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"To Laugh or Not to Laugh"
A FILM FESTIVAL
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The role of Humor in French Film about the Holocaust

Full program of events in the festival.
Friday, May 21st

3:00 pm Screening of "Almost Peaceful," Dartmouth Hall 105 Followed by a discussion led by André Colombat, author of "The Holocaust in French Film," Dartmouth Hall 105

Almost Peaceful (Un Monde Presque Paisible), 2002

Directed by Michelle Deville
Starring Simon Abkarian, Lubna Azabal, Zabou Breitman, Clotilde Courau and Denis Podalydès

The film is set in August 1946, in a ladies' garment workshop in the Jewish tailor's district of Paris. In the workshop, amidst sewing machines, cutting and finishing tables, and bolts of cloth, four women, five men and their children learn to live again. Devastated but determined, hardened but joyful, they opt for life. These are ordinary, yet also extraordinary people.

"Thoroughly charming, sad, gentle and funny in the best French traditions of high-quality cinema." -VARIETY

6:00 pm Reception in the Hanover Inn, Wheelock Room


Saturday, May 22nd

10:00 am Screening of "Amen," Dartmouth Hall 105

Directed by Costa-Gavras
Starring Ulrich Tukur, Mathieu Kassovitz

Academy Award-Winning Director Costa-Gavras has turned a critical political moment into a drama with the pace of a thriller. The story is based on the real-life Kurt Gerstein, who secretly approached the Swedish Consulate, the German Protestant community and finally the Pope in the hopes of exposing the annihilation of European Jews.


1:00 pm Screening of "Safe Conduct," Dartmouth Hall 105 with an introduction by Lynn Higgins, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
Starring Jacques Gamblin, Denis Polydadès


Nazi Occupied Paris, 1942. Love and art are acts of resistance. Set amidst the French film industry during WWII, Safe Conduct focuses on an assistant director with a wife and child to support, a philandering screenwriter, and their varying strategies of resistance and accommodation to the Occupation. The film is based on the actual wartime experiences of assistant director / resistance partisan Jean Devaivre and screenwriter and future Tavernier collaborator Jean Aurenche.


7:00 pm Screening of "Train of Life," featuring an introduction by Lionel Abelanski, star of the film

In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.


"A rustic comic fairy tale. Rollicking...Has the bustling energy of 'Fiddler on the Roof'."
-Stephen Holden, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Comic and Charming."
-John Anderson, NEWSDAY

Winner! Sundance Film Festival- Audience Award


Sunday, May 23rd

11 am Premiere of Danny Anker's new documentary "Imaginary Witness," Dartmouth Hall 105

This 90-minute documentary tells the story of the American film industry's complex and fascinating response to the horrors of Nazi Germany. Utilizing carefully selected excerpts from extraordinary and in some cases rarely-seen films, and told through the first-hand accounts of the directors, actors writers, and producers, the film covers some of Hollywood's most important movies, including The Mortal Storm, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, The Search, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Pawnbroker, Judgment at Nuremberg, Sophie's Choice, and Schindler's List.

Organized by Rebecca Leffler '04
Sponsored by: The Dickey Center for International Understanding, The Dean of the Faculty, The Bildner Endowment, The Parents Chair, The Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth Hillel, The Jewish Studies Department, The Dartmouth Alumni Council, The French & Italian Department, Kappa Delta Epsilon, The History Department, Film & Television Studies and Bones Gate

All screenings free and open to the public.