The 13th Preston International Film Festival And Movie Review Of Frantz

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Though only my second year of attendance 2019 mark the thirteenth anniversary of the Preston International Film Festival organized by the University Of Central Lancashire (UCLan) Worldwise Learning Centre., itself celebrating its tenth anniversary. The anniversary was marked with a trio of talks, a very nice nibbles and wine buffet reception and the first of nine movie screenings this week. This was all presented before an audience including many important dignitaries including the university vice chancellor, Graham Baldwin (who introduced the guest speakers) and the Lord Mayor of Preston. Darius Rahimi political Department Deputy head of the German Embassy offered the first talk, addressing the politics of reconciliation, an important short paper that neatly avoided taking sides in the main controversies of Brexit divisions between Britain and her European neighbours. There was a general sense that if the other main EU nations had similar remain or exit referendums their own population might be just as bitterly divided on the issue as we are in the UK now. Derek Smith, Chair Of Preston’s City Twinning Department talked on the politics of twin town arrangements. Preston has four twin towns, and asked to name them none of us in the audience (myself included) were able to, though they are mentioned on the city welcome signs on our borders. They are in fact Almelo - Netherlands. Kalisz - Poland. Nîmes - France and Recklinghausen – Germany. The twinnings ((quintriplicating?) enables a great deal of cultural, art and educational exchange. Students often get to visit the other towns, support and celebrate one another’s achievements, promote leading sport, music and academic heroes from our international allies, and bond our humanity across the oceans. Aside – In my recently published pub signs book, Watch The Signs, I mention The Mended Drum in Wincanton, the only UK town genuinely twinned to a completely fictional city, Ankh Morpork in the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels. The Mended Drum (actually also called Uncle Tom’s Cabin) is the name of a pub featured in some of the novels. Dr Frederick Brayard, a film-studies Professor addressing the role of peace-making in and through film-making (a central theme of the movie shown tonight). The movie is not only about post First World War events in France and Germany, it is an international movie co-production with cast, movie makers, language experts and many others from both France and Germany. Characters speak both French and German, depending which country they are in, throughout the film. The film making itself helped to cut divisions and misperceptions between the countries, and reached audiences across the borders too. Brayard notes that the movie director, Francois Ozon, blurs what he calles the ‘presentpast’ showing that history, recent and ancient, mainly addresses the present. On language he notes that all language have a word for mother, though a few words like Quirky are much harder to translate. For me words like eccentric and offbeat spring to mind. Amazing informative presentations setting the mood beautifully for the festival itself. After a lovely little buffet, and free French / German wines, the film itself was screened (introduced by Professor Brayard). Frantz – Review 2016 – Spoiler alerts. A very sad tragic story set in early 1919, during the first months of the uneasy peace following the November 1918 Armistice. Anna, (Paula Beer) is a German girl in a quiet village. Her fiancé, Frantz Hoffmeister was killed in the war and she visits his grave to put flowers there regularly. One day she finds out a young French man, Adrien (Pierre Niney) has also been visiting the grave with the same purpose. He has faced hostility from the German villagers who are still embittered by the deaths of their sons in the war. The people who try to drive him away include the Hoffmeisters, until Anna shows them that Pierre was a friend of their son from before the war and therefore may know something of his life and death. Gradually the family come to accept Pierre and delight in his stories about his friendship with Frantz, but all is not as it appears. Anne begins to feel love for Pierre until he reveals that he has been lying, and that he can no longer maintain the lies he has told. He never knew Frantz before the war, only meeting him the day he shot him. Pierre had deserted his platoon under heavy fire and ran into Frantz in a trench shooting the Frenchman before realizing that the enemy soldier was an unarmed pacifist. Wracked with guilt, and learning of Frantz from his last and unposted love letter to Anna, Pierre has gone to the family hoping to gain forgiveness for his own act of cowardice. Unable to forgive him, Anna sends Pierre away obliging him to write letters of apology for the Hoffmeisters but she knows it would break their hearts to know the simple truth, so she destroys the letters and writes her own letters for the family, giving more details of how wonderful their son was and his adventures with his friend in Paris. Eventfully Anna tries reuniting with Pierre only to meet his real family and his true lover. He had never realized that Anna even loved him, and now it is too late for them to fix that. They part though Anna imagines them both still united by their love of art and music, an eerie echo of the false life he created around Frantz. Many lies are told, but none for corrupt or dishonest purposes. If anything the truth itself is what could and in some cases does destroy the characters involved. Though mostly in black and white, the film breaks into colour when it shows the moments that are idealized and beautiful, but actually false as well as the moment in the war when the reality and false idealism from Pierre converge in a single tragic gun shot. That the final instant of film showing Pierre and Anna together is in colour, we know that love too is just another sweet delusion. Though by no means an action movie, the film sweeps along with an often unbearable tension, and emotional stress that becomes quite unforgettable. The most important message is of course that love, grief, a need for family and forgiveness, transcend borders and unite us all. The moments of conflict between nations still hostile to one another are a grim reminder of the bitterness that would explode over Europe in a new war just twenty years later as well as the tensions seen now in the fractures generated by Brexit. We do indeed live in the shockwaves of Profesor Brayard’s ‘presentpast’. A big thank you to everyone at the Worldwise Learning Centre. for organizing the festival. Arthur Chappell