Lyon (AFP)
The Lumière festival opens on Saturday in Lyon with a program of more than 150 films and documentaries, punctuated by tributes and meetings with big names like Jane Campion, Marco Bellochio, Paolo Sorrentino or Edgar Morin.
For this 13th edition, the 67-year-old New Zealand filmmaker, recently awarded the Golden Lion for best director, will receive the 2021 Lumière Prize, which her promoters like to compare to the "Nobel for Cinema".
The public will be able to see or re-watch his seven feature films on the big screen, including the last, "The Power of the Dog" produced by Netflix, and the one which won him the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1993, "La leçon de piano".
Cinephiles will also be able to discover, in preview, three other films intended for subscribers of the American platform: "The lost daughter", directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and also awarded in Venice, "La main de Dieu", the latest opus by Paolo Sorrentino and "Clair-obscur", the first feature film by American actress Rebecca Hall.
In Lyon as in Venice, Netflix wants to highlight its support for auteur cinema.
According to the festival, celebrating Jane Campion was "one of the last wishes of Bertrand Tavernier", the French filmmaker who chaired the Lumière Institute until his death on March 24, and whose memory will be greeted by an "evening tribute".
The opening session on Saturday will be dedicated to Buster Keaton with "The Cameraman", a 1928 silent film, restored in 4K resolution and accompanied on the piano by songwriter Vincent Delerm.
The philosopher Edgar Morin, who has just celebrated his 100th birthday, will host one of the festival's "master classes", in particular around the "direct cinema" experience carried out with Jean Rouch for the documentary film "Chronique d'un été ", presented in Cannes in 1961.
In addition to the various screenings, retrospectives and previews scheduled in some twenty places in the Lyon metropolis, the festival scheduled until October 17 offers several evenings of film concerts, including the "Casanova" by Alexandre Volkoff (1927) in restored version, accompanied by the Orchester national de Lyon.
In the past, the Lumière Award has honored Francis Ford Coppola, Jane Fonda, Wong Kar-wai, Catherine Deneuve, Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodóvar, Quentin Tarantino, Ken Loach, Gérard Depardieu, Milos Forman, Clint Eastwood and last year, the Dardenne brothers.
© 2021 AFP