Calendar - Spring 2007
January 15
7:30 pm
Film screening of La
Petite Jérusalem/Little Jerusalem by
Karin Albou. Part of the
FACE French Film Festival.
Location: Hippodrome
Theater, 25 SE 2nd Place, Gainesville.
The intimate lives of two women in a low-income neighborhood of Paris are explored, raising questions of religious interpretation, freedom, sexuality and familial relationships. Read More >>
January 22
7:30 pm
Film screening of L'Intrus by Claire Denis. Part of
the FACE French Film Festival. Location: Hippodrome
Theater, 25 SE 2nd Place, Gainesville.
In a tale of both inner and outer journeys, a mysterious Russian shadows a man recovering from a black market heart transplant. Read More >>
January 29
7:30 pm
Film screening of Carnages by
Delphine Gleize with Jacques Gamblin, Chiara Mastroiani. Part
of the FACE French Film Festival. Location: Hippodrome
Theater, 25 SE 2nd Place, Gainesville.
Circulation of the body parts of a bull, who is butchered after a tragic bullfight, ties together random stories and individual pathos. Read More >>
February 8
4:00 pm
McQuown Room, 219
Dauer Hall
La femme come témoin de guerre: Les récits
des infirmières de 1914-1918, a lecture by Professor
Ruth Amossy of the University of Tel Aviv, Israel. Dr. Amossy
is a specialist of French culture and literature of the 19th
and 20th centuries, including critical theory, French discourse
analysis, rhetoric and the theory of argumentation.
February 12-17
Dr. Catherine Grosdemange, Dean and Professor
of Chemistry, Université de
Strasbourg, France
Seminar plus meetings to establish research exchange (TBA)*
February 12
- 7:30 pm
Film screening of Nathalie by Anne Fontaine. Part of the FACE French Film Festival. Location: Hippodrome Theater, 25 SE 2nd Place, Gainesville.
A woman’s take on a classic love triangle, Nathalie is a film about desire, fantasy, manipulation and suspense. Read More >> - 9:30 pm
Film screening of Versailles, Rive Gauche (Versailles, Left Bank) by Bruno Podalydès. Part of the FACE French Film Festival. Location: Hippodrome Theate, 25 SE 2nd Place, Gainesville.
Successive mishaps and uninvited guests transform a private evening of intimate conversation into something altogether different. Read More >>
February 19
- 7:00 pm
Film screening of Pas de repos pour les braves/No Rest for the Braves by Alain Guiraudie. Part of the FACE French Film Festival. Location: Hippodrome Theater, 25 SE 2nd Place, Gainesville.
An angst-ridden French teenager is convinced that he will die if he falls asleep in this existential coming-of-age story. Read More >> - 9:00 pm
Film screening of Je ne suis pas à pour être aimé (I’m not here to be loved) by Stéphane Brizé. Part of the FACE French Film Festival. Location: Hippodrome Theater, 25 SE 2nd Place, Gainesville.
An lonely older man, weary of his job evicting tenants, meets a charming young woman—trouble is, she’s about to get married. Read More >>
March 19
African Film Festival Traveling Film Series 2006-2007: Free & Open to the Public
- Don’t F*** with me I have 51 brothers and sisters
3:00 - 4:30 pm
Dumisani Phakathi, South Africa, 2004, 86 min (in English & Zulu with English subtitles)
This film is the story of Dumisani’s epic journey to find his 51 siblings and come to terms with the loss of his father as a child. This film is as much the story of South Africa’s search for its origins as it is Dumisani’s. - Toi, Waguih
March 19, 4:30 - 5:00 pm
Namir Abdel Messeeh, Egypt / France, 2005, 28 min (in French & Arabi with English subtitles)
The story of a relationship between a screenwriter son and his father, told through the silence of the father’s feelings about his political life. Grand Prize winner at Rencontres du Moyen Metrage de Brive Festival. - A child’s love story / Un amour d’enfant
5:30 - 7:06 pm
Ben Biogaye Beye, Senegal, 2004, 96 min. (in French with English subtitles)
This a touching investigation of innocent love between children in Senegal set against the background of a traditional class system. Despite the difference in their background and family-lives, five young children become friends. Omar is in love with Yacine, a pretty, intelligent girl from a wealthy family. He writes her a love letter, but it only causes misunderstanding and a rift between the two. Meanwhile, Demba falls in love with a beggar, and they share secret long looks and tender touches in their brief meeting time. - Ousmane
7:10 - 7:25 pm
Dyana Gaye, Senegal / France, 2006, 15 min. (in Wolof & French with English subtitles) – Dakar, Senegal.
Ousmane, a 7 years-old child who begs in the streets, decides to write a letter to Santa Claus. -
Whole: A trinity of Being,
March 19, 8:00 - 8:16 pm
Shelley Barry, South Africa, 2004, 16 min.
Three experimental shorts which deal with sexuality, visibility, and voice from the perspective of a wheelchair use who turns the camera on herself to celebrate love and survival.
- My lost home / ma maison perdue
8 :20 - 8 :40 pm
Kamal El-Mahouti, Morocco / France, 2001, 19 min. (in French & Arabic with English subtitles)
The filmmaker recounts his childhood memories in the wake of the destruction of the housing project where he grew up, exploring the complexly intertwined history of France and Morocco through the eyes of Moroccan immigrants living in France.
-
The night with truth / La nuit de la vérité
8:45 - 10:25 pm
Fanta Régina Nacro, Burkina Faso, 2004, 100 min. (in Dioula, French & more with English subtitles)
Mirroring the political strife and genocide in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, this film opens as preparations are being made to end a decade of civil war in a fictitious country. A peace agreement is about to be signed and celebrated in a night of reconciliation with a “laying down of arms.” As the powerful drumming begins, both rebels and government forces gather, bringing with them years of rage, grief, hope, suspicion, and bitterness.
March 20
African Film Festival Traveling Film Series 2006-2007: Free & Open to the Public
- A child’s love story / Un amour d’enfant
3:00 - 4:36 pm
Ben Biogaye Beye, Senegal, 2004, 96 min. (in French with English subtitles)
This a touching investigation of innocent love between children in Senegal set against the background of a traditional class system. Despite the difference in their background and family-lives, five young children become friends. Omar is in love with Yacine, a pretty, intelligent girl from a wealthy family. He writes her a love letter, but it only causes misunderstanding and a rift between the two. Meanwhile, Demba falls in love with a beggar, and they share secret long looks and tender touches in their brief meeting time. - Ousmane
4:40 - 4:55 pm
Dyana Gaye, Senegal / France, 2006, 15 min. (in Wolof & French with English subtitles) – Dakar, Senegal.
Ousmane, a 7 years-old child who begs in the streets, decides to write a letter to Santa Claus. - The night with truth / La nuit de la vérité
5 - 6:40 pm
Fanta Régina Nacro, Burkina Faso, 2004, 100 min. (in Dioula, French & more with English subtitles)
Mirroring the political strife and genocide in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, this film opens as preparations are being made to end a decade of civil war in a fictitious country. A peace agreement is about to be signed and celebrated in a night of reconciliation with a “laying down of arms.” As the powerful drumming begins, both rebels and government forces gather, bringing with them years of rage, grief, hope, suspicion, and bitterness. - My lost home / ma maison perdue
6 :45-7 :05 pm
Kamal El-Mahouti, Morocco / France, 2001, 19 min. (in French & Arabic with English subtitles)
The filmmaker recounts his childhood memories in the wake of the destruction of the housing project where he grew up, exploring the complexly intertwined history of France and Morocco through the eyes of Moroccan immigrants living in France.
- Daughter of Keltoum
March 20, 7:10 - 8:56 pm
Mehid Chref, Algeria, 2001, 106 min. (in Arabic with English subtitles)
A young woman, Rallia, raised in Switzerland, travels to an isolated and barren Berber settlement located in the rocky Atlas Mountains of Algeria. Rallia’s journey is one of multi-tiered discovery in terms of her relationship to her extended discovery in terms of her relationship to her extended family, traditional Berber culture, and her desperate need to locate her biological mother. Through her eyes, the viewer is immersed in a world virtually untouched by contemporary society, one that still clings to tribal mores and strict religious codes of conduct. Mehdi Charef skillfully captures the windswept vistas of a faraway mountain range with wide camera angles that frame the a harsh environs and the desperate daily search for water, the responsibility of the resilient women of the Berber tribe.
-
Don’t F*** with me I have 51 brothers and sisters
9:00 - 10:36 pm
Dumisani Phakathi, South Africa, 2004, 86 min (in English & Zulu with English subtitles)
This film is the story of Dumisani’s epic journey to find his 51 siblings and come to terms with the loss of his father as a child. This film is as much the story of South Africa’s search for its origins as it is Dumisani’s.
March 28 - April 1
Visit by Samuel Sidibe, Director, Museum National de Mali.
ROUNDTABLE: The Future of Mud: a Mason’s Story, (Premiere
showing),
Architecture, Masons, and Modernity in Djenne, Mali:
Questions raised by a film blending “Truth” and “Fiction.”
Co-chairs: Samuel Sidibé, Musée National du Mali,
Trevor Marchand, SOAS, and
Susan Vogel, Columbia University
The roundtable centers upon a new film, The Future of Mud: A
Mason’s Story (53 minutes, coproduced
by the panel chairs) on the state of architecture in Djenne now.
The documentary presents issues of changing aspirations, new
affluence, Djenne’s
connection to a global world, and the future of the mason’s
craft. It is firmly grounded in co-writer and co-producer Trevor
Marchand’s
long research in Djenne. The film, however, takes an unorthodox
approach, casting
individuals in roles – a mason, his assistant, and his
family – and using staged scenes to tell a fictional narrative.
We filmed our characters in their daily activities and then intercut
the staged scenes seamlessly with the observational documentary
footage and interviews. The technique of blending fact and fiction
in the service of “truth” raises
a number of compelling issues. The roundtable has three parts:
first, each participant will briefly introduce a question that
they will be discussing – either concerning the film’s
unusual documentary approach or the subject of masons and architectural
change. Second we will have a screening of the film. In the final
hour,
each panelist will elaborate on the question he/she raised. Discussion
with the audience.
