FAU Presents French Film Festival
Florida Atlantic University’s department of languages, linguistics and comparative literature in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters will present a French Film Festival on Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m., beginning March 14 through April 11. All movies will be shown with a discussion following the screening in the Performing Arts Building, room 101,777 Glades Road, Boca Raton campus.
All films are in French with English subtitles and will be introduced by FAU faculty. Films include “La Belle Endormie,” Un Prophete,” Hadewijch,” Potiche” and “Des Dieux et des Hommes.”
- “La Belle Endormie,” or “The Sleeping Beauty,” will be shown on March 14. In this retelling of the classic fairy tale, 6-year-old Anastasia, cursed to sleep for 100 years, visits far-off lands in her slumber and renounces “the world of little girls.” She wakes up a teenager a century later and discovers carnal pleasures as well as crushing heartbreak.
- “Un Prophete,” or “A Prophet,” will be shown on March 21. Malik, a 19-year-old French-Arab, enters prison as an uneducated naïf and is thrust into a rigidly defined social system rife with corruption, cronyism and racism.
- “Hadewijch” will be shown on March 28. 20-year-old Céline is expelled from a nunnery for her overzealous faith and returns to the secular world where she meets rebellious teenager Yassine and his older brother, Nassir, whose religious fervor mirror’s Céline’s own.
- “Potiche” will be shown on April 4. Potiche (which translates as “trophy wife”) stunningly recreates the world of the 1970s in telling the story of potiche Suzanne’s transformation from submissive housewife to intrepid leader. As Suzanne, wonderfully played by the reigning queen of French film Catherine Deneuve, breaks free of her coddled life, she realizes, just like many other women who discovered feminism in the 1970s, that the personal really is political.
- “Des Dieux et des Hommes,” or “Of Gods and Men,” will be shown on April 11. A sublime tale of faith and doubt based on a real incident, “Of Gods and Men” chronicles the story of eight French Trappist monks living in an impoverished Algerian village. When faced with threats of violence from fundamentalist terrorists and the Algerian military, the monks must decide whether to seek safety or risk their lives and stay with the local villagers who have come to trust them and rely on their aid.
For a full schedule and description of the movies, visit http://www.fau.edu/llcl or call 561-297-2533.
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