Students enjoy NKU French Film Festival

Northern Kentucky University was the recent host of "Les Tournées," a French film festival comprised of movies not readily available in the United States. The event began on March 28 and continued through April 26.

Due to the rarity of these films in the U.S., the festival was an excellent opportunity for French students to attend. These recent and popular films provided an insight into French culture as well as the chance to listen to the language being spoken. Subtitles were shown to provide the audience additional understanding of the storyline.

French professor Jody Ballah asked students enrolled in her "Introduction to French Film" course to view at least two of the films shown at Les Tournées. After watching the movies, students submitted an essay describing the films that they chose.

Ballah offered her other French students the chance to earn extra credit points by viewing at least one of the films and submitting a brief summary describing the plot and their opinion of the piece. Dr. Ballah's students were allotted free admission to the films upon presenting student identification.

Les Tournées is sponsored by the French American Cultural Exchange, which allots grants to universities to host film festivals featuring some of the best releases in French cinema. This is the third year that Northern Kentucky University has hosted the event.

Over the five weeks that the festival took place, a total of five films were shown. Audiences had two opportunities to view each film, which were presented on Wednesday and Thursday of each week.
As Dr. John Alberti, NKU director of Cinema Studies, stated on NKU's official web site, "We have chosen five films that represent the diversity of modern French film in terms of style, genre and cultural focus. We invite all film lovers to our campus to celebrate the continuing vitality and excitement of one of the world's great movie cultures."

Films included in the festival this year were "Sleeping Beauty/Belle endormie," "Bellamy," "White Material," "Hadewijch," and "The Father of My Children/Le pére des mes enfants."

"Bellamy" by Claude Chabrol was a personal favorite of Ballah. The film featured Gérard Depardieu, a well-known French actor and filmmaker.

"I liked it for the storyline, and it is a sentimental favorite for me because of the filmmaker," said Ballah. "It was nice to see Depardieu back on the screen again."

In addition to completing assignments and receiving extra credit points, attending Les Tournées gave French students the opportunity to experience French culture while furthering their understanding of the language.

For more information about Les Tournées, visit http://www.nku.edu/.

http://www.nku.edu/