The James River Film Festival and the VCU/UR French Film Festival present …

Marching Band
(Claude Miller, 2009, 95 min.)
with French director Héléna Cotinier, French producer Annie Miller and production manager and Richmonder Isaac Regelson
6:30 pm
The Byrd Theatre
Admission $5 (free to French Film Festival Pass holders)

French director Miller and his crew followed the marching bands of Virginia State University and University of Virginia through the waning months of President Obama’s 2008 Campaign. Given the importance of the youth vote to Obama’s success, Miller has recorded the optimism and dreams of a whole generation in this revelatory documentary.

Les plages d’Agnès/The Beaches of Agnès
(Agnès Varda, 2008/2009 U.S.; 108 min., French w/English subtitles) Richmond Premiere … on 35 mm!
9:00 pm
The Byrd Theatre
Admission $5 (free to French Film Festival pass holders)

French New Wave director Agnès Varda’s latest and declared final film is a visually sumptuous and multi-layered essay, the cinematic memoir of an artist whose life is inseparable from her art and memories. Tracing her life via clips of her films and those of husband/director Jacques Demy – revisiting locations of previous shoots, observing crowds passing in the streets – Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7, Vagabond) settles ultimately on the beaches in her life as the film’s abiding motif for time’s passage. Richard Brody of The New Yorker declared it “A work of art!” and the Film Comment critics’ poll named it “One of the year’s ten best!”