The Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation was one of the official partners of the first Zoom Arriere event (31 January to 28 February), organized by the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, to support “a prestigious project to restore a masterpiece of our cinematographic heritage, Cecil B de Mille’s The Cheat, with the addition of a contemporary musical score.”
The Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation supports initiatives that develop cross-disciplinary approaches and foster links between generations. It is for this reason that it chose to support the first Zoom Arrière event, which was designed to celebrate our cinematographic heritage. The festival enables the public to rediscover rare films that may once have been celebrated but are now forgotten.
The Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation took part in a one-off showing of Cecil B. de Mille’s 1915 film, The Cheat. For the occasion, a rare copy of the film was specially imported from Rochester, New York, on loan from George Eastman House, Kodak’s US film archive. The Cheat was a film that helped found a filmmaking culture in France. It had an enormous effect on the French public and in particular on Louis Delluc, later to become a leading filmmaker, to whom we owe the award (the César) that honours the best French film of the year and the coining of the term “cineaste” (French for film- or moviemaker). The story involves a married woman (Fanny Ward) who takes out a loan, from a Japanese man (Sessue Hayakawa) who is smitten with her, to cover gambling debts that she cannot repay.
The evening became a “cine-concert”, since the showing was accompanied by an improvisational four-piece group comprising two composers of electronic music, Pierre Jodlowski and Christophe Ruetsch, violinist Jérémie Siot of the Lyon Contemporary Ensemble, and saxophonist Marc Démereau, founder of the ensemble La Friture Moderne. The quartet offered the public a modern musical interpretation of the film. In doing so, it faced a dual challenge: to define new musical avenues by improvising while maintaining a relationship with the picture through a living musical experience created by exceptional musicians drawing on the worlds of contemporary and experimental music.
“The Cinémathèque de Toulouse chose to adopt this approach to the music,” explains Natacha Laurent, a representative of the movie theatre, “to echo the visual ambitions of the film itself and its highly innovative cinematographic style. The enthusiastic audience stayed behind long after the showing to chat with the musicians. This event was one of the best attended of the Zoom Arrière festival.”
Zoom Arrière also served as an occasion for the Cinémathèque de Toulouse to forge a special link with filmmaker Pascale Ferran, on hand on February 21 and 22 to present the people of Toulouse his “ideal motion picture library” (four films of world renown and his first feature-length film, Petits Arrangements avec les Morts, which forms part of the Cinémathèque’s collection). During the ceremony for the César awards on February 24, Pascale Ferran won five honors for his film Lady Chatterley, including Best Film of the Year.
The Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation took part in a one-off showing of Cecil B. de Mille’s 1915 film, The Cheat. For the occasion, a rare copy of the film was specially imported from Rochester, New York, on loan from George Eastman House, Kodak’s US film archive. The Cheat was a film that helped found a filmmaking culture in France. It had an enormous effect on the French public and in particular on Louis Delluc, later to become a leading filmmaker, to whom we owe the award (the César) that honours the best French film of the year and the coining of the term “cineaste” (French for film- or moviemaker). The story involves a married woman (Fanny Ward) who takes out a loan, from a Japanese man (Sessue Hayakawa) who is smitten with her, to cover gambling debts that she cannot repay.
The evening became a “cine-concert”, since the showing was accompanied by an improvisational four-piece group comprising two composers of electronic music, Pierre Jodlowski and Christophe Ruetsch, violinist Jérémie Siot of the Lyon Contemporary Ensemble, and saxophonist Marc Démereau, founder of the ensemble La Friture Moderne. The quartet offered the public a modern musical interpretation of the film. In doing so, it faced a dual challenge: to define new musical avenues by improvising while maintaining a relationship with the picture through a living musical experience created by exceptional musicians drawing on the worlds of contemporary and experimental music.
“The Cinémathèque de Toulouse chose to adopt this approach to the music,” explains Natacha Laurent, a representative of the movie theatre, “to echo the visual ambitions of the film itself and its highly innovative cinematographic style. The enthusiastic audience stayed behind long after the showing to chat with the musicians. This event was one of the best attended of the Zoom Arrière festival.”
Zoom Arrière also served as an occasion for the Cinémathèque de Toulouse to forge a special link with filmmaker Pascale Ferran, on hand on February 21 and 22 to present the people of Toulouse his “ideal motion picture library” (four films of world renown and his first feature-length film, Petits Arrangements avec les Morts, which forms part of the Cinémathèque’s collection). During the ceremony for the César awards on February 24, Pascale Ferran won five honors for his film Lady Chatterley, including Best Film of the Year.
