Calendar - Spring 2008
January 17 , 2008
4:00 pm, Gerson Hall, Room 121
Jews and Muslims in Recent French
Cinema, presented by
Dr. Catherine Portuges, University of Massachusetts, Amherst -
Graduate Program Director in Comparative Literature, Program in Film Studies,
and Curator of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival.
February 8-9, 2008
Keene Faculty Center, All Day
International Camus Colloquium, Camus devant l'Histoire/Camus and History
An international conference to examine the relevance of Albert Camus’s thought today. Presenters include Colin Davis, Ronald Aronson, Marie-Thérèse Blondeau, David Carroll, David R. Ellison, Raymond Gay-Crosier, Agnès Spiquel, James Tarpley, Maurice Weyembergh. Co-sponsored by the France-Florida Research Institute, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Center for European Studies, and the Department of Romance Languages and literatures. Visit Camus Colloquium page for more information.
January - February 2008
FACE French Film Festival Spring 2008*
- January 21, 2008:
Indigènes / Day of Glory by Rachid Bouchareb (2006) 128 mn,
The film won the Prix d'interprétation masculine at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. - January 28, 2008:
Les amitiés maléfiques. Poison friends by Emmanuel Bourdieu (2006) 100 mn.
At the beginning of a new semester at the Sorbonne, Eloi, a reserved but passionate literature student, meets André, a brilliant and charismatic student quick to criticize his peers for their desire to write and publish literature. Mesmerized by André’s impressive intelligence, Eloi and two tentative friends, Alexandre and Edouard, let André become their mentor. With Andre’s help, Alexander enters a famed theatre school while Eloi has the courage to ask Pr. Mortier to supervise his dissertation. Edouard, on the other hand, falls out of André’s favor by committing the “sin” of having a short story published, a development that leads Eloi to throw away the book he has been working on. After discovering that André cannot be trusted, Eloi and Alexandre’s admiration for him begin to erode, as does the respect of Pr. Mortier, who discovers his mediocrity while reading his dissertation. After Mortier refuses to grant him a Ph.D., André pretends that an important research job at an American university awaits while he is in fact joining the French army as a literature instructor. In the meantime, Eloi’s book is recovered by his mother and published to critical acclaim, and Alexander’s career in theatre flourishes. Caught in a maelstrom of deceptions, André has to confront both the success and rejection of his friends.
Cast: Malik Zidi, Thibault Vinçon, Alexandre Steiger, Thomas Blanchard, Natacha Régnier, Jacques Bonnaffé - February 11, 2008:
L’Iceberg/ The Iceberg. by Abel/Gordon/Romy (belgian) 2005, 84 minutes
Fiona is the manager of a fast-food restaurant and lives with her family in the suburbs. She seems happy until one day she accidentally gets locked in a walk-in industrial freezer while closing up the restaurant. Half frozen and barely alive in the morning, she realizes that her husband and two children didn’t even notice that she was missing. Little by little, Fiona develops an obsession for everything cold and icy: snow, polar bears, fridges, icebergs... One day she drops everything, climbs into a frozen goods delivery truck and goes in search of a real iceberg. As her adventure unfolds, Fiona unsettles the lives of those around her. Her husband desperately tries to get her back, but she falls in love with a gruff sailor who decides to bring her to the North Pole. In the end, she goes back to her husband, and the sailor marries an Inuit tribeswoman. Using mainly sound and vision, with very little language, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Rony employ a series of inventive set pieces that are sure to elicit laughter. Written and directed by three clowns, L’Iceberg is a deadpan Belgian comedy that draws inspiration from silent comedy greats such as Mack Sennett and Buster Keaton while also utilizing colors and choreography reminiscent of Jacques Tati. - February 18, 2008
Qui a tué Bambi ? Who Killed Bambi? by Gilles Marchand. 2003, 128 min. Marchand makes his directorial debut in this thriller that centers on a student nurse’s misgivings regarding an attractive doctor. While leaving the hospital one night after her shift, Isabelle hears a ringing in her ear and loses her balance. When she comes-to, she meets Dr. Philipp, a good-looking yet mysterious man who gives her the nickname “Bambi” due to her difficulty in remaining upright. Her suspicions that there is something terribly wrong with him are confirmed when she discovers that Philipp uses drugs and takes advantage of the female patients at night. The strong-willed Isabelle starts her own investigation, but because of the stress of her job, her condition worsens, making it possible that she will become one of Philipp’s patients. After a patient disappears, Isabelle wonders how far Dr. Philipp is willing to go. Utilizing the sterilized appearance and echoing acoustics of the hospital, Marchand conveys a dark and unsettling atmosphere throughout the production. Sophie Quinton was nominated for a César for her performance as Isabelle.
Cast : Sophie Quinton, Laurent Lucas, Catherine Jacob, Yasmine Belmadi, Michèle Moretti, Valérie Donzelli - February 25, 2008:
Le petit Lieutenant by Xavier Beauvois. 2005, 110min.
Nominated for six Césars, including best picture and deservedly winning best actress for the great veteran Nathalie Baye, "Le Petit Lieutenant" is successful on two parallel levels. Perhaps because co-writer and director Xavier Beauvois is also an actor (he has a key supporting role), "Le Petit Lieutenant" is an involving character drama before it is anything else, a film that is determined to give us a real sense of what the lives of a group of elite Parisian police officers are like on the most intimate level.
Cast: Nathalie Baye, Roshdy Zem, Jalil Lespert.
March 4, 2008
10:40-11:30 AM, Dauer Hall 215
Aux Sources du Français Canadien: Variation Sociale et Régionale,
a lecture by Dr. France Martineau, University of Ottawa. Lecture
in french – open to public and french students.
4 :00 – 5 :00 PM, Dauer Hall 215
A Diachronic Perspective on the Development
of French Negation, a lecture by Dr. France Martineau, University
of Ottawa. Lecture
in English in the series of Linguistics. Co-sponsored by
the France-Florida Research Institute, the Department of Romance
Languages and Literatures, the Program in Linguistics.
Abstract (PDF)
April 10, 2008
2:00PM, CSE E119
Sailing the South Pacific with Jules & Paul Verne: The Kip Brothers, a lecture presented by Jean-Michel Margot, President of North American Jules Verne Society. Co-sponsored by the Department of English and the France-Florida Research Institute
