2011 Tournées French Film Festival Coming to Roger Williams
Saturday, March 19, 2011
FIve major French films will screen in Rhode Island in early April at the First Annual RWU Tournées French Film Festival. Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF) and Roger Williams University (RWU) will collaborate on the festival that will take place over a three-day period, April 6-8th, and will be free to the general public and campus community. The campus of Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI will serve as the host location for the Festival.
The Tournées French Film Festival will present five new important French feature films, (all with English subtitles), along with a selection of shorts films that FLICKERS: Rhode Island International Film Festival will premiere from its partnership with UNIIFRANCE that will precede each feature.
Themes of alienation, connection
The theme for this year’s Festival is “Alienation in the Age of Connection.” For the past few decades, numerous contemporary French filmmakers have focused on protagonists who exist outside dominant culture, or who feel detached from it. Emphasizing the realities of social oppression, isolation and alienation, these films have highlighted the powerful human desire for acceptance, intimacy and belonging.
The Festival's five films, according to organizers, continue on in this vein. Each film centers on characters struggling to make social connections in a world that is often constructed to keep them apart. Aesthetically, these films eschew Hollywood’s affinity for vibrant imagery, hyper-kinetic editing, broad characterizations and closed endings. Long-takes, hand-held-cameras, natural dialogue, complex characters and ambiguous narratives are used to create cinematic experiences that feel like life-as-it-is-lived; these are all films that invite the audience to engage with the world, rather than escape from it.
Special screening of Frederick Wiseman documentary on ballet
In addition to the five central films, the Festival will present a special screening of Frederick Wiseman’s recent documentary, “La Danse,” in anticipation of his visit to the Roger Williams University Campus this April at the annual Roving Eye International Film Festival. “La Danse” paints an intimate, behind-the-scenes portrait of the Paris Opera Ballet. It also, like all of Wiseman’s work, provides a searing depiction of an institution and its complex social inner-workings. Ultimately, ”La Danse” stands as a powerful contemplation about the relationship between crass commerce and high art.
The Program Directors for the First Annual RWU Tournées French Film Festival are Dr. Roberta Adams, Assistant Dean of Humanities and Performing Arts; George T. Marshall, Executive Director and J. Scott Oberacker, Educational Outreach Director, both of FLICKERS: Rhode Island International Film Festival. For more information, got to www.RWU.edu or www.RIFilmFest.org.
The Tournées French Film Festival at Roger Williams University, April 6-8, Roger Williams University, 1 Old Ferry Road, Bristol, and Barrington Public Library. Festival screenings will take place at the Global Heritage Hall, Room GH01 on the RWU Campus. Free.
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