Now in its third year, On Set with French Cinema, organized by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, invites French filmmakers to conduct a series of master classes at universities across the United States. While in New York, these leading contemporary filmmakers present a special screening at MoMA. On November 16 Arnaud Desplechin, the writer-director of the recent hit Rois et reine (Kings and Queen), presents his breakthrough feature La Sentinelle. Desplechin’s expressionist filmmaking, inspired by the French New Wave, is sensuous and cerebral, with allusions to mythology, literature, cinema, music, and philosophy, and possesses an almost reckless emotional intensity and narrative drive. His characters, like those of Godard, Truffaut, and Rivette, act with tragicomic desperation that calls attention to their own theatrical artifice.
Organized by Joshua Siegel, Assistant Curator, Department of Film and Media, The Museum of Modern Art; Florence Charmasson, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Unifrance.
Special thanks to Catherine Verret-Vimont, Executive Director, Unifrance/French Film Office, New York; Marie Bonnel, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York; Antoine Khalife, Unifrance, Paris; and Marcus Hu, Strand Releasing, for the print loan.