Feast of Fine French Films for February

Published: February 10, 2014 | Read Time: 2 minutes

For Southern Utah University, February isn’t just famous for heart shaped candies or cuddly teddy bears, February is also a time for foreign films and this year will be no different.

Organized by Elise Leahy, Foreign Languages & Philosophy department chair, and Rosa Perez, assistant professor of French, the two of them sold homemade truffles and tarts to fund the annual SUU French Film Festival and allow the events to remain free of charge.

“This film festival gives students needed diversity and enhances their education in a magical way,” said Leahy on the reason she personally funded this event.  “Cinema is an art form that is worth studying and should be seen in a variety if ways.”

Leahy and Perez ensured that the selected movies presented a variety of themes and showed France in its many facets, and exhibiting French culture past the French country lines. The French Film Festival offers a variety of films that embody the best of contemporary French cinema. The films span generational and geographic borders, offering a range of genres and subjects.

All films will be shown in French with English subtitles and a faculty member will introduce each film. Screenings will be each Tuesday during the month of February at 7 p.m. in the Sharwan Smith Student Center Theater.

The 2014 French Film Festival at SUU will include:

Tuesday, February 11 – Le Tableau (The Painting)

One of the most inventive animated films in recent years; The Painting examines bigotry through the social classification of subjects residing in a canvas. The subjects travel between paintings with a goal to meet their maker and ask why they were left in an unfinished state.

Tuesday, February 18 – La Folie Almayer (Almayer’s Folly)

Almayer’s Folly is Chantal Akerman’s loose adaptation of a Joseph Conrad novel. European trader Almayer lives deep in the Malaysian jungle during the 20th century, where he descends into madness as he obsesses over the welfare of his daughter, Nina.

Tuesday, February 25 – Le Bonheur D’Elza (Elza)

The wondrous directorial debut of Mariette Monpierre is the inspiring tale of Elza, a talented university graduate who breaks her mother’s heart when she decides to leave Paris to return to her birthplace of Guadeloupe. Posing as a baby-sitter for her unsuspecting father’s six-year-old granddaughter. 

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