The French’s role in film history is colossal. From the early 19th century, France has been putting forth directors and innovators like George Méliès who, with his surreal films (such as the famous science fiction short, Le Voyage dans la Lune, or in English, A Trip to the Moon), developed the techniques of cinematic grammar that have permeated the language of all film structure since. Then there’s the famous French Impressionist period, when creative pioneers such as Jacques Feyder, Jean Epstein and Abel Gance began constructing inspired poetic realism in movies within the rubble of a dying European film industry.
Unfortunately, French films – like all internationally produced films— seem to have taken a back seat in modern theatres to make room for the big Hollywood pictures; this limits viewers to a very small iris shot of what the film industry – the entire film industry – has to offer. On top of that, somewhere along the way of history, the idea of the French film became lost in translation for most American audiences; despite the rich story of French cinema, the mentioning of a “French film” evokes images of film loaded with conceited, frothy melodrama. In my brief emails with Samantha Peterson, a Romance Studies graduate student here at Boston University, she says the following in response to this perception: “Americans often think of “French film” as artsy, pretentious, and opaque. We’d like to debunk that myth while still providing and enjoyable and educational experience for the BU community.”
Peterson and other graduate students of French literature take part in putting together an annual film festival, The Tournées Festival, which displays a diverse collage of modern French films. The Tournées Festival, a nationwide event in many universities, is fashioned by the Franco-American Cultural Exchange, or FACE, with a grant from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture. Here at Boston University, support from the Department of Romance Studies, the Office of Study Abroad, and, of course, many dedicated graduate students makes this event possible. Since 2009 when it first debuted at BU, The Tournées Festival remains, and will remain, a yearly fall semester tradition held to introduce undergraduate students to both French cinema and, via French cinema, French culture and Francophone life.
Since October 17, the Festival has screened a different French film (with English subtitles) every other week night in the Photonics Building free of charge to any student with a valid BU Terrier Card. Peterson says, “Of course, being cinephiles ourselves, we also try to showcase a variety of cinematic genres, styles, and perspectives.” Indeed the films screened represent a spectrum of genres, from Potiche, a vibrant historical film about a housewife’s transformation into a valiant leader of feminism, to White Material, a melancholy, dreamlike story of a coffee-plantation owner struggling to maintain her business during a civil war, to Un Prophète, a tale of a 19-year-old thrust into the corrupted, violent prison world.
The Tournées Festival has two more films to screen. L’illusionniste, which will be shown on Tuesday, October 25, is a beautifully animated film about the unlikely friendship between a struggling magician and a poor cleaning girl and celebrates the poignant nonverbal ways in which we can communicate with one another. Des Hommes et des Dieux, which will be shown on Thursday, October 27, is a true story of eight French Trappist monks in an impoverished Algerian village and their struggle against fundamentalist terrorists and the Algerian military. Because of technology issues last Wednesday, White Material will be shown at 5pm on Thursday preceding Des Hommes et des Dieux.
The Tournées Festival is a enriching opportunity for any BU student, film lover or French student or none of the above, to get a small glimpse at the great cinema being crafted overseas.
Admission is free, donations suggested. Doors open at 7pm in the Photonics Center, room 206 (8 St. Mary’s Street).
