Graduation Ceremony of handing over the DELF certificates relating to Aug and Nov 2008 sessions Held at Calcutta School of Music on Friday 20 March

SAVEZ-VOUS CUISINER FRANÇAIS ?

FRANCOPHONIE FILM FESTIVAL

CANADA

MONDAY 16 MARCH 2009, 6 PM @ AFB
Directed by Louis Bélanger
CAST : Serge Thériault, Gilles Renaud, Sébastien Delormedanny Danny Gilmore
Durée: 110 mins, 2003

SYNOPSIS : Mr. Brochu "The Boss", runshis gas station as best he can, despite the repeated thefts and hold-ups, competition from the self-serve stations around the corner-and his strained relationship with his two eldest sons, who want more out of life than running the Champlain service station...

SENEGAL
TUESDAY 17 MARCH 2009, 6 PM @ AFB
Directed by Flora Gomes
CAST : Fatou N'Diaye, Jean-Christophe Dollé, Ângelo Torres
Durée: 89 mins, 2002

SYNOPSIS : A young African woman learns that finding love and happiness need not come at the sacrifice of one's identity in director Flora Gomes 2002 romantic musical My Voice. Young and beautiful, Vita (Fatou N'Diaye) decides to leave her home in West Africa to study in Paris. Before Vita leaves, her mother (Bia Gomes) nervously reminds her of the family curse stating that any female in their lineage who sings will be struck dead. Vita reassures her mother that she will do no such thing and leaves to begin her new life. Shortly after arriving in Paris, however, she meets and falls in love with a young French musician named Pierre (Jean-Christophe Dolle), who -- in a moment of romantic abandon -- convinces Vita to sing. Pierre's astonishment at Vita's obvious talent for music prompts him to convince her to record an album, which she does but almost immediately regrets upon remembering her promise to her mother about the curse. As the record achieves an unheralded success throughout France, Vita gradually becomes convinced that the curse was nonsense and decides to return to Africa to convince her mother and the rest of the villagers of her discovery. Chosen for inclusion in the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, My Voice was also the sole film from the continent of Africa in that year's festival...

BULGARIA

WEDNESDAY 18 MARCH 2009, 6 PM @ AFB
Directed by Milena Andonova
CAST : Bonka Ilieva-Boni, Diana Dobreva, Angelina Slavova.
Durée: 111mins, 2006

SYNOPSIS : Dona, Lukrecie and Tana - three women of different origins and destinies, whose stories unfold at different times. The tale of the Romany woman Dona begins in the 1960s. The only assets this beautiful and vital woman has are her three children fathered by different men. In order to secure a livelihood for them, she moves in with an older, but disabled man, who turns out to be a pervert. Ten years later, the ambitious Lukrecie is trying to avoid employment in the village. After she becomes pregnant by a prospective suitor, she meets an attractive young man who offers her a life abroad, something she had always dreamed of. Lukrecie resolves her situation in the most appalling way. Tana, the wife of a prosperous businessman, vainly longs to have a child. On the advice of a friend, she goes off to a spa, whose miraculous reputation is attributable to a skillful masseur. Her husband, however, is unmoved by the joyful news. Three stories offering three insights into the tragic outcome of relationships between men and women, which give rise to both longed-for and unwanted children...

ROMANIA

THURSDAY 19 MARCH 2009, 6 PM @ AFB
Directed by Nae Caranfil
CAST : Marius Florea Vizante, Ovidiu Nieulescu, Mirela Zeta
Durée: 145 mins, 2008

SYNOPSIS : A fact-based work of fiction that inevitably recalls the Taviani Brothers' Good Morning, Babylon (1987), Romanian director Nae Caranfil's historical epic Restul e Tacere travels back to the Bucharest of 1911, where 19-year-old Grigore Ursache (played by Marius Florea Vizante and modeled upon real-life director Grigore Brezeanu) realizes that he'll never be able to achieve success as a stage actor on par with his famous thespian dad. As an alternative, he decides to kick-start a new career as a filmmaker extraordinaire by mounting the country's first epic drama - a lavish onscreen recreation of Romania's struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Thus commences the young man's arduous and oft-nebulous seriocomic struggle between the requirements of art and the demands of business. While difficult, Ursache's effort does ultimately produce the film that he desires: the real-life Romanian masterpiece Independenta Romaniei (The War for Independence, 1912). His goal is simple: to convince a dubious Romanian public that cinema, as an art form, can exist on par with theater. Throughout the film, Caranfil intercuts sequences from Brezeanu's original motion picture, which underwent restoration just prior to the production of Restul e Tacere...

FRANCE

SATURDAY 21 MARCH 2009, 6 PM @ AFB

Directed by Alain Resnais

CAST : Pierre Arditi, Sabine Azéma, Jean-Pierre Bacri, André Dussollier

Durée: 120 mins, 1997

SYNOPSIS : Four years before Baz Luhrman's MOULIN ROUGE, Alain Resnais made this musical love story using contemporary pop songs. The songs are used in a style similar to MOULIN ROUGE as they are the portal through which the innermost feelings of love are released. Characters lip-sync to popular tunes of the day to express their emotional states. Each character is also assigned a song that acts as an anthem for them in this clever musical comedy. The story involves a Parisian woman (Sabine Azema) desperately in search of a more spacious apartment. Her sister offers the assistant of her new lover, a real estate agent. Azema not only finds living space through the agency, but romance as well.