Clint Bowie was a connoisseur of the film scene in Chicago, Paris, and Portland, Oregon before finally settling here in New Orleans, and has been involved with the French Film Festival for more than half of its history. Bowie sat down with me to discuss this year’s fest, the curation process, and some of his favorite memories of FFF’s past.
Let’s talk about the selection process. I see you’ve got a decent balance of newer films and older films. How do you go about choosing the lineup? How is it different from the New Orleans Film Festival?
It’s very different from what the process is like for the New Orleans Film Festival. That one is overwhelmingly submissions based, so we have a call for submissions from filmmakers all over the world. We have a team of over a dozen people and volunteer screeners to help with that process of trying to identify and create something from a giant pool of submissions. This is a little different, more direct curation. We are looking at French language films—that’s a priority for the festival—and for films that have screened at other festivals or that we’ve been made aware of through our connections within filmmaking communities. We work with sales agents, U.S. distributors, production companies, cast as wide a net as possible to identify French language films that we think could be a good fit. This year we looked at around 70 total films, and I think we’re going to show 18, including shorts. I don’t have the team that I have for New Orleans Film Festival—this is mainly me and some other members of our full-time staff. For the New Orleans Film Festival, we might have upwards of seven programmers looking at a given feature before it’s programmed. This one’s much different. Sometimes I’m watching a film and making a decision.
I see you’ve got some Jean Cocteau films and The Stranger. How’d you choose some of the older films?
We’re showing two Cocteau films: Orpheus and Beauty and the Beast. We really want to ensure that we’re connecting the lineage of French language cinema to its past to try and encourage audiences to identify not only where French cinema is today, but also where it’s come from. This happens to be the 80th anniversary of Beauty and the Beast so that was on our mind as a potential film to include. Then there’s some obvious connections to Orpheus in New Orleans. This year we’re also bringing Chloë Cassens, an international scholar on Jean Cocteau, to come provide introductions to those films and also lead a discussion on the art of fairytale and film as seen through Cocteau. She’s actually the granddaughter of someone who was the world’s preeminent collector of Jean Cocteau’s works and helped to establish a Jean Cocteau museum in France.
What contemporary films are you looking forward to?
There’s some really strong films in the mix. I’m particularly drawn to a film called Nino that played at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a very introspective film about one person who’s experiencing a diagnosis over the course of several days and internalizing that, trying to go about his regular life, but also absorb that heaviness. I feel it’s very connected to Cléo from 5 to 7, a similar introspective look at someone who’s contemplating the potential of some heavy medical diagnosis as well. I think there’s a really interesting play of the past and the present too within that film, it definitely has a lot of references to the Agnès Varda film, and it’s such a heartfelt and moving piece of work… Dahomey looks at Benin culture, particularly art, and is connected to the world of francophone culture and history through colonialism. This film certainly reframes how I think the story of France’s connection to West Africa has been told over the years.
Do you get to pull from a lot of local filmmakers or local actors?
We try to, as much as possible. We’ve got a film that was made right here in Louisiana about zydeco music and that was in part funded by #CreateLouisiana, which is an initiative to help fund films and Louisiana-based filmmakers. Built On Zydeco will showcase the history of Creole music in Louisiana and the French language voices and music that are still working today. So that’s super exciting. We’re also going to be showing Convulsions, a French language film that’s from a Baton Rouge-based filmmaker [Adrien Picquenot, Pierrot du Saillant]. He’s actually French and lives in Baton Rouge. Who Will Remember Us—there’s another short film that was actually made by a group of filmmakers who are based in Quebec, but came down to Louisiana to make their film. So there are a lot of connections to Louisiana and there’s certainly a lot of Louisiana talent represented in some of these films.
What else makes the French Film Festival so unique?
It’s one of the oldest French language festivals in the country, that’s for sure, and one of the oldest language-specific film festivals in the country. I think that this festival has a dedicated audience. There are people who come back year after year who will watch every single film in the festival, and that’s always really exciting for us, to kind of reengage with that audience and see them year after year. That’s something that does set this one apart. It is difficult to get artists to this festival just given that many of them are international and it can be really costly. But we are excited to have several visiting filmmakers this year. One who will be joining us from Quebec [Anne Émond], she’s the director of Peak Everything, which was actually the closing night film at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. We’ll have the filmmakers of the film Built on Zydeco in attendance. We’ll have several filmmakers of short films at the festival, and try to build as many opportunities as possible for audiences to learn from artists about their process and their inspirations.
What are some of your favorite memories from festivals past?
There’s nothing like seeing a film at Uptown Prytania. The screen is so big, it’s immersive. It’s the best place to really get lost in a film, I think. I have so many great memories of watching films. This was probably 10 years ago, but I remember we showed a film, Farewell, My Queen, at noon on a Monday and there was a literal line wrapping around the block. Almost sold that screen out at the Prytania, which is hard to do. It’s 250-odd seats and that was when I was working with my colleague at the time, John Desplas, who has since passed away. I remember him counting the people—going back and forth, counting the open seats and then counting the people in the line and us being amazed because we were not prepared to accommodate that many people. Seeing that kind of reaction, I mean we see that regularly with the French Film Festival in particular: people coming for a film that’s not a Hollywood film, does not have big names, but people are just really looking for exciting, independent, arty films. Being able to provide an audience with that is always exciting. Also, I have such fond memories of working with John Desplas who I think a lot of people associate the French Film Festival with. He was with the organization since it started in 1989. I think the French Film Festival was kind of his baby. He was such a mentor to me and I love John so much. We talked on the phone every single day up until the day he passed. I can’t think of the French Film Festival or even work on the French Film Festival without reflecting on our time together and all of his contributions to this community and to the organization specifically.
I saw that you spent some time in France during college.
There’s something special about French film and French language cinema. I think a lot of artists look to classic French cinema and also have an eye to what’s happening in contemporary French language cinema, particularly through the Cannes Film Festival, so I do think there’s something very relevant about French language cinema today. With the historical connections to Francophone culture, it makes a lot of sense for this festival to be in New Orleans.
How would you recommend someone tackle the French Film Festival?
This festival is fairly manageable from an audience perspective. I think the New Orleans Film Festival is much harder to navigate. There’s so many more films and things that are competing. But this festival, given that it’s at [mostly] one venue, only one film showing at a time, I would dive in. I don’t think you can go wrong, really. Take a chance on something you’ve never heard of that features no one you’ve ever heard of. You might be surprised.
Photo by Katie Sikora
