REEL LIFE Festivals enhance prov’s cinema culture BY CHRISTINA BEVILACQUA

We this week mark the year’s shortest day, when the sun seems to set at 2 pm and I can but wonder why am I not fattened with grubs and dreaming in a snug log like all sensible creatures. Still, let us rejoice: on the inexorable climb out of winter, each day now promises a just perceptibly brighter sky and pulls us toward spring’s most delightful harbinger: the French Film Festival (FFF).

But a recent rumor hinted that the FFF was finis. Mon dieu! Was it true?

A month ago, Eric Bilodeau, who runs the Cable Car Cinema, home to the FFF for its eight-year existence, allowed that plans were indeed in question. By early December, though, Richard Manning, film archivist at Brown’s Department of Modern Culture and Media (which organizes and helps fund the fest with Brown’s French Department) happily reported that it would proceed. He acknowledged, however, that an "unexpected shortages of resources" will cause a slightly abridged schedule. The 2006 run will feature 14 films, between Monday, March 6, and Sunday, March 12. Works will include narrative features, documentaries, Francophone African films, and offerings from Quebec.

That’s great news for FFF regulars, who think nothing of showing up two hours early for a seat at the noon screening, staying for the films at 3 and 5, running to the Parkside for a fast dinner, and getting back to their seats for the 10 pm show (ok, I confess). But what’s a cinephile to do? While the Cable Car and the Avon program wonderful foreign and independent films, plenty more never get here. So when 15 to 20 promising possibilities show up at once you buy a festival pass, call in sick to work, think of popcorn as dinner, and figure the laundry can wait. (Brown’s Cinemateque, 135 Thayer Street, shows two 16mm films every Friday at 6 pm during the academic year. Films are free and open to the public; a listing will be available on the Brown Web site by early January.)

After years in which purported deals with such first-rate names in independent film as Sundance and the Angelika have come and gone, Manning is unwilling to define Providence’s cinematic culture through theaters that may never be built, in part because he is unsure that the audience exists to sustain such investment. He notes how today’s undergraduates grew up with videos and DVDs, and that even film students — who once sought out revival houses or any dive with a projector to catch up on the classics — don’t necessarily prefer theaters anymore.

Instead, he cites crossover enthusiasm for the thriving festivals, which also include the Providence Latin American Film Festival (14th annual: next April 22-29); the African Film Festival (third annual: October 2006); the LGBT Queer Festival; and an Iranian festival on tap for 2007, to explain his optimism. "There’s a core audience for cinema in Providence," he avers, "not just Western European cinema, not just Third World cinema — cinema."

Mais, oui!