Alyssa Washington
palmettoreport@gmail.com

(Rock Hill, S.C.) — The Winthrop University Fine Arts Department has joined with the World Languages and Cultures Department to host a six-week French Film Festival, which features six films dating from 1931 to 2017.

Dr. Alice Burmeister, associate professor of fine arts, and Dr. Anna Igou, assistant professor of French, co-taught a special topics film course during the spring semester entitled “Women of the French New Wave,” which inspired the festival.

“We recruited students and faculty from their respective departments to present these films and facilitate discussion on them,” said Igou.

She said viewing a film “beyond our everyday lives” can have a significant impact on the audience.

“Like great works of literature, great foreign films can provide us with a means of venturing outside of ourselves,” said Igou. “They serve as a sort of portal, a window into other places, other people, other ways of living. They can inspire us, fuel our imaginations, pique our curiosity and teach us things we could never have learned otherwise.”

She said one goal of the festival is to provide “enriching opportunities to students for global cultural event credit” and to also expose members of the Winthrop community to new and great works.

Yashuri Del Rosario Rodriguez, a junior French major and one of the student presenters, said she believes the festival is important, because it exposes people to new elements of French film.

“France has had many artistic film movements that I don’t think many people have been exposed to,” said Del Rosario Rodriguez. “This was a really great way to just collect six marvelous films from all kinds of genres and expose people to a new idea of what a film can be.”

There are two remaining films to be screened, including Amélie (2001) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet on Oct. 1 and Faces Places (2017) by Agnés Varda on Oct. 8.

The films will be presented in the Rutledge Auditorium (room 119) from 7-9 p.m.

“We hope attendees will enjoy these wonderful films and perhaps consider seeking out other films in the French New Wave genre,” said Burmeister.