Art, antiques and Algerians

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History is a treasure trove of stories more amazing than any fiction writer could invent. Two of the three films featured in this weekend’s French Film Festival—in its second weekend at PSU’s 5th Avenue Cinema—deal with historical events I’d never heard of and made me think about how films portray history in general.

What are the rules? What can you change to make it more interesting? Is a story worth telling simply to raise awareness, or does there have to be some innate cinematic quality? Why are some events worth remembering?

Martin Provost’s 2008 film Seraphine is the true story of an unlikely artist, Seraphine
Louis, who worked as a housekeeper in early 20th-century France. She was uneducated and poor, living and working in the country, but her nature paintings, done on wood with paints made from materials like soil and pig’s blood, are considered extraordinary.

Discovered by German art critic Wilhelm Uhde, her art was sold and displayed through the 1920s, until Uhde was adversely affected by the Great Depression and Seraphine suffered a mental breakdown.

Seraphine is played by Yolande Moreau, who won the 2009 Cesar (essentially the French Oscar) for Best Actress, and Uhde is played by actor Ulrich Tukur.

The film actually swept at the Cesars, winning Best Film along with awards for cinematography, writing, music, production design and costumes. It’s interesting to think about why a story like this resonates with the French, but its themes of the value and nature of art are a good place to begin.

Seraphine will be presented by PSU French professor Annabelle Dolidon.

“This movie should appeal to many who like cinema, of course, but also art in general, biographical narratives and Europe at the wake of World War I,” Dolidon said in an email. “It tells the life of an ordinary person nobody would have noticed, or would have believed to be a great artist.

“She was not beautiful; she was uneducated and poor; perhaps a bit simpleminded,”
Dolidon continued. “And yet, she had an amazing connection with nature. Her paintings are unique and reflect movement and a magical realm. This movie poses the question: Who can make art? Who and what is an artist? Who can judge art?”

The film itself is quite academic in its presentation of these important and fascinating questions. It’s certainly not the most thrilling of tales, and yet I agree that the story is important—and Moreau’s incredible performance alone is enough to recommend it. Those with a strong interest in the art world will really be drawn to this slice of art history.

Free Men, a 2011 film by Ismael Ferroukhi, tells an even more compelling historical tale: that of Algerian immigrants in Nazi-occupied Paris who save the lives of French Jews using the Mosque of Paris as their base of operations.

It stars Tahar Rahim, famous for his lead role in The Prophet, as an Algerian immigrant-turned-freedom-fighter named Younes.

Younes’ friendship with a homosexual Jewish nightclub singer named Salim Halali (Mahmud Shalaby) inspires him to begin saving Jews, both by helping them escape the city and providing them with papers so they can identify themselves as Muslims.

The events of the story are real (though many of the characters and situations are composites), and Free Men is a very entertaining and interesting movie simply because so few people are aware of the events it covers.

Free Men is presented by PSU associate history professor Victoria Belco, who outlined the true and the fictional aspects of the film.

“Free Men…is the true story of the [m]osque’s rector, who had to convince German and Vichy officials of his community’s loyalty to Germany while he secretly protected both Muslim resisters and Jews,” Belco said in an email. “It is also the fictional story of a young Algerian immigrant who makes the transition from peddling black market goods to agreeing to spy on the [m]osque to becoming a committed resistance fighter.”

Free Men is also sponsored by the Alliance Francaise of Portland; the organization will serve hors d’oeuvres an hour before the screening this Saturday.

The final film of the festival, Summer Hours, a 2008 piece by Olivier Assayas, is a different perspective on history—the personal history of one family. It stars Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jeremie Renier as three adult siblings who must give up their mother’s heirlooms after her death.

Summer Hours deals with the meaning of memory, the safety of objects and the role of money and commodity in the modern world.

The untold stories of one family or of an entire country can be equally compelling in cinema, and nobody mines the riches of history quite like the French.

Whether these films can entertain as well as they can teach is another question, but you’ll walk away from all of them with a lot to think about, and that’s probably the best thing you can hope for in film.