Ohio Wesleyan to host Tournées French film festival

Dans La Maison movie poster. Photo courtesy of namitlattam.com.
Dans La Maison movie poster. Photo courtesy of namitlattam.com.

Ohio Wesleyan will be hosting six different French films on campus as part of the Tournées French film festival.

These six films will be March 27 through April 16 and will be presented in French with English subtitles.

The professor organizing the festival, Ana Oancea, teaches French in the Modern Foreign Languages department, is in charge of “obtaining the grant funding, liaising with distributors, scheduling the screenings and inviting students and professors to introduce the films.”

“The Tournées film festival is a highly regarded event, one which I first attended when I was an undergraduate,” Oancea said. “Now a professor, I saw hosting the festival as a rite of passage.”

“Together with other colleges and universities, OWU was chosen to host the festival from a large pool of applicants based on an application I prepared,” said Oancea. “The film selection was made by my composition and conversation students. I think the selection committee was pleased to see students and faculty cooperate so closely.”

The films will be shown on the following days; March 27, Dans la Maison; March 31, Le Passé; April 4, La Grande Illusion; April 6, Elle s’en Va; April 14, Augustine; and April 16, Grigris. The films will be shown in Benes B at 7 p.m. These six films were selected by students in a French composition class taught by Oancea.

Elle S'en Va movie poster. Photo courtesy of allocene.fr.
Elle s’en Va movie poster. Photo courtesy of allocene.fr.

Junior Victor Soder said, “The company that owns the rights to the film festival puts out a list of recent and classic films and we picked films we thought would be interesting to watch.”

Ohio Wesleyan students and faculty will lead pre-screening discussions before each movie begins. “The faculty members introducing the films are free to take discussion wherever they think will be most interesting,” said Oancea. “They will seek to enrich the audience’s understanding of the film, delving into both artistic and technical aspects, and because these are foreign films, they will also invite us to ponder the cultural differences.”

Oancea said, “The festival lets students and faculty put the topics discussed in our classes in larger, and very current, context. It also gives us a chance to share our interests with the wider community: the festival was advertised to the local high schools, and film enthusiasts in Columbus.”

“The grant application of the French-American Cultural Exchange Foundation entailed explaining the rationale for the film selection, and how the films relate to the French curriculum at OWU,” said Oancea.

Juan Rojas, professor of Spanish in MFL said, “through the showings we have the chance to experience elements of other cultures, and in this case it also represents an extension of what our students are learning in their French courses – a unique opportunity.”

This is the first time OWU has hosted the Tournées.