13/10/2003

Apart from the special events being held in 30 major French cities for the second edition of Cinedays, European cinema is also being featured in many other parts of the country thanks to Agency for Regional Film Development (the ADRC). The organisation has the task of maintaining and developing cinemas across the whole country and especially in the less accessible areas. To boost audiences the ADRC is bringing Cinedays 2003 to more than 60 cinemas in the small and medium sized cities, places where the audience is less than 215,000 a year. This initiative will allow the rich heritage of European cinema to reach all sections of the public, especially youngsters.

The ADRC, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year (with a total of 33,000 prints and 1,600 films made available), has put together a list of 80 European films for its cinema operators to show as part of Cinedays, with advantageous rental terms on offer (no minimum guarantee, in exchange for at least 2 screenings). There are works from Germany (Adlon, Schlöndorff, Wenders) Austria (Seidl), Belgium and Denmark (featured in 4 films by Dreyer), Sweden (Widerberg), Hungary (5 feature length films by Istvan Szabo), Poland (Munk, Wajda, Kawalerowicz, Zulawski, Kieslowski...), the Czech Republic Ceca (Hertz, Zeman, Menzel), without forgetting Russia, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan: thus giving a wide panorama of films made across the whole of Europe. There will also be works from Spain (Bunuel, Almodovar), Britain (Gilliam, Leigh, Ivory, Chaffey, Powell, Russell), Italy (Antonioni, Moretti, Fellini, Bertolucci, Avati, Pasolini, Comencini, De Sica), Ireland (Joe Comerford), Holland (van der Keuken), Portugal (de Oliveira and Botelho) and Switzerland (Schmid, Goretta). And the plethora of masterpieces also include French works, by directors like Truffaut and André Malraux. In addition there’ll be conferences organised by specialist magazines, (Cahiers du Cinéma, Synopsis and Positifi) and institutions like the French Film Library and the French Association of Historical Film Research.

(Translated from French)