07/10/2016 - Quentin Tarantino, Park Chan-wook, Catherine Deneuve, Nicholas Winding Refn, Paolo Sorrentino and a plethora of other guests will celebrate film history

Successfully turning a small event dedicated to heritage films into an incredibly popular festival, featuring jam-packed movie screenings, a number of other sessions presented by a multitude of artists (almost 200!), including some of the biggest names in world cinema, high-quality master classes and a Classic Film Market for the professionals, is no easy task. Yet this is what Thierry Frémaux, the organiser of the whole operation, has managed to achieve in just eight years with the Lumière Festival, the eighth edition of which will begin tomorrow, 8 October, in Lyon and run until 16 October (two more days than in precedent years). Quentin Tarantino will be making an appearance at the festival, presenting its opening film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

A surprise guest, the US director is only one of a number of stars from the world of contemporary cinema who will be making the pilgrimage to Lyon to celebrate cinema history and show off the films of yesteryear with more than 180 titles on the menu across 390 sessions. Leading the line-up is Catherine Deneuve (who will receive the 2016 Lumière Award, following in the footsteps of Clint Eastwood, Milos Forman, Gérard Depardieu, Ken Loach, Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodovar and Martin Scorsese), supported by Chinese star Gong Li, Korean master Park Chan-wook, his US peer Walter Hill, the enfant terrible of French cinema, Gaspar Noé, and scriptwriter Jean-Loup Dabadie, who will all be giving master classes and see a selection of their films screened. A number of other professionals will also be giving master classes, notably Tarantino, French actress Sandrine Kiberlain, French composer Bruno Coulais and even British producer Jeremy Thomas.

Also featuring among the guests of the 2016 Lumière Festival are names such as Denmark’s Nicolas Winding Refn (who will be presenting Bleeder), US director Jerry Schatzberg (The Panic in Needle Park) and Nicole Garcia (Place Vendôme). Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino will be participating in festivities as part of a special screening with the first two episodes of his TV series, The Young Pope, while Vincent Lindon will present three of Marcel Carné’s films (as part of a retrospective that will also include the participation of Jean-Pierre Jeunet). Also of note are Anna Karina (for Jean-Luc Godard’sAlphaville), Emmanuel Bercot (Immitation of Life by Douglas Sirk), Philippe Garrel (for his film Night Wind), Costa-Gavras (for his first two features, The Sleeping Car Murders and Shock Troops, unseen for 25 years and restored to celebrate his 50th year in the profession), Jerzy Skolimowski (for Love Story),Virginie Efira (for We All Loved Each Other So Much by Ettore Scola), Julie Bertuccelli (for Tod Browning’s Dracula) and Rebecca Zlotowski (for Michael Mann’s Miami Vice), not to mention Agnès Varda, Marisa Paredes, Lambert Wilson, Jean-Paul Salomé, Eric Lartigau, Christophe Honoré, Alexandra Maria Lara, Aurore Clément, Ab Al Malick, Philippe Le Guay, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Clotilde Courau, Régis Wargnier, Anne Consigny, Jean Becker, Nils Schneider, Hippolyte Girardot, Jérôme Bonnell, Lolita Chammah, Abd al Malik, Gilles Marchand, Dominique Blanc, Elsa Zylberstein, Alberto Barbera (the Artistic Director of the Venice Mostra), Gian Luca Farinelli (director of the Bologna Cinematheque), Emmanuelle Béart, or even the tireless Bertrand Tavernier (with his Journey Through French Cinema [+see also:
trailer
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A presentation of Italian director Antonio Pietrangeli’s comedies, a Buster Keaton retrospective, a tribute to Dorothy Arzner (the first female filmmaker accepted into Hollywood), an exploration of "Universal Monsters" of the 1930s and 1940s (vampires, mummies, werewolves, etc.), film-concerts, a selection of 1970 films chosen by Tarantino, the "Sublime Moments of Silent Film", "Archival Treasures" and "New Restorations" sections: the 2016 Lumière Festival casts a shining light on cinema’s history once more. A past that also interests the professionals of today participating in the festival’s industrial section and the fourth edition of the Classic Film Market (from 12 to 14 October) that will take stoke of the situation surrounding the exploitation of heritage films and discuss their promotion, marketing and communication, before distributers reveal their 2017 line-up (in particular Carlotta, Eye International, Gaumont, Les Acacias, Lost Films, Malavida, Pathé, Potemkine, Splendor, and Tamasa Distribution).

(Translated from French)