The University of Mississippi’s French Film Festival will kick off on Wednesday, Jan. 29 at 6:30 p.m. in Turner Center room 205 and will run at the same time and place weekly through March 5.
The festival aims to provide students and members of the community the opportunity to view French films of diverse genres. A different French film will be screened at each festival meeting.
The festival, which first took place in 2016, was brought about by a partnership between the university’s French Department and the non-profit Albertine Foundation.
Associate Professor of French Sara Wellman explained how the partnership with the Albertine Foundation came about.
“(The Albertine Foundation) has all kinds of initiatives that they invest in, and one of them is a grant to help colleges and universities all across the United States show recently released French films in the name of building more cultural understanding between France and the U.S.,” Wellman said. “Back in 2016, we applied for this grant for the first time and we got it.”
The grant allows for six French films to be screened throughout the allotted time. Five of these films can be recent releases whereas the sixth must be a “classic” French film, according to the rules of the grant.
Wellman emphasized that during the process of selecting appropriate films for the festival with fellow French Professor Anne Quinney, there was a focus on choosing films that are largely unavailable to the public. This ensures that students and community members who attend have a unique screening experience.
Opening the festival is “The Animal Kingdom,” a science fiction/adventure film that screened at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, followed by “Chicken for Linda” on Feb. 5, an animated film, the classic “Belle Du Jour” on Feb. 12, “Revoir Paris,” a fictionalized retelling of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, on Feb. 26, and “Toni en Famille” on March 5.
“By watching a foreign movie you are most directly exposed to different languages, but you also experience something of daily life in that area,” senior classics major Miles Thompson said. “Watching films is seeing a moment in the past or at least the ways that some people tend to see it, even though in its own production style.”
Keilah White, freshman psychology and legal studies major from Southaven, Miss., worked on advertising for the film festival.
“I first heard about the film festival from my French professor, Hailey Kaim,” White said. “I got to hear from some of the amazing faculty in the French Department, and I knew from the first meeting it was something I wanted to be a part of. I’m most looking forward to everything coming together in the end; I’m excited to see how everything will turn out.”
After viewing the festival’s lineup, one film stood out to Thompson.
“Chicken for Linda seems like fun in particular because I feel like animation can surpass even regular films in their degree of stylization, and I really enjoy stylization in films,” Thompson said.
Wellman shared aspects of the festival he is looking forward to.
“I am not a cinema specialist. My specialization is 17th- and 18th-century French literature, but I love different movies,” Wellman said. “I love film, and I’m excited about getting people on our campus excited about French and Francophone films.”
Wellman spoke to those who find themselves on the fence regarding the content of the films being shown.
“I totally understand that some people wouldn’t necessarily imagine that they would love to go see a foreign film,” Wellman said. “But I just think you owe it to yourself to be surprised by something, and in my experience, the students and community members who come out and invest a couple of hours of their time in watching one of these films have come away surprised with how much they liked it. It’s so interesting to get a little bit of insight into different cultures and see different places represented in these films. So I think you can really learn a lot and enjoy it.”
