Thursday, November 25, 2010

White Material - Sunday 28th November 5pm

'There's no better filmmaker working in the world right now.' There, you have it from the horse's mouth: Nick James, editor of our bible Sight & Sound was talking about Claire Denis on the release of her latest film White Material - which we have for you on Sunday. Having burst on the scene with Chocolat in 1988, the first of her films that KFC screened was Beau Travail, made in 1999 and based on French Foreign Legion troops in North Africa. Then a gap, for us, until 35 Shots of Rum, just a year ago - 'a richly textured meditation on family, friendship, love and loss' as it said in our brochure. And then there's the star, Isabelle Huppert, whom you've seen twice recently, in Home and The Sea Wall. Astonishingly she has been nominated for the Best Actress César (France's Oscar) 13 times, but only won it once (for Chabrol's La Cérémonie) but if British she'd surely have been Damed by now.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Mother - Sunday 21st November 5pm

South Korean director Joon-Ho Bong has already had two major successes, with Memories of Murder, screened by KFC in spring 2005, and The Host in the 2007 Festival. Like an old friend really! But Tom Huddleston, respected critic of Time Out says: 'Bold, unpredictable and quietly devastating, Mother is Bong's first masterpiece.' Quite an improvement on what was already a pretty good standard then! And do have a look at the comments of the two eminent American critics quoted in the brochure and on the film page: this is another of the autumn programme's films that we expect to be amongst the mustn't-be-missed category

Thursday, November 11, 2010

A weekend of hell?

How about a weekend of hell? Or L'Enfer as we've chosen to call it. You might be wondering about what's going on, with films on both Saturday and Sunday, so here's the pitch: one of France's greatest film directors,Henri-Georges Clouzot, decided that he had the idea for a masterpiece, and wrote the script for a film which was to be called L'Enfer. For various reasons, which will become clear, Clouzot's great new film was never made, but his widow made important parts of it available to Serge Bromberg, a gifted young documentarist, and he was able to create a fascinating movie (from interviews, those 'rushes' and his own knowledge) which we're showing on Sunday at 5pm. So this one is called L'Enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot. Peter Bradshaw calls it a 'must-see' and the collective view of most reliable critics is similar. It gets the small matter of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes!

Now on Saturday at 5pm, we're screening the film that another of France's best-known directors, Claude Chabrol, made from the script of L'Enfer that was acquired for him from Clouzot's estate, about 30 years later. So you'll have a chance to compare the two films and gain more understanding of the script-to-film process, as well as enjoying two pictures that could stand alone as fascinating in themselves. Emmanuelle Béart, or Romy Schneider - which one would have better played the role of a wife likely to inspire a man's jealousy? You'll have the choice...

Saturday, November 06, 2010

The Headless Woman - Sunday 7th November 5pm

The Secret in their Eyes proved as popular as expected, in terms of attendance (6th highest since 'records began' in 2003) and 22nd in terms of audience reaction with 88.62%. Not everyone liked it though - see John's review.

The third and last of our series of Argentinian films is coming up this Sunday, with Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman. Old hands will have seen her La Cienaga (The Swamp) at the 2002 Festival. You can get a good idea of what is on offer from the brochure and film notes or by listening to the Daily Telegraph film critic: 'Chances are you'll leave Martel's film wanting to see it again. Rightly so. It's elliptical, encoded, endlessly suggestive.'