Free French cinema--all over NYC--as FILMS ON THE GREEN returns for its eighth annual series

Films on the Green, New York City's favorite outdoor film festival -- of free French movies all summer long -- opens its eighth annual series this Friday evening, May 29, in Central Park with a landmark film that lifted a certain French sexpot named Brigitte Bardot (below and above, right, with a very young Jean-Louis Trintignant) to international acclaim, while taking her director, Roger Vadim, along for the ride -- for awhile.

Here's a film that should make clear to today's youth audience what something sexy looked like in the mid 1950s, when the poor old USA was getting damned little of it and so had to turn to France for a good turn-on. Interestingly enough, this film is now rated only PG -- which indicates, among other things, how very G-rated (if we'd actually had a rating system way back then) were most American films of the 1950s.

TrustMovies has a particular soft spot for the annual Films on the Green fest because he's been covering it since its inception: first, for the late, lamented Greencine.com, and then yearly on this blog. Each summer the festival -- hosted by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, FACE Foundation and the City of New York Parks & Recreation -- chooses a wide array of films from various decades (this year's includes the 1930s, 50s, 60s, and post-Millennium, of quite varied content and styles that show off French cinema to fine advantage. The dates are Friday evenings, beginning May 29 through July 31, with a final screening on September 10. Locations range from Central Park to Riverside Park, Tompkins Square Park, Washington Square Park, Columbia University, and Transmitter Park (in Brooklyn).

All the screenings are absolutely free and viewers are invited to bring their own food and drink and enjoy an evening of film culture al fresco. This year's films includes classics like the Vadim and Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko, as well as one of the great French comedies of recent years -- Priceless (above) by the ever under-valued Pierre Salvadori -- plus three movies completely new to me that I can't wait to view: Goha (1958), La Derive (1963) and Zarafa (2012). And that's only little more than half of what's in store.There's a Rohmer (two photos up), Sandrine Bonnaire (below) in one of her best roles, and some first-class animation.

You can see the entire program below, along with the proper park locations and descriptions of the films via the press office of the French Embassy. Mark your calendar now, and don't miss a single screening. What with all the dry weather we've been having of late, there may not even occur any rain interference, as in some former years.

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FILMS ON THE GREEN 2015

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE WITH FILM DESCRIPTIONS

Friday, May 29 | 8:30 pm - Central Park (79th street and Fifth Avenue)
…AND GOD CREATED WOMAN (Et Dieu créa la Femme)
Directed by Roger Vadim with Brigitte Bardot, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Curt Jürgens
1956 | Romance | PG | 1h35
Juliette is a seductive young woman with an unbridled appetite for pleasure. She attracts the attention of all of St. Tropez, including the wealthy Eric Carradine, Antoine Tardieu, and his sweet yet naïve brother, Michel, who all fight for her indecisive heart.

Friday, June 5 | 8:30 pm - Washington Square Park

CARAMEL

By Nadine Labaki with Nadine Labaki, Yasmine Al Massri, Joanna Moukarzel

2007 | Comedy | PG | 1h35 | France-Lebanon

Presented in partnership with the Fondation Liban Cinéma

In a colorful and sensual Beirut beauty salon, five women meet regularly to talk and confide in each other. Between haircuts and caramel sugar waxes, the friends share intimate stories about men, sex, motherhood, and their personal liberation. 

Friday, June 12 | 8:30 pm - Washington Square Park
PÉPÉ LE MOKO
By Julien Duvivier with Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin, Marcel Dalio
1937 | Crime | UR | 1h33
The notorious Pépé le Moko is a wanted man. In the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers, Pépé is safe from the clutches of the police. But his clandestine life is unveiled when Gaby, a Parisian playgirl, compels him to risk his life and leave his past behind.

Friday, June 19 | 8:30 pm - Tompkins Square Park

PRICELESS (Hors de Prix)

By Pierre Salvadori with Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh

2006 | Comedy | PG-13 | 1h46 

Irène, an attractive young woman, is on vacation at a French Riviera resort with Jacques, an older and very wealthy man. One night, while celebrating her birthday alone, she meets the handsome and intriguing Jean, who claims to be a millionaire and ad-venturer. However, unbeknownst to 

Irène, Jean isn’t everything he appears to be… 

Friday, June 26 | 8:30 pm - Tompkins Square Park
ZARAFA by
Rémi Bezançon & Jean-Christophe Lie
2012 | Animation | Ages 7 & up | 1h18
Presented in partnership with the Poitou-Charentes Region and the New York International Children’s Film Festival. Beneath a baobab tree, an old man tells the story of Maki, a young boy who crosses the desert with his giraffe and a Bedouin nomad named Hassan. During the epic journey from Africa to Paris, which takes them through Alexandria and the bustling port of Marseilles, Maki and his companions meet countless exotic characters.

Friday, July 10 | 8:30 pm - River-side Park, Pier I

GOHA

By Jacques Baratier with Omar Sharif, Claudia Cardinale, Daniel Emilfork 

1958 | Drama | UR | 1h21 | France-Tunisia

Goha, a poor, ignorant, and naïve boy, wanders around with his donkey all day long in a small Tunisian town. Taj El-Ulum, a wise old man who is respected and admired by all, soon remarries and chooses the pretty Fulla. But, bored 

in her new home, the young bride falls in love with Goha, and to no surprise, chaos ensues.

Friday, July 17 | 8:30 pm - Riverside Park, Pier I
QUEEN TO PLAY (Joueuse)
By Caroline Bottaro with Sandrine Bonnaire, Kevin Kline
2009 | Drama | UR | 1h37
Presented in partnership with the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, Institut Français and Corsica Pôle Tournages.
The lovely, repressed and quietly intelligent chambermaid Hélène comes upon a couple engaging in an intense chess match, and discovers she has a knack for the game. This obsession–much to the chagrin of her family– leads her to seek the clandestine tutelage of a reclusive American doctor, a liaison that radically transforms both of their lackluster lives.

Friday, July 24 | 8:30 pm - Transmitter Park

LA DÉRIVE

By Paula Delsol with Jacqueline Vandal, Pierre Barouh, Paulette Dubost

1963 | Romance | UR | 1h30 

Jacquie, a beautiful young girl, returns home in the South of France. There, she regretfully re-assimilates to a life with her childhood friends, stay-at-home mother and unhappily married sister. She drifts from lover to lover in the process of shredding the social conventions that dictate a life of submission and resignation.

Friday, July 31 | 8:30 pm - Transmitter Park
LA COLLECTIONNEUSE
By Eric Rohmer with Patrick Bauchau, Haydée Politoff, Daniel Pommereulle
1967 | Romance | UR | 1h29
Adrien, a bombastic, womanizing art dealer and Daniel, his painter friend, go to a seventeenth-century villa on the French Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian temptress Haydée.

Thurs., Sept. 10 | 7:30 pm - Columbia University
THE RABBI’S CAT (Le Chat du Rabbin)
By Joann Sfar & Antoine Delesvaux
2011 | Animation | UR | 1h29
Presented in partnership with the Columbia Maison Française.
Algiers, 1920s: Rabbi Sfar has more than one problem. His beautiful daughter Zlabya is transforming into a teenager, and even worse, his parrot-killing cat has just started talking. The Rabbi’s life grows all the more complicated when a box arrives from Russia with a painter inside. Ultimately Rabbi Sfar ends up on a quest for a hidden tribe and its mythical city of origin in Africa.

Here's where to go for more information:

www.Frenchculture.org - @franceinnyc - facebook.com/frenchculture

You can also follow Films on the Green via 

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest 

#filmsonthegreen 

Heads up! Last chance to catch one of the best unreleased movies of the year--FREE!

The below is re-post of TM's take on a film first seen at Rendez-vous with French Cinema this past March. I and many of my compatriots loved the movie and imagined that it would be picked up for U.S. distribution (films by Robert Guédiguian usually are). No such luck. But thanks to The Cultural Services of the French Embassy and its yearly program of Films on the Green, New Yorkers have at least one more chance to see the movie. It plays tomorrow night, Friday, June 8, at 8:30 (admission is free but get there early and bring food and drink) -- in Washington Square Park, just below the end of Fifth Avenue by that big faux French arch.

Enjoy!

It's not Hemingway. No, it's better than that. The great strength of writer/director Robert Guédiguian is how he tells his stories from so many points of view, not in some stylish, what-is-truth? Rashomon manner, but intuitively, organically, from the inside out and so that we come to see how the people involved on all sides of a given situation understand that situation and will gain or lose from it. With THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO, the filmmaker has outdone himself. (I can't think of a better film from him, in a raft of very good ones.)  Snows takes a layoff of workers in a shipyard as a starting point for exploring responsibility -- to oneself, one's family, friends, co-workers and even beyond.

The events that spin outward from this layoff (above) are both expected and not, and how the pivotal, negative and lawless post-event changes everything -- but not just for the worse -- turns the film into one of the richest, most intelligent and moving experiences in all of this year's Rendez-vous. Guédiguian is a political filmmaker, and a left-leaning one, I believe. But he never shies from showing us the other side -- not the right-wing one -- but the side that takes our beloved shiboleths and turns them inside out, forcing us to struggle with right and wrong from new angles. Yet the filmmaker is also a supreme humanist who never allows a principle to trump a person. That's what makes his work such a joy: the people are deep and real, and the life around them is, too.

In Snows, that life is lived by husband & wife Michael & Marie-Claire -- the "greats" Jean-Pierre Darroussin (above, left) and Ariane Ascaride (above, right) -- oft-used by this filmmaker. We get to know them, their best friends, and their children (in all, including the elderly woman taken care of by Marie-Claire, we see four generations here). We also come to know one of those laid-off workers, Christophe -- played by one of France's fine, up-and-coming new stars Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet (below, center, of Love Songs: click and scroll down) and The Princess of Montpensier). How these people connect and what happens subsequently is the stuff of great storytelling.

Along the way, we meet everyone from a delightful waiter with an eye for Marie-Claire (the terrific Pierre Niney of this Rendez-vous' 18 Years Old and Rising) to Christophe's mom (played exceedingly well and nastily by Karole Rocher, who was also the mom in this Rendez-vous' Last Screening and the recently released Polisse: She's cornering the market on bad moms!). Ms Rocher has a scene with Ms Ascaride that had me so angry I wanted to slap her face and shout, "Then have your tubes tied, bitch!"  (Really, this is so unlike me.) But it's a stunner of a scene that, again, allows you to see things -- appallingly irresponsible as they are -- from the viewpoint of this exceedingly selfish woman who has managed to connect herself to some even worse men.

By the time The Snows of Kilmanjaro concludes, you'll have lived through a lot and come out of it with greater understanding of how our lives are shaped by so many opposing forces. It's a wise movie, and Guédiguian's a wise movie-maker.  Don't miss this one -- which as yet, shockingly, has no U.S. distributor so far as I know. Maybe some enterprising distributor will show up at Film on the Green in Washington Square Park tomorrow night -- Friday, June 8 -- at dusk, watch the film, note the audience response, and take a chance on it.  We can hope.  (Click here to view this year's entire Films on the Green program.)

Fifth annual FILMS ON THE GREEN festival spotlights free French films in NYC's parks

It's back -- and better than ever. This summer's edition of the annual FILMS ON THE GREEN festival, organized by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, begins next Friday, June 1. For the fifth consecutive year, Films on the Green will present French films in New York City parks in June and July, as well as a special screening at Columbia University in September. The 2012 Films on the Green Festival will feature 8 free French screenings all adapted from French and American Literature. Through an array of different cinematic genres – thriller, comedy, drama, romance and musical -- the 2012 line-up includes films adapted from a wide range of literary styles, from fairy tale (“Donkey Skin”) to poetry (“The Snows of Kilimanjaro”) and graphic novel (“Persepolis”) – and highlights how great French directors like François Truffaut, Jacques Demy or Costa-Gavras have adapted certain works of literature to film.

The series begins on Friday June 1st in Central Park with the screening of the comedy, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies directed by the 2012 Oscar-winner (for The Artist) Michel Hazanavicius and featuring the two stars of that film: Bérénice Bejo (above, left) and additional Oscar-winning actor Jean Dujardin (above, right), who here plays a would-be James Bond who unfortunately possesses only a shred of the brain-power (but ten times the pomposity) of 007. Based on the series of novels “OSS 117” by French writer Jean Bruce (said to be the inspiration for the character of the famous Mr. Bond), the film provides an example of a literary (it's a bit of a stretch to call it that) adaptation from novel to screen.

The real highlight of this year's series, however, is the following week's film, to be shown in Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village, on Friday June 8th: The Snows of Kilimanjaro by one of the worlds most progressive filmmakers, Robert Guédiguan. Despite the film's title, forget Hemingway; this one's adapted from the Victor Hugo poem, “How Good are the Poor,” and it is a gem of movie-making. First shown in NYC last March, as part of the annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema series (my earlier review is here), the film ought have been immediately snapped up for U.S. release. Alas, no such luck, so if you want to see a remarkable movie about such important themes as family, love, employment, crime, justice, and what we owe our fellow man, this open air screening may be your only opportunity. Don't miss it. (The rest of this year's crop of films are easily available via DVD in the USA; this one, made just last year, is not.)

Friday June 15th will see the screening, also in Washington Square Park, of the famous family-movie, War of the Buttons (the 1961 version by Yves Robert), which was the first of four film adaptations of Louis Pergaud’s novel -- two of which arrived almost simultaneously last year in France, where they both did well at the box-office.

Screenings in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village will feature the dark thriller The Axe by acclaimed director Costa-Gavras, adapted from the bestselling novel by one of America's favorite authors, the late Donald Westlake, on Friday, June 22nd. This nifty little thriller with black comedic over- and under-tones tackles the western world's current employment crisis in a most intriguing fashion.

Also showing in Tompkins Square Park on Friday, June 29, will be one of Jacques Demy's most precious (in both senses of the word) films, the classic musical Donkey Skin based on the Charles Perrault fairy tale on Friday 28th. Next to Demy's one-of-a-kind musical The Young Girls of Rochefort, I think this is my favorite of all his work. It's enchanting, colorful and delightfully irreverent  -- oh, those horses! -- in a manner that nearly no one has managed before or since.

The festival continues in Riverside Park – Pier I, Upper West Side, on Friday July 6th with one of the great thrillers of our new millennium: Tell No One directed by Guillaume Canet from the novel starring François Cluzet (above, left), also known for his lead role in this year’s hit, Intouchables, makes a terrific everyman searching for his dead wife -- who's suddenly sending him emails.

Friday, July 13th, will serve up -- no, not a horror movie, although you could look it that way -- the black-and-white (with a bit of red now and then, and lots of luscious grays) animated film Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, which tells the story of Satrapi’s childhood in Iran and Austria. Tackling everything from fundamentalism to feminism to immigration, the movie is a surprisingly rich and thoughtful coming-of-age story.

The series will conclude on Thursday September 6th on the campus of Columbia University with an iconic film of La Nouvelle Vague, Jules and Jim by François Truffaut, presented in partnership with the Maison Française of Columbia University. If you've never seen this one, or haven't for a few years (or decades), now's your op.

All film screenings are held at dusk, and the films are in French with English subtitles, and are screened free of charge. A full film description is available by clicking on each film's title, above.

The youngest of the city's outdoor film festivals, Films on the Green is already a much-loved event of New York summers and is made possible with the cooperation of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Last year the festival reached over 3,000 viewers and, with the support of its official sponsors, Air France, BNP Paribas and TV5 Monde, the 2012 series has expanded to feature eight classic or contemporary French films in five different locations. DJs from New York University’s radio, WNYU 89.1 FM, will spin tunes before screenings.

Here's the FILMS ON THE GREEN schedule at a glance:

All screenings are held at dusk

June 1 - 8:30pm OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies, Central Park – Cedar Hill (79th St. & 5th Ave.)

June 8 - 8:30pm The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Washington Square Park

June 15 - 8:30pm War of the Buttons, Washington Square Park

June 22 - 8:30pm The Axe, Tompkins Square Park

June 29 - 8:30pm Donkey Skin, Tompkins Square Park
            (that's Catherine Deneuve, in the photo above)

July 6 - 8:30pm Tell No One, Riverside Park – Pier I (at 70th St)

July 13 - 8:30pm Persepolis, Riverside Park – Pier I (at 70th St)

September 6- 7:30pm Jules and Jim, Columbia University – Low Library Steps

For more information about Films on the Green, simply click here.

Tonight -- Free French films hit NYC parks! Delon & Schneider star in SWIMMING POOL

That's right, French film fans (or fans of films al fresco): tonight marks the beginning of the fourth annual series FILMS ON THE GREEN -- that popular and FREE series of French films which begin each Friday evening at dusk (outdoors on spacious lawns where you can bring your own food and drink) starting June 3 through July 15, with a final film to be shown on Thursday evening September 8, in various parks (and one additional venue) all around Manhattan. This year, expanding to eight evenings and eight different films, the series' theme is Summer Holidays, and the film's locations range from the French Riviera to seaside villages of Brittany and the rocky hills of southern Provence.

Tonight's movie THE SWIMMING POOL (La piscine), a low-key character study with a bit of mystery, was a huge popular French success in its day (1969). This film once again pairs Alain Delon, (shown at top and one of the most beautiful faces to ever grace the movies) with Maurice Ronet, his Purple Noon co-star. Also on board are the gorgeous, cat-eyed Romy Schneider (above) and a very young Jane Birkin (two photos below) and so this film hardly lacks for requisite glamour. But it remains one of those faux-decadent, haute-bourgeoisie outings that were popular in the 60s but say very little (and take two hours to do it).

Directed by journeyman Jacques Deray (Borsalino, Flic Story) and written by the talented writer/adapter Jean-Claude Carrièrre, the film is not uninteresting, but wears out its welcome around the halfway mark and never gets any stronger as it grows longer. The people on view are shallow indeed, and if the title had anything to do with the characters, they'd have called it The Wading Pool. The fashions are fun, however, and while the movie takes place around the Côte d'Azur, it does not take all that much advantage of the scenery. I guess there was no need -- not with Delon, Ronet, Schneider & Birkin dressed in bathing suits a good deal of the time.

Next week's film -- THOSE HAPPY DAYS (Nos jours heureux) -- is infinitely more fun. At least the first 16 minutes proved so.  The screener I was sent defaulted at that point and no amount of diddling could get me any further into the movie. But within those minutes I had laughed a good deal and was growing more and more interested in the summer camp counselors, their varied charges and the parents of those kids. This one seems to be a comedy that shows us the vagaries of these three sets of people, while possessing a lot of charm and love (rather than detestation) of humanity. So don't expect a dark satire but rather a light one -- in both meanings of that term. I was so taken with those first 16 minutes that I think I shall have to hie these old bones to the park in order to finish the film. (The still below features one of the talented stars Marliou Berry, center -- who plays the camp "nurse," but who does not, unfortunately, possess her official medical credentials, a point which I'm sure will surface later in the movie....)

Also on the menu are Rohmer, Godard and Tati, along with a French version of an Agatha Christie story (see still below), one half of a very popular nostalgic duo from the 1990s, and the first film from actress-turned-filmmaker Julie Delpy. You can see the complete schedule below and connect to the event's official web site here.

June 3 ~ 8:30pm Central Park – Cedar Hill (79th St & 5th Ave) The Swimming Pool

June 10 ~ 8:30pm Washington Square Park Those Happy Days

June 17 ~ 8:30pm Washington Square Park A Summer’s Tale

June 24 ~ 8:30pm Tompkins Square Park Contempt

July 1 ~ 8:30pm Tompkins Square Park Mr. Hulot’s Holiday

July 8 ~ 8:30pm Riverside Park – Pier 1 (at 70th St) Towards Zero

July 15 ~ 8:30pm Riverside Park – Pier 1(at 70th St) My Father’s Glory

Sept. 8 ~ 7:30pm Columbia University – Low Library Steps Two Days in Paris 
(Note time and date: This final film begins at 7:30 and on a Thursday evening!)

All events are free and open to the general public, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation would like to thank the series' official sponsors: BNP PARIBAS and TV5 MONDE.