15/10/2012 - Major works from cinematic heritage and a plethora of personalities are to star at this event directed by Thierry Frémaux

For the fourth edition of the Grand Lyon Film Festival opening today, Thierry Frémaux (photo - director general of the Lumière Institute presided over by Bertand Tavernier, and also the famous general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival) has once against made an immense effort to plan a great journey through the history of cinema via new and restored copies. This trip back in time for film lovers is to be enhanced by the presence of numerous star guests at the event (to close on October 21), who are to include English film director Ken Loach who is to receive the 2012 Prix Lumière (read more), as well as Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, Danish actor Max von Sydow (to give an acting class), actresses Isabelle Huppert and Jacqueline Bisset, composer Lalo Schifrin, Agnès Varda, Andrei Konchalovsky, and Tim Roth.

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The programme is also to include nine films by Italian director Vittorio De Sica (and two in which he appears as an actor), 13 features by Max Ophuls, a homage to Dean Martin, and a dive into samourai films in the “Baby Cart, a Japanese Saga” section. The "Great Screenings" section is notably to feature Roman Polanski’s Tess and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, as well as films by Steven Spielberg and Michael Cimino. The "Moments of History" section boasts "Genesis of a Masterpiece: The Night of the Hunter", "Renoir Revisited" (with, among others, Gilles Bourdos’ Renoir, a film that was unveiled at the last Cannes Film Festival), as well as an exploration of Mario Ruspoli’s cinéma-vérité and Charles Brabin (1883-1957)’s works. And then there will be silent film screenings with live music (in particular Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Loulou), a flurry of restored classics, a homage to Gaumont, masterclasses, and conferences, as well as the premieres of Mark Cousins’Story of Film: An Odyssey and Hungarian director György Pálfi’s Final Cut – Ladies and Gentlemen [+see also:
film review
interview: Gyorgy Palfi
film profile] (watch the interview) - closing film at Cannes Classics 2012).

(Translated from French)