For the fourth year in a row, a week of new French films will be presented at the City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival, April 25-29,2000 at the Director's Guild Theater is Los Angeles, California. This year the festival will showcase six films including Venus Beauty Institute (Venus Beaute), the 1999 winner of four Cesar Awards (France's equivalent of the Oscars) including the award for Best Film, the critically acclaimed Claire Denis film Beau Travail, and a period film entitled Time Regained based on French novelist Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past."

The five day event, which screens one film each evening plus an additional film on Saturday afternoon, is produced and funded by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a collaborative which includes the Director's Guild of America, the Motion Picture Association of America (a Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles-based office which lobbies on behalf of the distribution of U.S. films worldwide), SACEM (France's Society of Authors, Composers and Editors), and the Writer's Guild of America West. The films will be co-presented by France's L'ARP (Auteurs, Realisaeurs, Producteurs - a group of directors, producers and screenwriters), the French Film and Television Office of the French Consulate in Los Angeles, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The film program and its notes have been compiled by David Pendelton of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

"We are very proud to participate in this biggest of French cultural events in Los Angeles which gives us an opportunity to present to the American public and American film industry professionals, French talent and artistic development," said Francois Truffart of the French Film and Television Office. "For a long time, New York was the main gate for the screening of European and French movies, and now with the advent of 60 new multiplex screens in the Los Angeles area for independent and foreign films, such as the Laemmle and Landmark Theaters, our films have a chance for more visibility."

Venus Beauty Institute, the opening night film, was directed and written by Tonie Marshall and stars French film favorite Nathalie Baye as a pretty middle-aged beautician who discovers that her one-night stands become meaningless when she is pursued by a man whom she ignores but who pays attention to her anyway.

1999 Madeleine is the first in a series of 10 films from director-writer Laurent Bouhnik which will focus on 10 characters, one at a time, in a set group of people. The protagonist in this film is a young seamstress who looks for love in the personal ads. The style is spare, reflecting the emptiness of modern suburban life, and the humor subtle and black. There is a cameo performance by French film great Anouk Aimee at the girl's estranged troubled mother.

Claire Denis' Beau Travail, is a mood movie with virtually no narrative, set at a legionnaire's outpost overlooking the quiet aquamarine sea on the coast of Djibouti. The story, a tense triangle between a senior officer, a young sergeant and a new recruit, is loosely on the Herman Melville novel "Billy Budd." The film has met with critical success at the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Of Women and Magic (La Chambre des Magiciennes) is a Claude Miller film which focuses on a graduate student who's been suffering six months of headaches and her experiences in a hospital room with two other women. This dark comedy about suffering and redemption won the FIPRESCI (Federation of Film Critics) Award at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

A Monkey's Tale (Le Chateau des Singes), an animated feature film from director Jean-Francois Laguionie focuses on a universe inhabited by two races of monkey.

Time Regained (Le Temps Retrouve) is director Raul Ruiz' interpretation of Proust's story about a writer, part of Parisian high society, who confronts his own failing health as World War I will forever change the world. The film stars Emmanuelle Beart, Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich and Vincent Perez.

French directors Laurent Bouhnik, Claire Denis, Tonie Marshall and Claude Miller will be present following the screenings of their films for a question and answer session moderated by an American filmmaker.

With the exception of The Monkey's Tale, which is presented in its English language version, all the films will be in French with English subtitles.

This event, often sold-out ahead of time, drew an audience of over 4,000 industry executives and film fans last year.

The Director's Guild of America is located at 7920 Sunset Blvd. at the corner of Hayworth Avenue just west of Fairfax. Parking is free. Ticket information is available at (310)206-FILM.

Contributor/festival specialist
Wendy Carrel