Cole Smithey - Film Blog: French Actresses

French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) presents

CinéSalon

Cinematographer Caroline Champetier:

Shaping the Light

Tuesday, September 19–Tuesday, October 31

FIAF • Florence Gould Hall; 55 East 59th Street, NYC

New York, NY, September 8, 2017 — This fall, the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York’s premiere French cultural center, presents the new CinéSalon series Caroline Champetier: Shaping the Light. On Tuesday, October 24, Champetier comes to FIAF in person for a special Q&A after the 4pm screening of The Innocents and 7:30pm screening of Holy Motors.

Award-winning director of photography Caroline Champetier is a master of her craft. The orchestrator of lighting and camerawork on more than 100 films, her art is often felt as much as it is seen. Champetier has a rare ability to shape light to create palpable energy, evoke powerful emotions, and transform movie sets into fully-realized worlds.

Champetier is the cinematographer behind some of France’s greatest filmmakers, past and present. A student of William Lubtchantsky, she has worked with generations of pioneering filmmakers, from Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette to Chantal Akerman, Arnaud Desplechin, and Léos Carax.

This fall’s CinéSalon series features some of Champetier’s most striking films, including Holy Motors, Of Gods and Men, and films recently restored under her supervision.

Caroline Champetier: Shaping the Light coincides with the New York premiere, on electronic billboards surrounding Times Square, of Voir la mer, from France’s foremost conceptual artist, Sophie Calle. Featuring cinematography by Caroline Champetier, the series of intimate, evocative video portraits reveals the emotional response of Istanbul residents seeing the sea for the first time. Voir la mer is presented as part of FIAF’s celebrated Crossing the Line Festival.

Series curated by Caroline Champetier and Delphine Selles-Alvarez.

About CinéSalon

In the spirit of the French ciné-clubs and literary salons, CinéSalon pairs an engaging French film with a social post-screening wine & beer reception. Every 7:30pm screening will be introduced by a high-profile personality in the arts.

Films in French with English subtitles unless otherwise noted.

CinéSalon is free for all FIAF Members.

CinéSalon • Caroline Champetier: Shaping the Light

Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux)

Tuesday, September 19 at 4 & 7:30pm

5:30–8pm: Wine & Cheese Tasting

Xavier Beauvois, 2009. 122 min. Color.

With Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, and Olivier Rabourdin

In French and Arabic with English subtitles.

The true story of seven French Trappist monks who were kidnapped from their monastery in Tibhirine and killed during the Algerian Civil War, Of Gods and Men surpasses the tragically topical by focusing on the monks’ faith and their spiritual commonality with their Muslim neighbors. A surprise box office smash upon its release, this powerful film is an enduring paean to faith in the face of fundamentalism.

Caroline Champetier won the 2011 César for Best Cinematography for her superb work here, notably in a bravura scene inspired by the “Last Supper” and set to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

"Beautiful, somber and rigorously intelligent."—The New York Times

7:30pm screening will be introduced by Kirsten Johnson, award-winning director and cinematographer.

Part of FIAF’s Fall Open House. Complimentary Wine & Cheese Tasting from 5:30–8pm.

About Kirsten Johnson

Kirsten Johnson’s film Cameraperson was named one of the Top Ten Films of 2016 by The Washington Post and The New York Times. It premiered at Sundance, was short-listed for an Academy Award, won the National Board of Review Freedom of Expression prize, and won the Cinema Eye Outstanding Nonfiction Feature Award. Her short,The Above which premiered at the 2015 New York Film Festival, was nominated for the IDA Best Short of 2016. Kirsten’s camerawork appears in the Cannes premiere, Risk, Academy Award-winning Citizenfour, Academy Award-nominated The Invisible War, Tribeca Documentary winner, Pray The Devil Back To Hell, and Cannes winnerFahrenheit 9/11. She shared the Sundance 2010 Cinematography Award with Laura Poitras for their work on The Oath. She is currently a Sundance Art of Non-Fiction Fellow and was just awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She studied at the French National Film School, La Fémis, where she was the first American to graduate from the Cinematography Department.

Gang of Four (La Bande des Quatre)

Tuesday, September 26 at 4 & 7:30pm

Jacques Rivette, 1989. 160 min. Color.
With Bulle Ogier, Benoît Régent, Laurence Côte, Fejria Deliba

In French with English subtitles.

Four students at a prestigious all-female acting school happily live together in the suburbs of Paris until a mysterious stranger warns them that their classmate Cécile is in danger. The young women soon discover that their world of theater is closely connected to the shadowy recesses of contemporary reality. While the entrancing Gang of Four is full of trademarks of the most playful of New Wave directors—the back and forth between theater and reality, the plot as an enigmatic game of snakes and ladders, the focus on female protagonists—it stands out as one of Rivette’s most enjoyable films.

"Gang of Four offers an accessible and entertaining vision of how the New Wave has survived and evolved long after it was declared dead."—The New York Times

Special guest speaker to be announced.

Enjoy complimentary wine & beer after both screenings.

Related Event:

Sophie Calle: Voir la mer (New York Premiere)

Presented as part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival in partnership with Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts

Sunday, October 1 through Tuesday, October 31, nightly from 11:57pm–midnight

On Times Square electronic billboards from 42nd–49th Streets between 7th Avenue and Broadway

Free and open to the public

Since the late 1970’s, Sophie Calle—“France’s foremost conceptual artist” (The New York Times)—has been making provocative and often controversial work that confronts issues in her personal life. She is well-known for her sleuth-like explorations of human relationships, which have led her to follow strangers, and find work as a hotel chambermaid.

Calle’s work has been shown at international venues including the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, MoMA (New York), the Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Tate Gallery (London), Crossing the Line Festival 2011, and recently a site-specific installation in Greenwood Cemetery (Brooklyn) for Creative Time.

In Istanbul, a city surrounded by the sea, Sophie Calle met people who had never seen it. For Voir la mer, as Calle describes it, “I took them to the shore of the Black Sea. They came to the water’s edge, separately, eyes lowered, closed, or masked. I was behind them. I asked them to look out to the sea and then to turn back towards me to show me these eyes that had just seen it for the first time.” Magnified on Times Square’s electronic billboards, five of these intimate video portraits silently reveal their emotional response to this evocative experience.
Image: Caroline Champetier

For details visit www.crossingthelinefestival.org

La Sentinelle

Tuesday, October 3 at 4 & 7:30pm

Arnaud Desplechin, 1992. 139 min. Color.
With Emmanuel Salinger, Thibault de Montalembert, Jean-Louis Richard

In French with English Subtitles

La Sentinelle is the haunting tale of a medical student who arrives in Paris to discover a human head in his luggage. Determined to identify his “charge,” the young man wades deep into the murky waters of Cold War diplomacy. A profound meditation on recent European history and a wry depiction of Paris’s elite circles, this brilliant debut feature introduced audiences to Arnaud Desplechin, one of France’s most significant contemporary writer-directors. In choosing to work with the fledgling director, Caroline Champetier launched her important collaboration with a younger generation of filmmakers that would shape the French cinema of our era.

"An absorbing, psychologically resonant portrait of French student life."—The New York Times

Special guest speaker to be announced.

Enjoy complimentary wine & beer after both screenings.

Presented as part of FIAF’s First Tuesdays. See fiaf.org for info.

Toute une nuit

Tuesday, October 17 at 4 & 7:30pm

Chantal Akerman, 1981. 90 min. Color.
With Aurore Clément, Natalia Akerman, Paul Allio

In French with English subtitles.

From sunset to dawn over the course of a single summer night in Brussels, a variety of couples come together—or apart. Set to Italian pop hits of the eighties, this nearly wordless gem plays both like a perfectly choreographed extended dance piece and a deliriously woozy wander into the nocturnal heat, with entire relationships playing out in brief street-corner scenes. In her first feature as solo director of photography and her only collaboration with the late, great Chantal Akerman, Champetier beautifully captures the sights and textures of a sultry summer night in the city.

“One of the most ravishing films I have ever seen"—Huffington Post

Special guest speaker to be announced.

Enjoy complimentary wine & beer after both screenings.

The Innocents (Les innocentes)

Tuesday, October 24 at 4pm

Anne Fontaine, 2016. 115 min. Color.
With Lou de Laâge, Agata Buzek, Agata Kulesza, Vincent Macaigne

In French, Polish, and Russian with English subtitles

Mathilde, a Red Cross doctor stationed in Poland shortly after World War II, is urgently called to a Benedictine convent, where she learns that several nuns are on the verge of giving birth after having been raped by Soviet soldiers. Deciding to go against Red Cross protocol and the wishes of a fanatical Mother Superior, she fights to save the young women and their babies. Based on true events, this gripping period piece convincingly recreates a particularly dark pass in modern history, while evoking the plight of every innocent caught in the crossfire between rampaging armies and dogmatic beliefs.

“Uniquely powerful and beautiful."—Le Monde
Screening followed by a Q&A with Caroline Champetier

Enjoy complimentary wine & beer after the Q&A.

Holy Motors

Tuesday, October 24 at 7:30pm

35mm

Leos Carax, 2012. 115 min. Color.
With Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue

In French, English, and Chinese with English subtitles

Climb into a white stretch limo with mysterious master of disguise Monsieur Oscar (played by the virtuoso Denis Lavant) and embark on an astounding trip through contemporary Paris. As Oscar changes identities, the film shifts gears from fantasy to musical comedy, from Henry James to CGI, and from family drama to hardboiled action. The sum total is a caustic, visionary representation of a world transformed by technology, haunted by materialism, but still lifted by director Leos Carax’s trademark dark romanticism. A disorienting, exhilarating masterpiece by one of the major artists of our era, Holy Motors is a must-see.

“Carax’s ultimate definition of the cinema, and it’s one of the best and grandest that a movie has ever offered."
—The New Yorker

“Best French film of the 21st century!”—Indiewire

Screening followed by a Q&A with Caroline Champetier

Enjoy complimentary wine & beer after the Q&A.

Hannah Arendt

Tuesday, October 31 at 4pm

Margarethe von Trotta, 2012. 113 min. Color.
With Barbara Sukowa, Janet McTeer, Julia Jentsch.

In English & German with English subtitles

Starting with the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann by the Mossad in Argentina, Hannah Arendt describes the writing of Arendt’s classic account of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and the controversy that followed its publication in The New Yorker, recreating a long-lost New York émigré intellectual milieu along the way. If film as intellectual history sounds arduous, a single scene of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy arguing out ideas while playing pool will convince you otherwise: Margarethe von Trotta’s gripping dramatization succeeds not only in bringing complex ideas to life without dumbing them down, but in teasing out their emotional stakes.

“Stimulating and inspiring.”—The Huffington Post

Enjoy complimentary wine & beer after the screening.

Grandeur et Décadence d’un petit commerce de cinéma

Tuesday, October 31 at 7:30pm

Jean-Luc Godard, 1986. 92 min. Color.
Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie Valera, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Caroline Champetier.

In French with English subtitles.
Previously unreleased in theaters, this newly restored gem finds Godard straying from his commission to make a film noir for television in order to tell the story of a down-on-his-luck producer and a director preparing his new film. Godard is as irreverent and thought-provoking as ever in his assessment of cinema marginalized by the unprecedented expansion of television in the 1980s. Yet Grandeur et décadence is more than an SOS sent out from the shores of cinema: it is also a love letter to the dream factory and an essential chapter in Godard’s storied career.

"Deeply moving and funny, indisputably accurate, today more than ever.”—Slate

Special guest speaker to be announced.

Enjoy complimentary wine & beer after the screening.

About FIAF

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) is New York’s premiere French cultural and language center. FIAF's mission is to create and offer New Yorkers innovative and unique programs in education and the arts that explore the evolving diversity and richness of French cultures. FIAF seeks to generate new ideas and promote cross cultural dialogue through partnerships and new platforms of expression. www.fiaf.org

Merci!

Special thanks to the Institut français and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

Special thanks to Julien Rejl (Capricci Films), Arianna Turci (Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique), John Kochman (Cohen Media Group), Courtney Vlaming (Music Box Films), Michael DiCerto (Sony Pictures Classics), Matt Pierson (Swank Motion Pictures), Nadège Le Breton (Why Not Productions), Nancy Gerstman (Zeitgeist Films).

CinéSalon is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. CinéSalon is sponsored by Air France and Delta Air Lines, BNP Paribas, and Renault Nissan. Wine courtesy of Vinadeis, the exclusive wine sponsor of CinéSalon. Beer courtesy of Kronenbourg 1664, the exclusive beer sponsor of CinéSalon.

Program Sponsors: Air France and Delta Air Lines, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Edmond de Rothschild Foundations, Engie, Enoch Foundation, French American Cultural Exchange (FACE), Florence Gould Foundation, Hermès Foundation within the framework of the New Settings Program, Howard Gilman Foundation, Institut français, JCDecaux, National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Office de Tourisme de Boulogne-Billancourt, Performing Arts Fund NL, and Pommery.

LISTING SUMMARY

What:	*CinéSalon* *Caroline Champetier: Shaping the Light*
When:	Times and titles detailed above.
Where:	FIAF – Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street (between Park & Madison Avenue)
Admission:	$14; $7 students; Free for FIAF Members; Advanced tickets $3* Free FIAF Member tickets distributed day-of. Show your Membership card at the Box Office. Member tickets may be purchased in advance for $3. As part of FIAF’s September 19 Open House, screenings of Of Gods and Men*are free for both FIAF Members and Non-Members. Tickets will be distributed day-of at the box office on a first-come first-serve basis or may be purchased in advance for $3 (FIAF Members) or $5 (Non-Members).
Tickets:	800 982 2787 \| fiaf.org
Information:	212 355 6160 \| fiaf.org
Transportation:	4, 5, 6, N, R and Q to 59th Street & Lexington Avenue
	F to 63rd Street & Lexington Avenue; E to 53rd Street & 5th Avenue