The Cinéma d’Alès Itinérances festival, a real meeting place for film lovers, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It will be held from March 25 to April 3, with a tribute to director Tony Gatlif.
Previews, short and feature films, documentaries… For this 40th edition, the Festival Cinéma d’Alès itinérances association saw things big, with more than 200 films screened and nearly 120 guests.
Here, no midlife crisis, but rather a gentle return to basics.
” The only desire is to share our passion, which is this cinema open to the world with obviously this common thread which is itinerancy. It’s a festival, the Itinérances festival, with meaning, with meaning, and which wants to give meaning to cinema. It can be pleasure, happiness, sadness, a more philosophical, more political reflection, but it’s always films with meaning, explains Julien Camy, president of the Festival Cinéma d’Alès association.
This year, a great novelty, an Itinérances prize will be awarded to the guest of honor of the festival: director Tony Gatlif.
Author of an emblematic work around the theme Itinerariesthe Andalusian gypsy director (born on the outskirts of Algiers), began as a theater actor at the very beginning of the 1970s. The need for cinema arrived quite quickly.
We then see the birth of an atypical, committed, poetic filmmaker. Musical too with the magnificent and intoxicating Latcho Drom in 1993 where he transports us to the history of the great Gypsy migration, from Rajasthan to Spain and which won the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
” It was a way for us to celebrate a guest who is a traveling companion of the festival, and to mark the occasion. And it’s an author Tony Gatlif who resonates a lot, we have already received him three times in Alès, his filmography, his work resonates a lot with the title Itinérances, with our themes: travel, musical travel, so it quite naturally that we leaned towards him, that he said yes very quickly. It’s going to be a highlight and a way to mark the occasion for the 40th anniversary! “explains Antoine Leclerc, general delegate of the Festival Cinéma d’Alès association.
On the program of this tribute, the screening of 17 of his films including the short film “Canta Gitano” but also meetings, a concert, and even this exceptional exhibition of his storyboards at the Alès media library.
For an anniversary placed under the sign of romance with the retrospective “Itinérancesamoures”. And so that everyone can rediscover the pleasure of cinema, the prices of the sessions will be a little lower this year, between 5 and 7 euros per session.
The association thus wishes to send a message to the public: “Come back to the theaters, we are waiting for you!”