterdam. This road movie about two lovers wandering the southern Indian province of Kerala is a great improvisation as well as a fascinating reflection on the contemporary India. The Chronicles of Melanie (Melānijas hronika, 2016) tells a story unravelling during the 1940’s Soviet occupation of Latvia, inspired by true life events of the journalist Melānija Vanaga. The film directed by Viesturs Kairišs is the Latvian candidate for an Oscar. Another film featured in the section is the Slovak premiere of a new release from the all-star French director François Ozon called Double lover (L’amant double, 2017). The titillating erotic thriller toys with a secret and a blurred line between expectations and reality. A Ciambra (2017) directed by Jonas Carpignano is the Italian candidate for an Oscar as well as one of the top ten nominees for this year’s LUX Prize. The story revolves around a teenage Romani boy Pio, who must quickly become a man in order to support his family.
One of the traditional festival sections Made in Slovakia presents the local and international audience with several attractive new local releases, many of them in their Slovak premiere. An anticipated documentary film, which will enter the current local film scene by its premiere at the Bratislava IFF, is a portrait of a recently late Slovak big beat icon Varga. The young director Sonya Maletzová met and started filming Marián Varga towards the end of his life. Through a sophisticated montage of archival records, the film condenses Varga’s life and career decades into musical numbers, where one track echoes in interpretations from different periods. His mortal frame visibly changes along with his musical style and temperament. However, somewhere beneath, Varga remains preciously unchanging and artistically as well as humanly consistent.
Another premiere to look forward to is the final part of Jan Hřebejk’s and Petr Jarchovský’s trilogy Garden store: Suitor (Zahradnictví: Nápadník, 2017) This time, it is a story of love, exposing the quiet war between parents and their children, affected by the war and the communist coup d’état.
Suitor is a bird’s-eye-view portrayal of the sharp dividing line between the pre- and post-war generations. They each have their own vision of happiness and therefore tread their own paths to reach it.
The section will also present a controversial portrait of a “velvet neo-Nazi”, The White World According to Daliborek (Svět podle Daliborka, 2017), by the Czech director Vít Klusák. The film was realized partially thanks to a co-production with Slovakia, especially through a significant creative input of the composer Vladimír Godár, whose music tinted the grotesque images of Dalibor’s everyday life a with a color of human tragedy.
The Made in Slovakia section will traditionally comprise a selection of films made by the students of the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica. This year the audience should not miss the internationally successful student films noticed by some of the biggest world festivals. Atlantis, 2003 (Atlantída, 2003, 2017) directed by Michal Blaško appeared in the student competition of the Cinéfondation film festival in Cannes and Magic Moments (2017) by Martina Buchelová made it to the Short Cuts competition section at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The list of legendary Slovak actors currently featuring Ladislav Chudík, Mária Kráľovičová, Jozef Adamovič, Štefan Kvietik, Eva Krížiková, Ivan Palúch, Emília Vášaryová and Martin Huba, whose memorial tiles are already embedded in the Bratislava Film Walk of Fame, will include the name of yet another outstanding actress – Božidara Turzonovová. This year’s laureate of the award for lifetime artistic creation and holder of a Film Walk of Fame memorial tile will personally introduce the film Penelope (Penelopa, 1977) directed by Štefan Uher, in which she played the lead role.
This year’s Lexicon section will shed some light on the specifics, history and future of acting for film, starting with the perfect acting opposites of silent slapstick comedy – Chaplin and Keaton – and ending with virtual actors in the era of 3D cinema. The section will feature two films from the silent era, The Floorwalker (1916) and One Week (1920), followed by the breakthrough A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), whose legendary lead star Marlon Brando uses the so-called method acting. The history of the Slovak cinema will be represented by the remarkable film Our Daily Life (Deň náš každodenný, 1969), interesting by the way it works with non-actors. The section’s highlight is a study of a consuming physical and psychological transformation of an actress who gradually merges with her character Kate Plays Christine (2016). The film directed by the American filmmaker Robert Greene is the winner of last year’s Special Jury Prize for the best screenplay in the category of documentary films at the Sundance Film Festival.
The 19th edition of the Bratislava International Film Festival will welcome one of the most outstanding actors on the current European acting scene, Jean-Marc Barr, who has received world recognition thanks to his cooperation with the controversial Danish director Lars von Trier, especially as the star of Luc Besson’s cult film The Big Blue (Le grand bleu, 1988). In Bratislava, Jean-Marc Barr will receive the festival’s own Award for Artistic Excellence in World Cinema as well as personally introduce his latest film Grain (Bugday, 2017), directed by the renowned Turkish filmmaker Semih Kaplanoğlu and often likened to Tarkovsky’s Stalker.
Another big name to attend the festival is the star of the North American independent film, the Canadian Denis Côté. The works of the 43-year-old Canadian director and former film critic with images from Eisenstein’s Ten Days that Shook the World tattooed on his back, are characteristic by their blending of fiction and documentary methods, as well as things left unsaid and secrets. The highlight of the profile section will be represented by the Slovak premiere of Côté’s latest film A Skin so Soft (Ta peau si lisse, 2017) about professional strongmen and bodybuilders.
The events accompanying the main festival program will include a number of great musical evenings, thought-provoking discussions and masterclasses of this year’s main festival faces Jean-Marc Barr and Denis Côté. The theme of acting will also sound throughout the lecture of Ladislav Dedík, the founder of Studio 727 post-production company, who will talk about the issue of the digital actor, motion-capture technology and full-body scan, linked to the future of film acting in the era of computer generated and special effects films and video games.