On Screen This September: Film & TV in New York

France, 1971
Directed by Robert Bresson
Based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story White Nights
Starring Isabelle Weingarten and Guillaume des Forêts
Cinematography by Pierre Lhomme
Approx. 82 min. 4K DCP.

On the Pont Neuf, Guillaume des Forêts befriends Isabelle Weingarten, potentially suicidal over the absence of her lover.   Over the next four nights, he desperately falls for her himself , but a question lingers – what if her lover shows up?

A Janus Films Release

Jeanne (Clara Pacini), a 15-year-old orphan, witnesses the shoot of a film adaptation of the fairy tale The Snow Queen, and she becomes fascinated with its star, Cristina (Marion Cotillard), an actress who is just as mysterious and alluring as the Queen she is playing.

On Wednesday, September 17, join author Santiago Amigorena for a special conversation on the debut of his novel The Ghetto Within(Le ghetto intérieur, Gallimard, 2021; trans. Franck Wynne, Harper Collins, 2022). He will be joined by Daniel Loedel, writer and senior editor at Bloomsbury.

A critical sensation in France, The Ghetto Within is Amigorena’s personal attempt to confront his grandfather’s silence. Passed down, from generation to generation, the silence of Amigorena’s grandfather became his own. A gripping study of inheritance, The Ghetto Within re-imagines the life of this Jewish grandfather, a Polish exile in Argentina, whose guilt provokes an enduring silence to span generations.

Belgian auteur Chantal Akerman envisioned this live, musical take on her 1993 travelogue D’Est in 2005 with her partner, cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton. Now, in this New York Premiere, Wieder-Atherton performs her curated score alongside award-winning pianist, Sarah Rothenberg. 

Discover Zar Amir’s films at Metrograph along with his short movie Two People Exchanging Salivean.

A writer, director, casting director, producer, and actor, Tehran-born, Paris-based Amir helmed her first short, Khat, when she was only 18, and has since established herself as a force to be reckoned with in international cinema. Don’t miss this tribute to an indomitable and exacting artist, who will be visiting Metrograph in person to present a program that includes her directorial work, Tatami, as well as Two People Exchanging Saliva, Holy Spider, Shayda, and Mehran Tamadon’s documentary My Worst Enemy. 

MoMA’s complete retrospective of Chantal Akerman’s work for the cinema, comprising more than 40 features and rarely screened short films in new digital preservations, celebrates a multiyear effort by the Fondation Chantal Akerman and the Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK to restore, document, and exhibit her career in film, installation, and writing. International audiences hungering to discover more about Akerman (b. Belgium, 1950–2015) in the wake of her death have been rewarded with unprecedented access to her moving-image and paper archives.

French mime, screenwriter, and director Jacques Tati’s hapless, old-world alter ego Monsieur Hulot appeared in four sublime comedies from 1953 through 1971. Hulot’s third go-round, Playtime, a commercial and critical disaster upon its original release, is now ranked 23rd in the 2022 Sight & Sound critics’ poll of the greatest films ever made. A feast for the eyes, Playtime stages subtle choreography within graphic, mid-century production design, as Hulot embarks on a 24-hour trip through a bewildering, hyper-consumerist Paris. The influence of Tati’s alter ego on the Pee-wee Herman character is palpable: both are postmodern clowns in distinct visual worlds, who virtuosically reimagine physical comedy.

François Truffaut, 1976, 105min, 35mm
Starring Jean-François Stévenin and two hundred children!

A series of interconnected stories following the lives of children, from toddlers to tweens, school yard hijinks to first loves. Truffaut said he loved working with young people, and no one has captured the mysteries of adolescence with such humor and compassion. It is also a film that poses a question, asked by Wes Anderson, “Do kids in French villages really run to school in packs?”

CENSORED film series 

The film series presents five feature-length and three short films that were censored upon their release in France, Lebanon, or the United States – and often banned in other countries as well. Produced between 1943 and 1985, these films were suppressed by state authorities who considered them searing indictments of the prevailing social and political order. Several have been rarely – or almost never – screened in the U.S. Their objects of critique range from fascism and wartime occupation, to colonialism, racism, police brutality, class inequities, repression of labor movements, patriarchism, and McCarthyism – often exposing several of these forms of oppression at once. Several films present joyous portrayals of communal cooperation and successful resistance to social ills (Rendez-vous of the Docks, Salt of the Earth), or affirmative counter-histories (Leila and the Wolves). Some bear witness to events as they unfold – whether told directly (October 1961, The Hollywood Ten) or through allusion (The Raven). The formal ingenuities used by the directors are highly innovative, avant-garde, even revolutionary – going beyond conventional filmmaking practices to unleash the creative potential of the medium. This film series explores vital questions about the possibilities of alternative and engaged filmmaking – and about the political and inspirational power that movies can wield.

Explore upcoming screenings of French films, including:

• Enter the Void by Gaspar Noé September 3, 5 – 6
• Titane by Julia Ducournau, September 26, 29 – 30  
• Clouds of Sils Maria by Olivier Asayas, September 26 and 30  
• Passages by Ira Sachs, September 26 – 27 

Join One Film One Federation and Telescope Film for French Cinémathèque, a free monthly online film club hosted by Peter Debruge, Chief Film Critic at Variety. On September 22, the club will screen François Ozon’s When Fall is Coming.  Register below to access these one-of-a-kind films and to join the film community.

RSVP

Discover our roundup of this month’s must-see programs available on the international French-language network, TV5 Monde.