Tag Archives: COLCOA French Film Festival

COLCOA — AMALRIC’S BARBARA

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For his seventh feature as a director, Mathieu Amalric investigates the life of French singer BARBARA through the prism of an actress (Jeanne Balibar, as Brigitte) portraying the singer for a film directed by Yves Sand (Amalric).

This acclaimed meta-narrative—for which Balibar won the César de la meilleure actrice—makes its West Coast debut Thursday night at COLCOA.

BARBARA

Thursday, April 26, at 10:15 pm.

Directors Guild of America

7920 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

Above and below: Scenes from Barbara. Image credit: Gaumont.

COLCOA — MARGUERITE DURAS

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“[Marguerite Duras] was a fascinating character… indomitable and tireless, who grabbed the world by the throat and said, ‘Look at me.’  But [she was] very intelligent, and able to think of many different strategies for dramatizing the basic facts of her life.” — Edmund White

Author of the autobiographical novel L’Amant, the screenplay Hiroshima mon amour (1959, for director Alain Resnais), and several diaries of the 1940s which play up her Resistance activities and play down her work with the Vichy regime, Duras was well known for telling a few stories many times, in many different ways.

Duras’ fictionalized “memoir of war” La douleur (written contemporaneously with the events it describes but not published until 1985, eleven years before her death) is the basis for a hallucinatory new film directed by Emmanuel Finkiel, a former assistant director for Jean-Luc Godard and Krzysztof Kieslowski.

LA DOULEUR / MEMOIR OF WAR stars Mélanie Thierry as Duras, and features Benoît Magimel, Benjamin Biolay, Shulamit Adar, and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet as “Morland” (the code name for François Mitterrand during the Resistance).

COLCOA presents the West Coast premiere of the film, followed by a conversation with the director.

 

LA DOULEUR / MEMOIR OF WAR

Tuesday, April 24, at 5:40 pm.

Directors Guild of America

7920 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

Mélanie Thierry as Marguerite Duras in La Douleur / Memoir of War. Image credit: Music Box Films.

DALIDA

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A star was born last spring at the COLCOA screening of DALIDA, a sweeping, big-screen biopic in the manner of Love Me or Leave Me, Lady Sings the Blues, and I’ll Cry Tomorrow. This week, Angelenos can see what the fuss was about in a series of Monday night screenings, courtesy of Laemmle.

In the title role, Sveva Alviti pulls out all the stops as the towering, tragic international chanteuse Dalida, climbing the charts while unsuccessfully navigating perfidious showbiz, bad marriage choices, and an irreversible spiral of despair.

 

DALIDA, Monday, October 23, at 7:30 pm.

LAEMMLE ROYAL, 11523 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

LAEMMLE PLAYHOUSE, 673 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena.

LAEMMLE TOWN CENTER, 17200 Ventura Boulevard, Encino.

LAEMMLE CLAREMONT, 450 West 2nd Street, Claremont.

laemmle.com/films/42735

 

DALIDA is also the opening night feature at this year’s ARPA International Film Festival in Hollywood.

Friday, November 3, at 8 pm.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

arpafilmfestival.com/

 

DALIDA, video on demand, from December 5. All platforms.

Sveva Alviti and Nicolas Duvauchelle in Dalida (2017). Image credit: Under The Milky Way.

ADI_3558_preview

COLCOA — L’ENVOI

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Some highlights from the last five days of the 2017 COLCOA FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL:

A glossy biopic of a great star of the sixties and seventies, played by an unknown in a tour-de-force performance—DALIDA, starring Italian model Sveva Alviti. With Riccardo Scamarcio, Niels Schneider, and COLCOA favorite Nicolas Duvauchelle as socialite “Le Comte de Saint-Germain.” Friday night, April 28, at 8:30 pm.

A TASTE OF INK / COMPTE TES BLESSURES. The post-punk music scene in Paris sets the stage for an explosive triangle: underground singer Vincent (Kévin Azaïs), his widowed father, and his father’s new, much younger girlfriend. This debut film by writer–director Morgan Simon screens on Saturday afternoon, April 29, at 1:20 pm.

Pre-fest screenings of A BAG OF MARBLES / UN SAC DE BILLES have triggered a strong emotional response. The Christian Duguay film screens early Saturday evening, April 29, at 5 pm.

MONSIEUR ET MADAME ADELMAN—the feature debut of playwright and political satirist Nicolas Bedos, about an egomaniacal writer and his wife—could be as divisive as last year’s Mon Roi. See for yourself on Saturday night, April 29, at 8:30 pm.

Romain Duris is a veteran of trench warfare trying to put his life back together in CEASE–FIRE / CESSEZ–LE–FEU, directed by Emmanuel Courcol, and screening on Monday afternoon, May 1, at 3:10 pm.

Lucie (comic Florence Foresti in a dramatic role) has survived cancer. Now she’s trying to recover from her recovery in Anne-Gaëlle Daval’s LADIES / DE PLUS BELLE, which co-stars Nicole Garcia and Mathieu Kassovitz. Monday evening, May 1, at 5:40 pm.

The story of Seine-Saint-Denis writer–performer Fabien Marsaud—his crippling swimming accident when he was 19, his recovery, and his rise as slam poet Grand Corps Malade—is told in STEP BY STEP / PATIENTS, co-directed by GCM and Mehdi Idir. Monday night, May 1, at 8:30.

In addition to these ticketed events, the following free screenings are available, first come, first served:

PLAYTIME (1967, restored, directed by Jacques Tati)

Saturday morning, April 29 at 10:50 am.

And all four screenings on Tuesday afternoon and early evening, May 2, are free.

These reruns of festival favorites screen in two DGA cinemas at 1 pm, 3:15 pm, 3:45 pm, and 5:45 pm. Titles will be announced the evening before on COLCOA’s website, Facebook, and Twitter.

 

COLCOA FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL

Through May 2.

Directors Guild of America

7920 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

Special thanks to Karine Choi at Big Time PR.

Top: Florence Foresti and Mathieu Kassovitz in Ladies / De plus belle.

Above: Romain Duris (left) in Cease-fire / Cessez-le-feu.

Below: Kévin Azaïs in A Taste of Ink / Compte tes blessures. Image credit: Cineuropa

COLCOA — L’ODYSSÉE

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The 21st annual COLCOA FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL is here, presenting nine days of premieres at the Directors Guild Theater in Hollywood. Some highlights from the first few days of the fest:

L’OPÉRA—a documentary about the Paris Opera directed by Jean-Stéphane Bron, and a worthy complement to Frederick Wiseman’s La Danse (2009)—screens Tuesday evening, April 25 at 5 pm.

Later that night, rustic farceur Bruno Dumont screens his new satire SLACK BAY / MA LOUTE. Tuesday, April 25 at 7:30 pm.

Lambert Wilson, Audrey Tautou, and Pierre Niney headline L’ODYSSÉE, a biopic of adventurer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau. Directed by Jérôme Salle, L’ODYSSÉE screens on Wednesday night, April 26 at 8:30 pm. (Wilson will participate in a post-screening Q & A.)

Director Stéphane Brizé—known for contemporary dramas starring Vincent Lindon—takes on Guy de Maupassant in the trenchant period piece A WOMAN’S LIFE / UNE VIE, starring Judith Chemla, and screening Thursday evening, April 27 at 7:25 pm. (Brizé will attend.)

Also Thursday, Pierre Deladonchamps stars in A KID / LE FILS DE JEAN, an examination of paternity and identity directed by Philippe Lioret, who is in town for the festival.

POLINA—directed by Valérie Müller and choreographer Angelin Preljocaj—takes wing once its eponymous protagonist leaves the Bolshoi (and Moscow) for France. But the lessons learned at the dance academy in Aix are only the beginning of Polina’s European education.

Starring Mariinsky dancer Anastasia Shevtsova, Niels Schneider, dancer-choreographer Jérémie Bélingard, Preljocaj star Sergio Diaz, and Juliette Binoche (who has danced for Akram Khan), POLINA screens on Friday evening, April 28 at 5:45 pm.

COLCOA FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL

Through May 2.

Directors Guild

7920 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

From top:

Scene from L’Opéra.

Judith Chelma in Un vie.

Pierre Deladonchamps and Gabriel Arcand in Le fils de Jean.

Anastasia Shevtsova in Polina.

Audrey Tautou in L’Odyssey.