NEW FILMS, hit films, and an out and out cinema classic, all from France, will be shown this weekend at the Pálás, for the Galway Film Society's A Taste Of France event.
A Taste Of France starts at 4pm this Saturday with Faces Places (Visages, Villages ), a documentary where director Agnes Varda and artist JR, travel from town to town in a van repurposed as a gigantic camera, photographing people at home or work, and pasting these images in public spaces.
At 6pm, Memoir of War (La Douleur ), Emmanuel Finkiel’s adaptation of Marguerite Duras’s semi-autobiographical novel, and France's official submission to the 2019 Academy Awards, is screened. It is 1944 in Nazi-occupied France. Marguerite and Robert are active Resistance members. When Robert is deported by the Gestapo, Marguerite tries to discover his whereabouts by entering into a high-risk friendship with the collaborator Rabier.
Fresh from its release in France at the end of October, Sink or Swim (Le Grand Bain ) is a feel-good comedy from director Gilles Lellouche. When long-term unemployed family man Bertrand answers an ad for a male synchronised swimming team, he finds himself with an unlikely bunch of guys, all on the verge of mid-life crisis. See it this Sunday at 4pm.
Then at 6.30pm comes one of cinema's all time classics - Orphée (1950 ) - Jean Cocteau's magical retelling of the Orpheus myth, which turns the lyre-playing singer of Greek legend into a famous and arrogant left-bank poet in postwar Paris, and using some still impressive special effects.
Tickets are available from palas.ie or 091 - 394800. A ticket for all four films are €25.