This year's French Film Festival will take place from October 4 to November 11, with the opening of the restored version of “Cyrano de Bergerac”, a masterpiece by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, the godfather of French cinema.H Edition. Also on the programme: a retrospective dedicated to Henri-Georges Clouzot at the Cinémathèque. The cultural attaché of the French Embassy and the French Institute, organizers of this event, Sylvia Paglia presents the new developments.
This is 19H The French Film Festival will be your baptism, since you took over the organization on September 3. Can you tell us about your background?
I am the heir to everything that my predecessor and the teams of the French Institute have achieved, they are 100% the organizers of this festival, which is very rare. I am not Portuguese, but of Romanian origin. I worked for twenty years in Paris as director of the Cinema Le Latina, which was the cinema of Latin cultures. So I had to welcome and work with Portuguese directors on many occasions. I knew the great classics, from Manoel de Oliveira to Paulo Rocha. I also contributed to the spread of young Portuguese directors in France, like Teresa Villaverde or Pedro Costa. So my contact with Portuguese or Lusophone culture was through cinema. I wanted, without any interest in reciprocity, to take the opposite path: to come and present French directors in Portugal.
How did you learn Portuguese?
On the other hand, because I speak all the Latin languages. It also came through literature. In Romania, I translated Portuguese poets, most notably Sofia de Melo Brenner Andersen. I also come regularly to Portugal, because I love this country. Now that I have settled there, there will be an opportunity to practice it.
So let's go back to the festival: what is its ambition?
It is a major annual event, organized around several axes, the most important of which are new films. It is a window on current French cinema, which will be partly broadcast in Portuguese cinemas later. The public will be able to see the films in premieres in 11 cities across the country (Lisbon, Almada, Porto, Leiria, Coimbra, Viana de Castelo, Beja, Seixa, Faro, Aveiro and Setúbal), and not all of them will be selected. Even by Portuguese distributors later. So we have a part dedicated to contemporary cinema and another to our godfather or godmother. This year it will be Jean-Paul Rapinoe.
His masterpiece “Cyrano de Bergerac” will also be your opening film…
The news is that his great film “Cyrano”, which won ten Césars and an Oscar for best costume, has been restored and screened at the Cannes Film Festival this year. In Portugal, people will be able to see it, during the launch of our festival on October 4, before it is released in cinemas across the country. Jean-Paul Rapinoe will come to present the film. Four or five of his other films, such as “La Vie de château”, will be screened at the São Jorge Cinema in Lisbon. We must remember that Rapinoe does not have a huge body of work, because he is a very meticulous director, who works like a master on each of his films. The imagery in “Cyrano” is magnificent. We owe it to the great cinematographer Pierre Lhomme. The restoration of the print is a tribute to his work, especially in the area of light.
Why does the festival run from October 4 to November 11?
It is a question of copying. Films cannot be broadcast simultaneously throughout the country. The fact that it is diffused over time also allows us to carry out interesting work with the film schools of Lisbon and Porto, because our calendar coincides with the opening of the school year. There is, for example, the Acid Course (Independent Cinema Association for its Dissemination), which highlights films made by young independent directors, who are present during the screening, then during a master class. Then several topics are discussed, linked to the theme of the film, to the shooting…
Besides Jean-Paul Rapinoe, can you tell us about other names from French cinema?
Xavier Giannoli will come to present “L'Apparition”, Gilles Lellouche “Le Grand Bain”, Jean Becker “Le Collier Rouge”, Stéphane Brizy “En guerre”… We will also have a very young, luminous, brilliant actor, who was revealed in “La Prière” for which he won the acting award at the last Berlinale: Antony Pagon. If all goes as planned, we will also have the pleasure of welcoming Nuno Lopes to present “The Wind is Turning”. This actor from Lisbon travels regularly between Portuguese and French cinemas. So our selection is very varied: there will be comedies, dramas, art films, more mainstream films… The great variety of programming is very common at our festival.
Last year, Jean-Pierre Melville was the subject of a retrospective at the Lisbon Cinematheque. Which director will be in the spotlight this year?
Henri-Georges Clouzot will be in full retrospective, usually. His films and his extraordinary documentary “The Enigma of Picasso” will be on display. We will also have a documentary on Clouzot himself, “L’Enfer,” directed by Ruxandra Medrea and Serge Blumberg. This is a very interesting look at the workings of the man who was considered the “French Hitchcock.”
Will there be animated movies?
Yes, we have programs for schools and children. We will have the opportunity to present a great French animation director, Michel Ocelot, with his film “Dilili in Paris”, which is a wonderful film, like all his other films. You should definitely see it.
Do you have an idea of your festival's audience? Are the spectators mostly French expatriates?
No, not only, because there is a love story between Portuguese and French cinema, and for a long time. Just look at the French film releases here, which do very well. Among European productions, those from France are also the most represented in Portugal. More than 150 French films are screened every year on Portuguese screens. The opposite is also true: the French really like Portuguese films, perhaps even more than the Portuguese themselves.
