• Winner, Best Documentary, César Awards, 2009
• Winner, Best Film, French Critics Union, 2009
• Official Selection, Toronto Int'l Film Festival, 2008
• Official Selection, Venice Film Festival, 2008
Four Stars:“A great, loving, uplifting film. If you have not seen a single film by Agnes Varda, perhaps it is best if you start with The Beaches of Agnes.”
– Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“Spellbinding visual beauty reminds you of the transporting power of pure cinema. It attests to the undiminished creativity of a woman who has led a charmed life surrounded by art and artists.”
– Stephen Holden, The New York Times
(Cinema Guild release) A reflection on art, life and the movies, The Beaches of Agnes is a magnificent new film from the great Agnes Varda, director of Cleo from 5 to 7 and The Gleaners and I, a richly cinematic self portrait that touches on everything from the feminist movement and the Black Panthers to the films of husband Jacques Demy and the birth of the French New Wave.
When one thinks of the major figures of postwar cinema, the name Agnès Varda immediately springs to mind. Her body of work in both fiction and documentary is defined by a wealth of innovation and imagination. Irrepressible and enquiring, she is a force of nature, and even at eighty shows no signs of slowing down. Her new film is a reminder that there are few artists capable of such eloquence in cinema.
Varda takes beaches as her point of departure. Though she was not born near the ocean, she would travel to the seaside every Easter and summer during her childhood, and her memories of these trips act as a springboard for the film's meditation on her early life. She recalls her wartime exile to the coastal village of Sète as a period of endless fun and life jackets. While a young adult, Varda began her career as a photographer before raising a family with her husband, Jacques Demy (best known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and eventually turning to filmmaking. Returning to Sète over a decade after the end of the war, she used the locale and its fishermen as the backdrop for her remarkable first feature film, La Pointe Courte.
Varda weaves photographs, vintage footage, film clips, and present-day sequences into a memorable voyage through her life, during which she confronts the joy of creation and the pain of personal loss, death and aging. It is a singular trip played out against the exciting context of the postwar explosion of cultural expression in France. She knew everyone: her colleagues in the French New Wave, the Black Panthers in California and even Jim Morrison, who would visit when in Paris. Idiosyncratic, engaging and deeply moving, The Beaches of Agnes is a journey through an extraordinary artistic life.
• Winner, American Grand Prize at Montreal World Film Festival, 2007
• Winner, César Award for Julie Depardieu (Best Actress in a Supporting Role), 2008
• Official Selection, Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2008, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York City (link)
• Adapted from Philippe Grimbert`s celebrated autobiographical novel, SECRET (Simon and Schuster)
"A SECRET follows the saga of a Jewish family in post-World War II Paris. François, a solitary, imaginative child, invents for himself a brother as well as the storyof his parents’ past. But on his fifteenth birthday, he discovers a dark family secret that ties his family’s history to the Holocaust and shatters his illusions forever. Before the war, his father, Maxime, was married to Hannah when he fell madly in love with Francois’s mother, Tania. As a young Jewish couple living in Nazi-occupied France, Maxime and Tania were compelled to make difficult choices tosurvive the war while Hannah (Sagnier) would make a decision that would change her lifeand that of her family forever."
Cast: Cecile de France, Patrick Bruel, Ludivine Sagnier, Julie Depardieu, Mathieu Amalric
French, Yiddish, German, Hebrew, with English Subtitles
general screenings - shorts programs
French Shorts One In this vibrant collection of new works from dynamic and talent French filmmakers, we find stories of two unlikely people discovering the power of love, a man needing to pay his restaurant bill, a woman experiencing nostalgia after the death of her husband, a boy bringing medicine and love to his ailing grandmother, and a man with big ears finding love the hard way. (total running time: 78 minutes)
Showtime 1:00PM
• FRENCH ROAST
8 min | France | 2008 | Animated Short Director: Fabrice O. Joubert
Audience Award Winner at Festival Voix d'Etoiles: "In a fancy Parisian café, an uptight businessman is about to pay the check when he finds out that he's lost his wallet. To save time, he decides to order more coffee...
• ALTER EGO
20 min | France | 2008 | Narrative Short Film French with English Subtitles Director: Cédric Prevost
Official Selection at Clermont-Ferrand among over 25 other festivals around the world: "A cross-cultural story packed with a power message of love. In a park in Paris, Esther and Nadir come across each other, having apparently very little in common Apparently...
• NOUS DEUX ENCORE
17 min | USA, France | 2009 | Documentary Short Film French with English Subtitles Director: Heather Harlow
Winner of Best Short Film at Portland Int'l Film Festival: "Twenty two years after the sudden death of her Greek husband, Maxie, a former French television journalist, takes us into the soul of the love affair that changed her life forever. Captured visually through many of the countless photos he snapped over the years, this piercing portrait of one couples' passion for life and each other will touch even the most disenchanted hearts. (official site)
• GUYANE
13 min | France | 2008 | Narrative Short Film Hmong and French with English Subtitles Director: Imanou Petit
Official Selection of Festival International de Clermont-Ferrand: "Village Hmong de Cacao, French Guiana. When his grandmother gets sick, Ying, a ten year old, is in charge of going to get back medicines in Cayenne. Ying promenades in alleys empty of the city. When he decides to come back, the night already fell. Along the way, an extraordinary event happen: in a deafening noise, a ball of fire rises in the sky..."
• TONY ZOREIL
20 min | France | 2007 | Narrative Short Film
French with English Subtitles Director: Valentin Potier
Winner of Best Short Film at the 2008 Rome International Film Festival and Official Selection at 2008 Venice International Film Festival: "Tony is a 28 year-old single who inherited from an remarkable physical particularity. He has like the rest of his family very big ears and suffers from an extreme sensitivity to the slightest noise. In everyday life, he always goes out with his hat to hide his difference and he uses custom made ear plugs to temper surrounding sounds. In private, his apartment looks like a safe room isolated from the ceiling to the walls. The phone's ring tone and the doorbell have been replaced by flashing lights to avoid a too high level of noise which would generate unbearable suffering. Looking for love, he collects failures with women who reject his difference. His life has thus become a true nightmare. Unlike him, his parents are very proud of their 'oversized' ears they inherit one generation after the other. They hardly can bear their son's celibacy and they insist despite his complaints that he meets Elizabeth, a young and pretty big-eared Canadian girl. Tony reluctantly agrees..." (website) (SJIFF2 details)
French Shorts Two In this captivating and illuminating collection of short films from up-and-coming filmmakers, we find: a wife reliving her first moment of her husband's love every Sunday; a woman experiencing nostalgia after the death of her husband; a young woman discovering a 1960's riot in Paris and the secret life of her father; and two mothers experiencing the most beautiful and most tragic moments of their lives. (total running time: 76 minutes)
Showtime 5:00PM
• FORGET ME NOT (Ne m'oublie pas)
17 min | France | 2008 | Narrative Short Film French with English Subtitles Director: Katia Grivot
Clover and Maggie Award at Cleveland International Film Festival: "Day after day, Max, a 70-year-old java dancer, looses memory. He's suffering from a memory disease. To help him remember scattered things, his wife puts "memos" on his path. And each Sunday, for the love of her life who does not remember it, she sets up again and again their very first meeting and their love at first sight."
• NOUS DEUX ENCORE (Encore Screening)
17 min | USA, France | 2009 | Documentary Short Film French with English Subtitles Director: Heather Harlow
Winner of Best Short Film at Portland Int'l Film Festival: "Twenty two years after the sudden death of her Greek husband, Maxie, a former French television journalist, takes us into the soul of the love affair that changed her life forever. Captured visually through many of the countless photos he snapped over the years, this piercing portrait of one couples' passion for life and each other will touch even the most disenchanted hearts. (official site)
• LAST ILLUSIONS (Les Paradis Perdus)
30 min | France | 2008 | Narrative Short Film
French with English Subtitles Director: Hélien Cisterne
Nominated for 2009 César Award and Winner of Prix Jean Vigo 2008: "One night in May 1968, high school student Isabelle comes home shaken. Her worried parents decide to take her to the country to escape the riots in Paris. Though she doesn't now it yet, she's on her way to an entirely different place."
• BABY BLUES (D'une vie à l'autre)
12 min | France | 2008 | Narrative Short Film French with English Subtitles Director: Alice Mitterrand
Starring Cecile de France: "In a maternity ward, two women experience the most beautiful and the most tragic moment of their lives. Mille has lost her child at birth. She's desperate. When she's about to leave the maternity ward, she steals a baby. When the mother of the baby wakes up, the nightmare begins for her."
AUDIENCE AWARD NOTES
All narrative short films at French Cinema Day are eligible and in-competition for the Audience Award for Best Short Film.
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