Wednesday, March 23, 7:00pm
Student Union Movie Theater, UNC Charlotte Main Campus
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Director Alain Resnais
France, Japan, Mexico, 1959, 90 min
French, English, Japanese with English subtitles
Introduction and lecture by Massoud Hayoun, award-winning journalist, before the film at 6:00pm.
Massoud Hayoun is an award-winning journalist who has covered a wide range of topics primarily in China, but also in the Francophone and the Arab-speaking worlds. He was most recently a full-time reporter for Al Jazeera America, the now-defunct television news network. He has also reported for The Atlantic, Agence France-Presse and South China Morning Post. In Summer 2015, he published an article on the French film Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) based on an interview he conducted with the actress Emmanuelle Riva.
Massoud Hayoun
Presented as part of The Tournées Festival, which was made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, the Centre National de la Cinématographie et de l’Image Animée, and the Franco-American Cultural Fund.
Additional sponsors are the Alliance Française de Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte French Club.
One of the most influential movies ever made, Hiroshima mon amour would not only shape the Nouvelle Vague but also liberate filmmakers from linear storytelling. It centers around the time-toggling conversations of two characters, identified only as She (Emmanuelle Riva) and He (Eiji Okada). She is a French actress who has gone to Hiroshima to take part in a film about peace; He is her married lover, a Japanese architect who had served during World War II—and whose family was in Hiroshima the day the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city. While the two reflect on the horrors of wartime—She lived through the Nazi occupation of France—they begin to debate the very unreliability of memory.
©Rialto
Reviews:
“Among the many masterpieces of the French New Wave, Resnais’s 1959 memory
drama is easily the most passionate: a cross-cultural romance tinged by shame and
regret.” —Time Out New York
Social Media Links: Hiroshima Mon Amour on YouTube
