The Competition

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The Competition

“Insightful…Compassionate.” (The Hollywood Reporter)

“A remarkably compelling portrait.” (Senses of Cinema)

Claire Simon, one of France’s leading documentarians, gives an enlightening all-access tour behind the scenes at France’s premiere film school, La Fémis. During its long and exhaustive admissions period, thousands upon thousands of would-be filmmakers are assessed for forty cherished slots. Simon’s captivating film shows us heated discussions among selection committee members, entrance interviews, and other forms of evaluation in this unique glimpse into the operation of a state-run institution officially—if quite imperfectly—representing the French Republican values of equality.

PAST EVENTS

Q&A filmmaker Claire Simon with JBFC Creative Culture Fellow Lydia Cornett
Friday, Mar. 8 2019, 7:00
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As a filmmaker, Claire Simon first directed independent shorts. Her most notable works of the period are La police (1988) and Scènes de ménage (1991), starring Miou-Miou. She then discovered the practice of 'direct cinema' with the Ateliers Varan and made several documentaries such as Les patients (1989), Coûte que coûte (1995) and Récréations (1998), which garnered multiple awards. Her film, Ca, c'est vraiment toi (2000), an original work, half-documentary, half-fiction, filmed within the walls of the European Parliament, was awarded the great prize at the Belfort Film Festival. Her second fiction film, Ca brûle (2006) was also selected for Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 2006. She received the True Vision Award at The True/False film festival in 2017, a career honor. An atypical talent in the French movie world, Claire Simon has been directing for more than two decades–ceaselessly–to capture the essence of reality.

Lydia Cornett is the Fall 2018 Valentine & Clark Emerging Artist Fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center. Originally from Baltimore, she now freelances as a documentary filmmaker and video producer in Brooklyn. Lydia was a 2018 CoLab Fellow at UnionDocs and is a graduate of Princeton University. As a member of The Video Consortium, she has produced non-fiction video content for The New Yorker, Slate Magazine, The Washington Post, and Penguin Random House.


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