The Tournées Festival Presents Five Screenings in November

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The French Cinema Club invites you to join them for the Tournées Festival, which will screen five French movies with English subtitles at 7:45 p.m. Nov. 7, 8, 13, 14 and 21 in Old Main's Giffels Auditorium.

The festival will begin Thursday, Nov. 7, with Poulet Aux Prunes (Chicken with Plums). Nasser-Ali Khan is a gifted but miserable violinist who is wiling himself to die. As he takes to his bed to expire, the sources of his sorrows revile themselves.

Screenings continue Friday, Nov. 8, with Berlin 1885: la ruée sur l'Afrique (Berlin 1885: the Scramble of Africa). At the Berlin Conference on Africa, held at Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's official residence in Berlin, the major European countries and the U.S. divided the continent without the presences of a single African, setting in motion the colonization of Africa that would change the fate of that land.

The films resume on Wednesday, Nov. 13, and Thursday, Nov. 14 with Amour (Amour) and Le Chat du Rabbin (The Rabbi's Cat). Amour tells the story of George and Anne, long-married octogenarians and retired music teachers who still take great delight in each other. Their bonds are tested as Anne grows increasingly debilitated both mentally and physically.

Le Chat du Rabbin is an animated feature based on a popular comic book series. Set in Algiers in the 1920s and 1930s, the Rabbi's Cat is preparing for his bar mitzvah. The hairless and giant-eared feline has developed the power of speech, which he uses to constantly question and probe his faith during a voyage to Ethiopia with his master.

The series concludes Thursday, Nov. 21, with La fée (The Fairy). This homage to the physical comedy and slapstick of earlier movie eras begins when Dom, a mild-mannered hotel clerk, is visited by Fiona, a woman who claims to be a fairy. The Fairy unfolds one sight gag after another while the audience is left to wonder if Fiona really has supernatural powers or is simply insane.

The Tournées Festival is a program of the French American Cultural Exchange, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring contemporary French cinema to American college and university campuses. The program distributes close to $200,000 in grants annually to encourage schools to begin their own self-sustaining French film festivals. Now in its 18th year, the festival has partnered with more than 400 universities, making it possible for more than 500,000 students to discover French-language films.

The screenings are free of charge thanks to a grant from the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the United States and the Centre National de la Cinématographie et de l'Image Animée. Other sponsors include Florence Gould Foundation, CampusFrance, Grand Marnier Foundation and highbrow entertainment. The festival is coordinated through the French section of the department of world languages, literatures and cultures in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.