CFCC’s Albertine Cinémathèque Film Festival

The Velvet Queen

Monday, Feb. 13 at 12 p.m.
92 minutes, 2021

In the heart of the Tibetan highlands, multi-award-winning nature photographer Vincent Munier guides writer Sylvain Tesson on his quest to document the infamously elusive snow leopard. Munier introduces Tesson to the subtle art of waiting from a blind spot, tracking animals, and finding the patience to catch sight of the beasts. Through their journey in the Tibetan peaks, inhabited by invisible presences, the two men ponder humankind’s place amongst the magnificent creatures and glorious landscapes they encounter.

Aline

Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 12:30 p.m.
125 minutes, 2021

For Aline Dieu, nothing in the world matters more than music, family, and love. Her powerful and emotional voice captivates everyone who hears it, including successful manager GuyClaude Kamar, who resolves to do everything in his power to make her a star. As Aline climbs from local phenomenon to best-selling recording artist to international superstar, she embarks on the two great romances of her life: one with the decades-older Guy-Claude and the other with her adoring audiences. This is the unofficial biopic of Céline Dion.

Gagarine

Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 12 p.m.
97 minutes, 2021

Youri, 16, has lived all his life in Gagarine Cité, a vast red-brick housing project on the outskirts of Paris. From the heights of his apartment, he dreams of becoming an astronaut. But when plans to demolish his community’s home are leaked, Youri joins the resistance. With his friends Diana and Houssam, he plans to save Gagarine, transforming the estate into his own “starship”– before it disappears into space forever. The film was shot on the cusp of the actual demolition of the Cité Gagarine housing project in collaboration with its residents in Ivry-sur-Seine.

Last Year at Marienbad

Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 6 p.m.
94 minutes, 1961

A man approaches a woman at a social gathering at a château or baroque hotel. He claims they met the year before at Marienbad and is convinced that she is waiting there for him. The woman insists they have never met. A second man, who may be the woman’s husband, repeatedly asserts his dominance over the first man, including beating him several times at a mathematical game (a version of Nim). Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorientating shifts of time and location, the film explores the relationships among the characters.
Conversations and events are repeated in several places in the château and grounds, and there are numerous tracking shots of the château’s corridors, with ambiguous voiceovers.

The characters are unnamed in the film; in the published screenplay, the woman is referred to as “A,” the first man is “X”, and the man who may be her husband is “M”.

Gallantes Indies

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 12:30 p.m.
108 minutes, 2021

This is a premiere for 30 dancers of hip-hop, krump, break, voguing… A first for the director Clément Cogitore and for the choreographer Bintou Dembélé. And a first for the Paris’ Opera Bastille. By bringing together urban dance and opera singing, they reinvent Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque masterpiece, Les Indes Galantes. From rehearsals to public performances, it is a human adventure and a meeting of political realities that we follow: can a new generation of artists storm the Bastille today?

Lost Illustions

Thursday, Feb. 16 at 6p.m.
141 minutes, 2021

Lucien is a young unknown poet in 19th-century France. He has great expectations and wants to forge a destiny. He leaves the family printing business in his native province to try his luck in Paris, on the arm of his protector. Soon left to his own devices in the fabulous city, the young man will discover the backstage of a world dedicated to the law of profit and pretense. A human comedy where everything is bought and sold, literature as well as the press, politics as well as feelings, reputations as well as souls. He will love, he will suffer, and survive his illusions.