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There was a large crowd for the opening of the 18th Lumière Festival on Saturday evening in Lyon. For nine days, the former capital of Gaul becomes the go-to meeting place for lovers of the seventh art, with nearly 450 screenings scheduled in around fifty venues across the metropolitan area. This year, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen will be in the spotlight, with the Lumière Award due to be presented on Friday 16 October.
On the red carpet, guests were confronted with a single question: what is their earliest cinema memory? For German director Fatih Akin, everything goes back to a Bruce Lee film, The Chinese Connection. “I must have been six when I saw it. Watching that film on Super 8 reels was like taking speed”, he recalls, evoking the intensity of that first experience.
American filmmaker Todd Haynes remembers Mary Poppins. He was three when the film came into his life. “It became completely imprinted in my body, in my mind and in my creative brain”, he explains. A first encounter with cinema which, he says, has continued to feed his imagination.
For Hong Kong director Tsui Hark, the shock came with Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa. He was 14 at the time and had gone alone into a darkened theatre. “I discovered a truly extraordinary film”, he recalls, highlighting the Japanese filmmaker’s influence on his own career.
Among the guests this year is also Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi, who has come to present Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Ang Lee film that brought her to the attention of audiences worldwide. The festival invites viewers to rediscover the work in a restored version, shown for the first time in France. On her first visit to Lyon, the actress has also been won over by the city: after wandering its streets, she confides that she has “fallen in love” with the city and hopes to return for the festival.
From restored classics to the Coen brothers
Beyond its opening night, the Lumière Festival puts heritage cinema centre stage, with restored films, talks and special screenings. Retrospectives dedicated to the Coen brothers, American director Norman Jewison and Italian filmmaker Ettore Scola offer a chance to immerse oneself again in major works from the history of cinema. Other events focus on Hong Kong director Tsui Hark and Todd Haynes, who is in Lyon this year.
The programme also gives pride of place to silent cinema, with cine-concerts including a screening of the restored version of Metropolis by Fritz Lang, accompanied by a symphony orchestra on 15 October, as well as numerous sessions presented by artists and experts, always a highlight for audiences here in Lyon.
The festival is taking over cinemas across the Lyon metropolitan area, giving the public a chance to discover or revisit classics on the big screen.
The high point of this edition will be the presentation of the Lumière Award to Joel and Ethan Coen on Friday 16 October, and we will certainly be telling you more about it, followed the next day by an all-night tribute to their films at the Halle Tony Garnier. The festival runs until Sunday 18 October.
The full programme can be found on the official website of the Lumière Festival (source in French).