My French Film Festival

Bonne Année is French for Happy New year and, if you ever felt like organising a French film festival, this is the year and now is the time. You can start next week and the whole thing will be done and dusted by the end of the month.

Usually you would need to plan a long way ahead, find sponsors, staff and cinemas. Then you would need to pick the films, negotiate the rights, arrange the transport of the celluloid spools and the special guests and ...pray that they arrive on time for the advertised screening. And that is only half of the joys, headaches and suspense that are part and parcel of managing a cultural event like a film festival. It's like that on a large scale for Cannes, Berlin, London and all of the major film festivals, and also for the thousand local festivals happening somewhere in the world every single day of the year. One thing they all have in common is that the organisers never have the time or the peace of mind to enjoy the films.

Organise Your Own Festival

Experienced or not, you can organise your own French film festival next week and have the leisure to enjoy the films also. With a minimum of fuss and organisation, and for the price of an inexpensive meal, you can organise a festival for just yourself, a group of friends or an entire university. It is thanks to digital technology, the internet and the French film industry. From Jan 12th to February 1st they are making available online 10 recent feature films and 10 short films that will compete for 3 prizes: the Audience Prize, the International Press Prize and the Social Networks Prize. The public can vote for their favourite film.

The films will be available subtitled in a choice of 14 different languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

All of the films demonstrate the vibrancy and diversity of contemporary French cinema. France is a country that takes its cinema as seriously as it takes its cuisine. The first public screening of a film took place in Paris in 1895 and you can be sure that its qualities were discussed and debated over a nice dinner and bottle of wine afterwards. The 10 films in competition for My French Film Festival are selected from the 200 or so feature films that are made in France every year. If you want to make an event of it, you can organise screenings and form juries to discuss the films merits and vote online, using their five-star system. Or you can simply make a private pleasure of it on your laptop at home alone curled up on the sofa.

For more information in English, click here, or browse our World Cinema section. 

Séamas McSwiney is our guest film correspondent. He has decades of experience in film journalism, with work published in some top international publications. To read more posts by him, click here. 

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