Synopsis
This special documentary chronicles the everyday routines of Jules Guitteaux, an elderly blacksmith in rural Burgundy, and his wife: the work at the smithy for one, the daily housework for the other, and then, as time flies, departing and absence…
Cousin Jules, a lost masterpiece of cinema, originally premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1973, where it won a Special Jury Prize. A new digital restoration, produced by Arane-Gulliver Labs, awed its audience at the 2012 New York Film Festival and 2013 Berlin International Film Festival.
Completed in 1972, this film was the result of five years of painstaking work by director Dominique Benicheti and cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn. Over that period, they photographed in CinemaScope and recorded in stereophonic sound the daily lives of Jules and his wife. Despite clear indication from critics and audiences alike that this was a masterwork to be reckoned with, the film did not find a distributor, in part because it defiantly refused to be categorized, but also probably because not enough arthouse cinemas were then equipped to project in CinemaScope with stereophonic sound.
Credits
Director: Dominique Benicheti
Screenplay: Dominique Benicheti
Producer: Rythma Films
Cinematographers: Pierre-William Glenn, Paul Launay
Remastering: Jean-René Faillot, Géraldine Desindes (Arane-Gulliver Lab)
With the participation of Jules Guitteaux & Félicie Guitteaux
Schedule & Presentation
Presentation by and discussion with cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn
Special Guest : Richard Patry, president (Fédération Nationale des Cinémas Français)
Friday, March 28 – 7:10 p.m. • 1h31 • All Audiences • In French with English subtitles
More information
Credits : DR
Dominique Benicheti
(Director)
Pierre-William Glenn
(Cinematographer)
Choose a picture to see the filmography (source : IMDB)
“Cousin Jules is one of these extraordinary discoveries which film festivals ought always to be about… It is indeed an invitation to learn to hear again, to pay fresh attention to field birds, rooster crows, the ring of hammer on an anvil, the sizzle of a blade on a grindstone and, not the least, the matter of fact thudding of clods of earth onto a new coffin, which is how we learn of the one major event of this remarkable film.”
Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times, 1974
“In Cousin Jules Benicheti’s innovation is inseparable from his artistry. Luminous and exquisitely framed, his patient shots of rural vistas often recall 19th-century French painting. One thinks of Vincent van Gogh’s radiant fields, Jean-François Millet’s laboring peasants and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s precise but poetic landscapes. And yet Cousin Jules will also speak to many who have spent time in rural America. Combining objectivity with beauty, unsentimentality with warmth, it is ultimately a tribute to life itself.”
Kristin M. Jones, Wall Street Journal, 2013
“Aesthetically allied to fiction films of the time in the epic deliberation of its widescreen lensing and the assertive autonomy of its soundtrack, Cousin Jules also prefigures present-day observational documentary filmmaking at its starkly lyrical best.”
Ronnie Scheib, Variety, 2013
Press Reviews “Cousin Jules”
English ~ 35 pages ~ 6,5 Mo ~ pdf