Films français !

Who says that French films are meant for French audiences ??? A small, little tweak and voila ! Ready for Indian audiences :) Well, that's exactly what happened at Fun Republic (a mutliplex), Ahmedabad a few days back...

There was a French Film Festival held there from March 31 - April 6, 2006. It was organized by Alliance Francaise, a body which promotes the French language throughout India. It was indeed very well organized, with audiences increasing in number as the days went on ! On the last day, there was not even a single empty seat in the audi.

Seven films were scheduled for the 8'o clock show every evening (one film on each day). All of these were essentially animation films with English sub-titles (so that poor souls like me could understand what was going on on-screen) !! And I can tell you.. these movies were very, very good pieces of animation !

Following are the names of the movies screened... (one of them has slipped out of my mind) !

Le roi et l'oiseau de raillerie
The King and the mocking bird

Kirikou et la sorcière
Kirikou and the sorceress

Le chien, le général et les oiseaux
The Dog, the General and the birds

Pleuvoir des chats et des grenouilles
Raining Cats and Frogs

Les triplettes de Belleville
The triplets of Belleville

L'île de MOR noir
The Island of Black Mor

Even though I don't understand much(!) of French, these movies were much better than a Rs. 100-crore hindi movie :) And the animations were excellent - I can say that because I come from a designing background...

I ended up watching 5 of these movies... One with my family, one with friends, a couple with my sis, and one ALONE ! (Yes, I enjoyed the movie alone too) :) One thing different about these movies was that almost all of them had a mix of humans and animals as characters (or protagonists) - All of them animated of course. They tried to portray how can man and nature gel with each other, and make this world a much better place to live in.

All the movies were were innocent in the treatment of stories / plots, and in the way the characters were portrayed. They were very well paced, and kept the audience glued at all times... There was no point in the movie when the audience would have felt confused or even away from the core story... And the most important thing was that every movie had a social message conveyed at the end... Which is lacking in movies today !

All in all, a brilliant experience... Atleast these movies left a message for me... "Learn French. It'll help !" :)