Center for French and Francophone Studies presents Tournées French Film Festival

The richness of French cinema arrives on campus once again as Duke’s Center for French and Francophone Studies (CFFS) presents their annual month-long Tournées French Film Festival.

The Tournées Festival is a program of the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE) that partners with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy to bring current French films to college campuses around the United States.

Professor Laurent Dubois, director of the CFFS, describes the festival as “an opportunity to see films [Duke students] otherwise wouldn’t have access to.” It is a decade-long venture that seeks to expose the Duke community to a variety of French Films that have not been distributed widely or shown at all in the States. Dubois and Assitant Professor Anne-Gaëlle Saliot pick the films from a long list presented by the FACE. Running the gamut from established titans like Jean-Luc Godard to up-and-comers like Céline Sciamma, the film series revolves around a theme that changes each year corresponding with the latest releases and current issues.

This year’s theme, France in Europe, seeks to explore the meaning of France’s place in the increasingly complex European societal landscape, according to French Professor Saliot. French directors do not necessarily create the films. However, they all discuss themes that resonate with the francophone community at large and deal with universal themes like immigration, gender and the lingering presence of the past.

The film series includes Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre. The work crafts a warm portrait of the French immigration issue that focuses on an aging ex-bohemian shoe shiner who cares for an African immigrant youth stranded in the French port city of Le Havre and his efforts to reunite the boy with his family in England.

Céline Sciamma’s sophomore effort, Tomboy, will also show during the run of the festival. A tomboy, Laure (Zoé Héran), moves to the suburbs and reinvents herself as Mickaël, reveling in her/his newfound identity but constantly in fear of having her/his femininity revealed. The movie deals with the fluid nature of gender, a topic not often presented in French culture.

Another standout is the cine-essay by celluloid demigod Jean-Luc Godard, Film Socialisme. It is an unabashed treatise on the history and current status of the European landscape that juxtaposes discussions amongst vacationers on a cruise on the Mediterranean with the story of a rural couple in the midst of a marital crisis. Godard interpolates these macro- and micro-cosmic storylines with digital images of hedonism and violence creating relationships that leave the viewer to extrapolate his or her own meaning and views on the future of society. As Professor Saliot phrases it (quoting Godard), film is a “thinking form” that lends itself to reflection and engages the student in the French cultural experience. These films and the others presented are meant to promote interest in francophone culture and provoke thought in our own lives and interactions.

The Tournées 2012 French Film Festival is showing a film at Griffith Film Theater every Monday evening from September 3 until October 1.