HPU Cinémathèque French Film Festival

 

The Department of Arts, Humanities, and Languages of the College of Liberal Arts, with a grant from the FACE Foundation, is pleased to present their fourth French Film Festival.  Albertine Cinémathèque is a program of the FACE Foundation, which brings French cinema to American college and university campuses.  This year’s program will be in person. Follwoing an opening screening at the Hawaii Theater Center on Nov. 4,  five films will be introduced and shown on the downtown campus on Friday afternoons in Spring 2025.   

 

contempt (Le Mepris)                                 November 4, 6 P.M.                Location:  HaWai'i Theater Center

This classic film by Director Jean Luc Godard features scenes  from a marital breakdown between screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) and his wife (Brigitte Bardot), as both become enmeshed in the behind-the-camera struggles of a director (Fritz Lang) and producer (Jack Palance) as they film an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. The screening is free to HPU students with id. 

 

Chicken for Linda (Linda veut du Poulet)                                  January 31, 3 P.M.                         Location: WP 6-323 

Paulette feels guilty after unjustly punishing her daughter Linda and would do anything to make it up to her. Linda immediately asks for a meal of chicken with peppers, which reminds her of the dish her father used to make. But with a general strike closing stores all across town and pushing people into the streets, this innocent request quickly leads to an outrageous series of events that spirals out of control, as Paulette does everything she can to keep her promise and find a chicken for Linda.

Directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach (The Girl Without Hands) unleash a unique visual marvel of hand-painted animation with bright, color-blocked characters, and a story that is an intoxicating blend of slapstick comedy, musical, and family drama, as Paulette and Nina ultimately confront the grief of an unspoken tragedy, and the meal that could finally bring them closer together.

                  

MArs Express                                                                         FEBRUARY 7, 3 P.M.                                     Location: WP6-323    

In 2200, private detective Aline Ruby and her android partner Carlos Rivera are hired by a wealthy businessman to track down a notorious hacker.

On Mars, they descend deep into the underbelly of the planet’s capital city where they uncover a darker story of brain farms, corruption, and a missing girl who holds a secret about the robots that threatens to change the face of the universe.

the Taste of Things (La Passion de Dodin Bouffant)                        FEBRARY 14, 4 p.m.                       Location: WP6-323

 

 

Set in France in 1889, the film, directed by Tan Anh Hung,  follows the life of Dodin Bouffant as a chef living with his personal cook and lover Eugénie. They share a long history of gastronomy and love but Eugénie refuses to marry Dodin, so the food lover decides to do something he has never done before: cook for her.

Five Devils (Cinq Diables)                                           FEBRUARY 21, 3 P.m.                                                     Location: WP6-323

Eight-year-old Vicky (newcomer Sally Dramé) has an unusual gift: she can recreate any scent she comes across, even that of her beloved mother Joanne (Palme d’Or winner Adèle Exarchopoulos). When Vicky’s estranged aunt suddenly returns to their mountain town, the invocation of her fragrance plunges the young girl back in time to unravel the mystery of Joanne’s fiery past with her now sister-in-law.

The acclaimed breakout from filmmaker Léa Mysius (screenwriter for Claire Denis and Jacques Audiard), THE FIVE DEVILS forges a witchy and wildly imaginative fable out of family secrets and queer romance.

Four Daughters (Les Filles D'Olfa)                                                       February 28, 4 P.M.                                  Location: WP6-323

One of the year’s most acclaimed releases, this riveting documentary by two-time Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania (The Man Who Sold His Skin) uses an audacious formal conceit to tell the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters. Attempting to answer the question of how and why the Tunisian woman’s two eldest were radicalized, Ben Hania reveals a complex history. We watch as the family relives key events in their lives with help from professional actors standing in for the missing girls. Winner of the Best Documentary award at the Cannes Film Festival, Best Documentary Feature at the Gotham Awards, and Best Writing at the IDA Documentary Awards, Four Daughters is a compelling portrait of five women and a unique and ambitious work of nonfiction cinema that pushes against the conventional boundaries of the documentary form to explore the nature of memory, rebellion, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters.

 

The HPU Cinémathèque Film Festival is made possible by Albertine Cinémathèque, a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine, with support from the CNC / Centre National du Cinema, and SACEM / Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain.

 

Contact  Dr. Chadia Chambers-Samadi for more information