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| Nicholas Winding Refn: “This initiative gives young people in particular the chance to see films and understand that film is a futuristic language.” Photo: Richard Mowe |
Should the film industry really be encouraging people to watch films on their mobiles, tablets and computer screens rather than experiencing them, initially at least, in cinemas?
Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives) declared in Paris that he has no inhibitions about how film fans consume cinema. “There are as many variations in watching movies as there are sexual positions,” he posited rather controversially.
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| Isabelle Giordano (Unifrance director general): The philosophy behind the event is to give
a new lease of life to titles that may not have had adequate exposure through conventional channels Photo: Richard Mowe |
He heads the film-makers’ jury for the Unifrance initiative MyFrenchFilmFestival which was launched at a shindig in the Eiffel Tower as part of the 18th Rendezvous with French Cinema. His fellow jurors are Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) who championed seeing films as a collective experience rather than a solo activity; Felix Van Groningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown); David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) and Valérie Donizelli (Marguerite And Julien).
Refn tried to justify his stance by saying: “This initiative gives young people in particular the chance to see films and understand that film is a futuristic language.”
The titles on offer in around 40 countries are: Jérôme Bonnell’s love-triangle drama “All About Them,” Catherine Corsini’s girlhood romance Summertime, Olivier Jahan’s Sand Castle and Martin Talbot’s Henri Henri, Emmanuel Mouret’s romance Caprice, Clovis Cornillac’s Blind Date, Raphaël Jacoulot’s thriller Heatwave and Frédéric Tellier’s investigative thriller SK1, Fabrice Du Welz’s Alleluia, and Diastème’s French Blood. These feature films will compete for three awards: The Chopard filmmaker prize, Lacoste audience accolade and the international press award whose jury includes colleague Melanie Goodfellow from Screen.
The sixth edition of the online festival runs from now until 18 February, and also will include documentaries with Julie Gayet and Mathieu Busson’s Cineastes and French Cinema Mon Amour, produced by UniFrance and Beali Production. With animation on the upsurge in France there will be three animated shorts: Sacha Feiner’s Derniere porte au sud, Marina Moshkova’s M Seeking W and Celine Devaux’s Le Repas dominical.
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| Producers Aton Soumache (left) and Dimitri Rassam receive the New French Cinema award from Unifrance president Jean-Paul Salomé at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris Photo: Richard Mowe |
The platforms, include iTunes in 90 territories, Google Play in 15 countries, Mubi in the UK, Amazon in Germany and Japan, Universcine in France and Belgium, Telefonica in Spain and Shuun in Japan. The rental of one feature is around 2 euros while consumers can buy the Festival pack for a modest 5.99 euros. In certain locations such as Latin America, Poland, Russia, Africa and Rumania there will be no charge. There is also a selection of shorts available free of charge. Films will have versions in ten languages.
The philosophy behind the event is to give a new lease of life to titles that may not have had adequate exposure through conventional channels and to make French cinema available in territories where art-house cinemas are thin on the ground.
In figures released at a ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Quai d’Orsay, the organisers of the Rendezvous with French Cinema noted that French films tallied more admissions abroad than in France for the second consecutive year (more than 100 million admissions) and it was the third best year for attendances over the past 20 years. Other high points were a buoyant animated sector taking 20 per cent of total admissions and record ticket sales of 22 million in Latin America.
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| Lining up for the launch of the sixth edition of MyFrenchFilmFestival.com: the jury headed by Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn at a ceremony held at the Eiffel Tower Photo: Richard Mowe |
Laurent Fabius, minister of foreign affairs and international development, said: “If French cinema is a highly thriving cultural industry, it must nonetheless come up with new and inventive forms of distribution such as MyFrenchFilmFestival.”
During the evening Isabelle Giordano, director general of Unifrance and Jean-Paul Salomé, the organisation’s president bestowed a new French Cinema Award on producers Dimitri Rassam (son of actress Carole Bouquet) and Aton Soumache for their production of Mark Osborne’s Le Petit Prince from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s timeless classic which was one of the top scorers worldwide with 15 million spectators and one of the most expensive French animated features ever made on a budget of more than 80 million dollars.
France is the second biggest global exporter of cinema after the United States.
