Covering both incest and animation, the eighth annual Providence French Film Festival encourages viewers to open their eyes - and minds - to the world of French cinema.
The festival, which started Thursday and runs at the Cable Car Cinema through March 6, covers a diverse range of French movies, from classic and family-friendly films like "Donkey Skin" to more controversial ones like "Ma Mère," a story about an in-cestuous relationship between a mother and her son.
Richard Manning, film archivist for the Department of Modern Culture and Media, said these movies are intended to introduce viewers to new ways of thinking about film.
"It could be jarring in a productive way," he said.
Michael Siegel, a fourth-year MCM graduate student who helped organize the event, said he hopes the festival will "give a bit of spotlight to Providence and the film scene here," and instill "Providence pride."
Some of the festival's highlights this year include the North American premieres of "The Frog's Prophecy," an animated film by Jacques-Remy Girerd, and "Cause Toujours!," a light comedy by Jeanne Labrune about how suspicion and mistrust affect the foundations of today's society.
Unlike in past years, this year's festival will also showcase French experimental films, a genre that has next to no outlet in the United States, Siegel said.
With its unique non-narrative structure and attention to the function of the image, experimental film is closer in form to painting, visual arts and even music than it is to traditional cinema, Siegel said. Some notable experimental filmmakers include Andy Warhol and Michael Snow.
One of the event's main purposes is to celebrate the rich history of French films - arguably the greatest cinema of Europe, Siegel said.
"One thing that makes European cinema different is the lack of interest in genre. There is not a strict set of rules," he said.
Though most Hollywood films follow a preplanned code, in contemporary French film there is a willingness to play with these rules and mix them up.
While many U.S. films are constructed in a way that makes it easy to get pleasure from them, in a lot of today's French films, "it's not as easy to come to a conclusion," Siegel said.
Sylvie Toux, former senior lecturer in MCM, founded the festival in 1998 as a joint venture between the French Studies and MCM departments and the Brown Film Society. Having been well received during its first two years, the festival then expanded its range of films and showings to accommodate the preferences of the community.
"Our lives are so much about film that it's hard not to take something spectacular out of a 10-day festival of French films," Siegel said.
