In the wake of last week’s tragic shooting at Michigan State University and due to this week’s inclement weather, the MSU Albertine Cinémathèque French Film Festival is being rescheduled for April. The new dates and times have yet to be determined. The College of Arts & Letters will announce the updated schedule once it is decided.

Assistant Professors Elizabeth Tuttle and Jena Whitaker in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University received the Albertine Cinémathèque Festival grant, which is helping to fund the MSU Albertine Cinémathèque French Film Festival that will bring six contemporary and classic French films to MSU’s campus. Graduate student film fellows Laetitia Kokx, Hannah Olsen, and Vanessa Weller are helping to organize the on-campus events. 

Drs. Tuttle and Whitaker plan to make the film festival biennial to complement the existing Latinx and Italian Film Festivals offered by the Department of Romance and Classical Studies.

The theme for the 2023 festival is AMOUR/LOVE with each film exploring a different aspect of love: romantic, artistic, spiritual, sensual, and forbidden. The films that will be shown include:

• A Summer’s Tale (Un conte d’été) (1996) — In a seaside resort in Dinard on the coast of Brittany, amateur musician Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) meets three women (Amanda Langlet, Gwenaëlle Simon, and Aurelia Nolin) who offer the possibility of romance, but Gaspard’s inability to commit to just one puts all of them in jeopardy. 
  
• Benedetta (2021) — In the late 17th century, with plague ravaging the land, Benedetta Carlini joins the convent in Pescia, Tuscany, as a novice. Capable from an early age of performing miracles, Benedetta’s impact on life in the community is immediate and momentous. 
  
• Bergman Island (2021) — A couple of American filmmakers, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth) retreat to the mythical Fårö island for the summer. In this wild, breathtaking landscape where Ingmar Bergman lived and shot his most celebrated pieces, they hope to find inspiration for their upcoming films.  
  
• Last Year at Marienbad (L’annee dernière à Marienbad) (1961) — Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorientating shifts of time and location, this film explores the relationships among the characters in Kafkaesque fashion. 
  
• A Tale of Love and Desire (Une histoire d’amour et du désir) (2021) — While discovering a collection of sensual and erotic Arab literature he never imagined existed, Ahmed falls head over heels in love with Farah, and although literally overwhelmed with desire, he will try to resist. 
  
• The Story of a Three-Day Pass (La permission) (1967) — Channeling the brash exuberance of the French New Wave, Director Melvin Van Peebles creates an exploration of the psychology of an interracial relationship as well as a commentary on France’s contradictory attitudes about race that laid the foundation for the scorched-earth cinematic revolution he would unleash just a few years later with Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

Albertine Cinémathèque is a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine, which aim to promote French-American cultural exchange in education and the arts. The Albertine Cinémathèque Festival Grant supports French film festivals on college campuses as part of a larger project championing French cinema.

MSU’s Albertine Cinémathèque French Film Festival also is supported by the Centre National du Cinema (CNC) and Fonds Culturel Franco-Americain (SACEM) and co-sponsored by the Department of Romance and Classical Studies; the College of Arts & Letters; MSU Libraries; the Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; and Film Studies at Michigan State University.