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“VIVE LE CINEMA!” CLAUDE LELOUCH CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF FILMMAKING IN CHICAGO

Posted Thursday, October 6th, 2011 - Comments Off on “VIVE LE CINEMA!” CLAUDE LELOUCH CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF FILMMAKING IN CHICAGO
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 5, 2011 — The 47th Chicago International Film Festival welcomes back French film director and producer Claude Lelouch and joins him in his celebration of 50 years in the film industry. The Festival will present Lelouch with a Silver Hugo award at the Saturday October 8, 7:30 pm screening of What Love May Bring, Lelouch’s 43red film, at the AMC River East 21. A second Lelouch film, From One Film to Another, is being screened at the Festival as part of its DOCUFEST showcase of documentaries. He will also be present at the October 7, 6 pm screening of From One Film to Another.

Lelouch was the subject of a retrospective during the 22nd Chicago International Film Festival in 1986, where he received a Career Achievement Award in recognition of his  contributions to the international film industry.

“I remember telling the legendary Hollywood director and producer King Vidor after I saw Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, ‘You’ve got to see this man’s film. I have never seen anything like this before.’ And ever since then, Lelouch has never ceased to amaze me. I’m a romantic and I love Lelouch’s movies, particularly his latest feature film What Love May Bring, which is one of his most delightful yet,” said Michael Kutza, Founder and Artistic Director of the Chicago International Film Festival.

“The opening shot of From One Film to Another is a testament to Lelouch’s genius and his love for the liberating potential of film,” said Lee Ferdinand, Programmer for the 47th Chicago International Film Festival. “Lelouch launches us from a ‘canon’ into his own filmography by strapping a camera into a car and speeding through the streets of Paris in the first hours of the morning. That sequence alone expresses the exhilaration Lelouch feels every time he is behind a camera.”

Born in Paris on October 30, 1937, Lelouch inherited his passion for filmmaking from his father, who was an avid home-movie maker. Lelouch bought his first 8mm camera when he was 13 and the next year won first prize in an amateur film festival for his first documentary. He came to the United States in the mid-fifties, where he shot two short documentaries. Following that, he shot another short film in the Soviet Union using a concealed camera.

In 1960, Lelouch founded his own production company, Les Films 13. For the next two years, he produced Scopitones, two- and three-minute film clips to accompany recordings played on juke boxes with tiny movie screens, which were the forerunners to music videos.

After being discouraged by lack of financial success and critical recognition, Lelouch took a vacation to a French coastal resort town in 1965 and came up with the story for A Man and a Woman, an Academy Award® winner for Best Foreign Film and Best Screenplay and winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The film’s critical and commercial success granted Lelouch the artistic and financial freedom to make the films he wanted to make. In 1970, Lelouch won the David di Donatello (Italy’s Oscar®) for Best Director of a Foreign Film for The Crook starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, and in 1975, he received the Best Foreign Language Film award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for And Now My Love starring Marthe Keller.

He revisited the characters and story of A Man and a Woman twenty years later in the appropriately titled A Man and a Woman Twenty Years Later, which received its Chicago Premiere as part of the Festival’s Lelouch Retrospective. His 1996 adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Misérables won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and actress Annie Girardot received the César for Best Supporting Actress. In 1998, the Chicago International Film Festival awarded Alessandra Martines the Silver Hugo for Best Actress for her starring role in Lelouch’s Chances or Coincidences.

Lelouch has been an advocate for young unknown directors. Since the establishment of Les Films 13, he has produced or co-produced more than 20 features by first time filmmakers.

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TICKET INFO

All events, except Opening Night, are at the AMC River East 21, 322 E. Illinois Street. Tickets for the 47th Chicago International Film Festival are on sale now. Opening Night tickets and festival passes may be purchased on the Festival website. All individual tickets must be purchased by phone 312-332-FILM (3456), in person by visiting the Festival box office at AMC River East 21, or through Ticketmaster.

FESTIVAL SPONSORS
Led by Presenting Partner, Columbia College Chicago, the 47th Chicago International Film Festival’s sponsors include: Premiere Partners – American Airlines, Lincoln; Producing Partners – AMC Theaters, DePaul University’s School of Cinema and Interactive Media, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Major Partners – Allstate, Intersites; Supporting Partners – Applitite, Barefoot Wine & Bubbly, Brugal Rum, Kodak, Second City Computers, WBBM, and the Festival’s Headquarters Hotel, JW Marriott Chicago.

ABOUT CINEMA/CHICAGO

Cinema/Chicago is a not-for-profit cultural and educational organization dedicated to encouraging better understanding between cultures and to making a positive contribution to the art form of the moving image. The Chicago International Film Festival is part of the year-round programs presented by Cinema/Chicago, which also include the International Screenings Program (May-September), the Hugo Television Awards (April), CineYouth Festival (May), Intercom Competition (October) and year-round Education Outreach and Member Screenings Program.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

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My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
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~ David Simon