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2010 Festival Feature Films (March 25-28)

French director and screenwriter Pierre-William Glenn, French producer Magali Potier and French actresses Lucine Sanchez and Amélie Demoulin present Portrait de groupe avec enfants et motocyclettes

director Pierre-William Glenn screenplay Pierre-William Glenn producer and distributer Les Films du Phoenix starring Pierre Guyonnet, Nicolas Dussauge, Amélie Demoulin, Lucine Sanchez, Martin Bellabois, Hugues and Jules Fougeaud, Thibault Gourin, Hugo Monamy, Corentin Accigliaro, Roméo Pageot, Rémi Guyot, Jules and Simon Danilo, Robin Anne, William Wallart, Hugo Casadessus also starring Giacomo Agostini, Rosine Rougerie running time 1 h 31 min general audience

Official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival

Synopsis

Pierre-William Glenn, well known for his film Cheval de fer, with Portrait de groupe avec enfants et motocyclettes, has made the film of his life.

The aspirations of a group of child motorcyclists serve as the catalyst that reveals all Glenn’s life passions: motorcycle racing and all its great champions; French and American cinema and their most famous stars. Native Americans, Audrey Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, Marlon Brando — just like long gone motorcycle champions Mike Hailwood, Michel Rougerie, Patrick Pons — are reincarnated in Pierre-William Glenn’s eyes through the passion of these young drivers. Is that not what is called the immortality of stars?

A fascinating documentary on speed, life, danger, youth, motorcycles, stardom ... beautifully filmed.

Note the remarkable interviews with champions like Giacomo Agostini, Christophe Guyot and even Nicolas Dussauge on their experiences and their passion for motorcycle racing, as well as the breathtaking excerpts from American film classics.

director/screenwriter
Pierre-William Glenn

selected filmography

director of photography

cameraman

Interview with director Pierre-William Glenn

Yesterday you were interested in star pilots. Today you film unknown youth. To what do we owe this sudden change?
Three years ago, I had the idea for a comedy portraying a young girl expected to play piano, when all she wanted was to become a motorcycle champion. While doing research, I met Lucine, who was living that very same situation, and then it was Amélie. …

It was an excellent medium to deliver my views on time, fear and my admiration for Indians! Some kind of initiation trip during which I unveil my cinematic vision of motorcycles and actors who, like pilots, never die.

Note by Bertrand Tavernier regarding Pierre-William Glenn

I will never forgot the first time I met Pierre-Wiliam Glenn. He came to ask me to direct his graduate thesis, “Psychoanalysis and Freudism in the American B Series Movies,” an excellent work that showed a profound and living knowledge as well as a love of cinema — a love that never weakened. That nourished his life, his conversations and his work, without becoming fetishist references that he reproduced or copied. He drew from it — we all drew from it — an energy that allowed us to tackle, to solve, many problems. With this love, he crossed mountains, he energized the whole team. Throughout the films we made together starting with L’Horloger de Saint-Paul and moving to Coup de torchon and Une semaine de vacances, we would passionately discuss during and especially after filming, the effects of blacklisting on John Berry or Joseph Losey’s careers, Robert Aldrich’s, François Truffaut’s and Ricardo Freda’s last films, Sam Peckinpah’s use of long focal lengths. One of Willy’s other passions (other than math, karate, reading and politics), was motorcycles. And also cars. I experienced many frightful moments at his side, when he roared through torturous Ardèche mountain turns during the filming of Le Juge et l’assassin.

Motorcycles had already inspired a beautiful documentary by Willy Glenn, The Iron Horse. Willy has a fascination for everything that moves. For speed, its exhilaration, its usefulness, its dangers. As if to go as quickly as possible from one point to another was the essence of cinema. Going from one shot to another, one scene to another, from one idea to another, carrying with him thousands, millions of passengers. Without slipping, without falling, without getting lost. As if the notion of time, of travel, of destination was at the heart of mise en scène, at the heart of cinema. I thought of all this after I saw Pierre-William Glenn’s last film, which talks about all this with modesty and delicacy. And it warmed my heart. He hadn’t changed.