Osaka European Film Festival pays tribute to music
by Vitor Pinto
The Osaka European Film Festival, which runs the whole month of November, celebrates its 15th anniversary with a musical tribute. Besides the traditional Premieres Screenings, composed this year of 10 titles, the festival pays homage to the importance of soundtracks and has made three-time Oscar winning composer Maurice Jarre the Honorary Chairman of this years' edition.
Artistic Director Patrice Boiteau told Cineuropa the reason behind this choice: "It is the 100th anniversary of the birth of British director David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia) and also the 100th anniversary of the first screening of The Assassination of the Duke of Guise, one the first titles in film history to feature an original score, composed by Camille Saint-Säens".
The 84-year old Jarre, who won his first Oscar for Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, will attend the screening of a new print of the legendary film with digital sound, followed by a Q&A. He is also the core subject of Pascale Cuenot's documentary In the Tracks of Maurice Jarre. The film includes exclusive interviews with people who have worked with Jarre over the decades, such as Jeanne Moreau, Omar Sharif and Adrian Lyne, as well as with Jarre himself.
The festival also celebrates 50 years of the French Nouvelle Vague. A total of 17 films – among them Alain Resnais' Hiroshima, My Love, Jean-Luc Godard's Masculine Feminin and Claude Chabrol's Handsome Serge – along with two conferences entitled Further Away from the Nouvelle Vague will offer a reflection on that revolutionary movement and its present legacy.
As for current films, the festival worked with local distributors to bring Osaka audiences a first glimpse of upcoming European releases. Anticipated guests include French actor Benoît Magimel, who will present Florent Emilio Siri's Intimate Enemies [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona takes a break in the preparation of his new project to talk about his multi-award winning debut The Orphanage [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; and Irish screenwriter Mark O’Halloran will chat about his experience working on the plot of Garage [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ed Guiney
interview: Jean-François Deveau
interview: Lenny Abrahamson
film profile].
Other titles include Nic Balthasar’s Ben X [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nic Balthazar
interview: Peter Bouckaert
film profile], Lyudmil Todorov’s Seamstresses, Andrei Konchalovsky’s Gloss, Fulvio Bernasconi’s Out of Bounds, Paula Van der Oest’s Tiramisu, Petri Kotwica’s Black Ice [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kai Nordberg
interview: Petri Kotwica
film profile] and The Wave [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Dennis Gansel (see interview).
Some of the titles will also screen in Tokyo's Cinema Angelica, which successfully became a festival venue three years ago.
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