Film Screenings / Programs / Series
SERGE BOZON PRESENTS
April 16 – April 16
Filmmaker Serge Bozon, one of the leading lights of contemporary French cinema – his film LA FRANCE enjoyed a highly successful run here at Anthology in 2008 – was recently given the opportunity to organize a 10-day takeover of Paris’s Pompidou Museum, a collaboration with fellow filmmaker/critic Pascale Bodet which brought films new and old, music, DJs, readings, critiques, and other performances to the museum, all under the umbrella of “the history of French cinema.” For the retrospective component of the event, Bozon selected eight films, one from Italy and seven from America. This to represent the history of French cinema! As explanation, Serge offered a quote from Henri Langlois’s final article: “All the history of cinema is just a dialogue between France and America.”
This spring, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Anthology Film Archives will be presenting Round Two of that carte blanche, with Anthology focusing on two Hollywood masterpieces from Allan Dwan and Jacques Tourneur (significantly, to Bozon, directors championed by the circle of cinephiles and critics associated with Paris’s MacMahon cinema, and not the CAHIERS DU CINÉMA set), as well as an encore screening of LA FRANCE. By way of shedding light (albeit just a glimmer) on his selections, Bozon writes:
“Just before leaving Hollywood forever, Tourneur wrote this in 1965: ‘A well designed chair has an air of expectancy.’ I will explain this mysterious sentence in terms of ‘mise en scène’ by looking at the two best movies about male friendship: TENNESSEE’S PARTNER and CANYON PASSAGE. Think about this never-ending impossible masculine duo, say Christmas and Lucas in Faulkner’s LIGHT IN AUGUST. One is strong and laconic, like a solitary sphinx, the other is weak, indecisive, and self-destructive. But the strong can not help but to help the weak. Why? How can they be (such close) friends? I’ll propose a French mac-mahonian answer.”
Serge Bozon will be here to introduce all three shows, and will appear following CANYON PASSAGE for a Q&A with film curator and critic Miriam Bale.
Special thanks to Serge Bozon, Miriam Bale, Scott Foundas (Film Society of Lincoln Center), May Haduong (Academy Film Archive), Kathryn Brennan (Paramount), and Paul Ginsburg (Universal).
