French

A nativity story reboot that gently skewers French cultural pretensions, it features newcomer Victor Ezenfis as a discontented Parisian teenager in search of a father, Mathieu Amalric and Fabrizio Rongione as his, respectively, callous and gentle alternative paternal options, and Natacha Régnier as his single mother.
The American-born expatriate filmmaker Eugène Green exists in his own special artistic orbit. All Green’s films share a formal rigor and an increasingly refined modulation between the playfully comic, the urgently human, and the transcendent, and they are each as exquisitely balanced as the baroque music and architecture that he cherishes.
Eugène Green drops biblical motifs – Abraham and Isaac, Mary and Joseph – into this genuinely contemporary setting as if it were the most natural thing in the world, augmenting them with nods to crime films, Italian Baroque music, a Doisneau photograph, three 17th century paintings and an artificial way of speaking that is anything but current.
The characters are positioned within the visual compositions and look directly into the camera, their diction flawless. Whatever needs saying – and that’s a lot – they recite impassively, in declamatory fashion. Along the way, there are jabs at the literature milieu and trendy yuppies.
A film where divine seriousness rubs against bizarre comedy, where theology meets caricature, an intriguing film, anachronistic and innovative in equal measure.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Les divisions is a documentary about the Château de Chambord and the title comes from the Divisione of Johannes Scotus (Erigena), the ninth century Irish philosopher (who was a ‘realist’, although the film is more ‘nominalist’ in characterization of the castle which presents itself as a representation). I say that it is a representation, since it is neither practical for military purposes (too many doors), nor to live in (too many draughts), but only as pure representation. So for the commentary, I tried to imagine how a Renaissance philosopher would view it in a pastiche of a scholastic or gothic text, then a pastiche of Fichte’s Vocation of Man and finally a pastiche of Baudrillard.’
– Raoul RuizRead More »

“Plot Synopsis by Dan Pavlides
Three people from the country travel to the big city to seek employment in this documentary that contrasts primitive and modern life in Nigeria. After they have money, the three return to their native village to resume shepherding and hunting.” (All Movie)Read More »

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The story of a Machiavellian plan hatched by a money-grubbing stepmother to push aside the young lover of her stepdaughter whom she wants to marry a wealthy idiot. The woman devises the most abominable machinations to achieve her ends, going as far as to try and murder her own husband. This melodrama in which evil attempts to prevail over love was adapted from the play THE SPIRIT OF EVIL by Quebec’s prolific playwright of the 40s and 50s Henri Deyglun.Read More »

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The adventure of a young university student confronted with love and the Quebec separatist movement of the 60s. Denis Héroux, who directed this film while in university, says, ”I realized my strongest characters, those who oriented the film almost against my will, were ardent separatist, sometimes even terrorist. But I was stuck with them and had to continue following them.”Read More »

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Forty-year old Abel travels to France from Quebec on a pilgrimage to explore the mother country and the land of his ancestors. As he travels around and does all the things tourists are supposed to do, his expectations and perceptions are shattered and he is forced to revise his romanticized image of France. As he travels to see the places where Rimbaud was born, lived, and died, he meets two women who show him the warmth and kindness he was searching for.Read More »

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The film is part of the television series “La culture en chantiers” (“Culture under Construction”). In the form of a video letter, this film goes up the Seine. Starting with the traces of the Normandy landing of the Americans, it ends in Paris in Jean Genet’s hotel room. It is a voyage made to meditate on the “state of things” in a clear and melancholy way—the mutations in cinema and the media in the year of the Gulf War, in the company of Serge Daney and others.Read More »

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The population of a small Beauce town in Quebec dogs a mother and her daughter who are believed to trade on their charms. The film shows the brutal reality of the village inhabitants’ behaviour toward the mother and her daughter. Taureau, the woman’s son who is a little crazy, but as strong as an ox, even takes the liberty of courting the teacher. The Beaucerons feel obliged to avenge their honour.Read More »

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This film is based on the simplest staging principle: 9 high-level mathematicians have each less than 4 minutes to tell, in front of the camera, what fascinates or moves them, brings them joy, makes them dream or laugh in their scientific activities.

The film was shot for the purpose of the exhibition “Mathématiques, un dépaysement soudain” (Maths: a sudden change of scenery), which took place from October 2011 to March 2012 at the Cartier Foundation in Paris.Read More »