In partnership with the Consulate General of France in San Francisco, the Film Society presents this free education program each fall to expose high-school level French students in the Bay Area to the wonderful culture of France through film. In past years students have been challenged with such films as: Brodeuses by Éléonore Faucher, Cyrano de Bergerac by Jean-Paul Rappeneau and L’Enfant by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Upcoming Events

The Class
Thursday, October 9 (time TBA)
Landmark’s Clay Theatre, San Francisco
Directed by Laurent Cantet (France 2008, 129 min)
A fully sustained immersion in the academics, attitudes and frequent altercations of a group of junior high school students, The Class is an adaptation of Francois Begaudeau’s 2006 novel, Entre les murs, documenting a year in the life of a classroom. The film’s roving HD cameras never once leave the school grounds and only rarely leave the classroom, which is presented here as a microcosm of cultural, intellectual and aspirational differences. Begaudeau himself plays teacher François Marin, a handsome, charismatic thirtysomething whose playful, bristling approach seems an appropriate way of dealing with his often unruly and inattentive students. While the class has its share of diligent, well-behaved pupils like Asian immigrant Wei (Wei Huang), who speaks assuredly despite his less-than-perfect French, it’s the troublemakers who leave the most vivid impression. In a terrific screen debut that leaves plenty of room for his costars to shine, Begaudeau comes across as a likeable, admirably confident but flawed authority figure. The Class excels as both a character study and an inquiry into the proper parameters of education and discipline that will resonate in urban schools on both sides of the Atlantic.

Second Film TBA
Friday, October 10 (time TBA)
Landmark’s Clay Theatre, San Francisco

Past Events

Bad Faith
Monday, October 15, 2007 at Landmark’s Aquarius Theater, Palo Alto
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at Landmark’s Bridge Theatre, San Francisco

Our annual partnership with the French Consulate of San Francisco featured two screenings of the film Bad Faith (Mauvaise foi) for 450 French language students from Pinewood, Sacred Heart Preparatory, Woodside, Milpitas, El Camino, Washington, Lincoln, Lowell and Miramonte high schools. The film explores the emotional and familial complications experienced by a mixed faith couple (Clara is Jewish, Ismael is Muslim) in Paris when Clara becomes pregnant. The students were thoroughly engaged and entertained by the romantic comedy—even clapping and cheering during the film’s suspenseful ending. Following the feature, we screened two animated short films by French animator Louis Clichy, who is currently working for Pixar. Clichy’s Q&A with the students took place in both French and English, with questions incluidng who his film influences have been, which scenes he worked on in Ratatouille, how old he was when he made his short films, where he went to school, how his drawings went from paper to computer to screen and whether he preferred 2-D or 3-D animation.