From November 5th to 9th, as the opening of its 2013/2014 season, L’ECLAT presents five evenings of screenings, hosted by critic Eugenio Renzi, FID Marseille’s general delegate, Jean-Pierre Rehm, and attended by filmmakers Arnaud des Pallières and Salomé Lamas, focusing on the theme: “PORTRAIT / SOME FIGURES.”
L’ECLAT, a regional center for cinema education and training in PACA, opens its 5th cinema season with a major event that brings together many guests, including the filmmaker who represented France at the last Cannes Film Festival, Arnaud des Pallières, with an exceptional film: Michael Kohlhaas, and some premieres including Redemption, the new film by Miguel Gomes, noted last year with Tabou.
Tuesday, November 5th at 6:30 PM | Program presented by Jean-Pierre Rehm
REDEMPTION by Miguel Gomes (Portugal, 2013, 26 min) Premiere
Four interlocutors of different origins recall a moment of their lives marked by emotional trauma, in found color Super 8 or black and white 16mm video documents. The film takes social realities and European political figures as starting points to create fictional, partial, sometimes disarming biographies. Adopting a narrative style, surprising and full of irony, it relates a kind of false intimacy, real history, and invented memory of Passos Coelho, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Merkel. Co-written by Miguel Gomes and Mariana Ricardo (already his collaborator on Tabou), Redemption was presented in September 2013 at the Venice Film Festival and Toronto Festival.
ZONA OESTE by Olivier Zabat (Portugal, 2001, 0h42) Premiere
In Brazil, four teenagers from a Rio de Janeiro favela, local drug traffickers, talk about their condition as bandits living “on the rightful side of the bad life”; two men presenting themselves as military policemen discuss contracts they undertake alongside their policing activities; an evangelical preacher recounts how he abandoned the pulpit he held in his church to become a bandit.
at 8:30 PM: NO MAN’S LAND by Salomé Lamas (Portugal, 2013, 1h12) Premiere
A Portuguese mercenary talks about his past and gives us an unofficial and personal account of the conflicts he witnessed in various countries and continents. Paulo de Figueiredo, a 66-year-old ex-mercenary, undertook missions in Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and many more countries, alongside his regular gigs in France and his native land. Salomé Lamas films him dressed in a black sweater against a black background using a tripod-mounted camera, rarely altering the format of the shot, producing a highly cinematic image while his face contrasts starkly with the darkness.
Wednesday, November 6th
at 5:00 PM | DUSTS OF AMERICA by Arnaud des Pallières (France, 2011, 1h40) Exclusive screening
By hook or by crook, the world is called to live the American dream as its own. At least since cinema massively exported it. This dream, whether we want it or not, we share it. The project of this film is to make it both more intimate and more universal. Arnaud des Pallières conceived his film as “an improvisation, a logbook, a poem made of pieces of other films, snippets of sentences, music, and sounds… A film made of snippets, tiny pieces which put together make what we call the grand history. It talks about America. So, about us.”
at 8:00 PM | MICHAEL KOHLHAAS by Arnaud des Pallières (France, 2013, 2h02)
Official selection in competition – 2013 Cannes Film Festival
In the 16th century in the Cévennes, horse merchant Michael Kohlhaas leads a prosperous and happy family life. Victim of the injustice of a lord, this pious and upright man raises an army and sets the country on fire and blood to restore his rights. Freely adapted from a novella by Heinrich von Kleist in 1810, the film escapes historical reconstruction through the modernity of its dialogues and direction.
Thursday, November 7th evening hosted by Eugenio Renzi
at 6:30 PM | EL SICARIO, ROOM 164 by Gianfranco Rosi (USA, 2010, 1h20)
In a motel room at the US-Mexican border, a sicario sits in a chair, his face covered with a black veil. A sicario is a hitman. This one grew up in poverty and kills for drug dealers, but also for the government. Today, he waits for death. But first, he wants to talk about the twenty years he spent kidnapping, torturing, and killing. This film is a confession based on the article “The Sicario” written by Charles Bowden and published in Harper’s Magazine in 2009.
at 8:30 PM | FREE ANGELA by Shola Lynch (USA, 2013, 1h37)
Becoming a symbol of the fight against all forms of oppression: racial, political, social, and sexual, Angela Davis epitomizes, in the 70s, the “Power to People.” With her “fro” hairstyle and stunning silhouette, she inadvertently launched the “afro” fashion, taken up at that time by millions of young people. Forty years later, on the anniversary of Angela Davis’s acquittal, Shola Lynch revisits this crucial period in the second half of the 20th century with Free Angela. Always engaged, abolitionist activist, the icon Angela continues the fight. Power to the people!
Friday, November 8th
at 6:30 PM | BRIGITTE FONTAINE, REFLETS ET CRUDITÉ by Benoît Mouchart & Thomas Bartel (France, 2013, 58 min) Exclusive screening
“Brigitte Fontaine is a friendly Pythia, sometimes merciless, who declaims truths and absurdities with the majesty of a smiling or distant diva. The unique inhabitant of this inner castle invites us today to visit through her records, her shows, and her books, is she really from here? Yes, because Brigitte Fontaine is a terribly human artist.”
at 8:30 PM | I’M NOT THERE by Todd Haynes (USA, 2007, 2h15)
A journey through the ages of Bob Dylan’s life. Six actors portray Dylan as a kaleidoscope of changing characters: poet, prophet, outlaw, impostor, comedian, martyr, and “Born Again.” They all contribute to sketching a portrait of this definitively elusive American icon. I’m Not There received the Special Jury Prize at the 64th edition of the Venice Film Festival in 2007. The film also earned Cate Blanchett the Best Actress Award.
Saturday, November 9th
at 6:00 PM | THE FOG OF WAR by Errol Morris (USA, 2003, 1h35)
The film centers around Robert McNamara, one of the key figures in recent American history, yet who remains little known. Under John F. Kennedy, he takes part in the Bay of Pigs operation and the Cuban Missile Crisis. After Lyndon Johnson’s accession to the Oval Office, he remains in position and oversees the Vietnam War’s quagmire. Avoiding biography, based on testimonials or interviews, Errol Morris opts for a construction in eleven chapters, each revolving around a lesson McNamara would have drawn from his life, expressed in maxims.
at 8:30 PM | LAWYER OF TERROR by Barbet Schroeder (France, 2007, 2h15)
Communist, anti-colonialist, far-right? What conviction guides Jacques Vergès? Barbet Schroeder investigates to elucidate the “mystery.” At the start of this enigmatic lawyer’s career: the Algerian War and Djamilah Bouhired, the freedom fighter embodying her people’s liberation will. The young lawyer marries the anti-colonialist cause, and the woman. Then vanishes for eight years. Upon his return, Vergès defends terrorists from all sides (Magdalena Kopp, Anis Naccache, Carlos) and historical monsters such as Barbie. From scandalous cases to terrorist explosions, Barbet Schroeder follows the paths taken by the “Lawyer of Terror,” at the crossroads of politics and the judiciary. The filmmaker explores, questions the history of “blind terrorism” and unravels connections that are dizzying.
Guests: Arnaud des Pallières, filmmaker, Salomé Lamas, Portuguese filmmaker, Jean-Pierre Rehm, general delegate of FID Marseille, Robert Charvin, law professor, international law consultant, Eugenio Renzi, artistic advisor.
