Secondary School students looking at Chinese cinema

by Secondary School students of Lumière High School at Luxeuil-les-Bains

France

Vesoul Asian Film Festival FICA and Luxeuil-les-Bains secondary school Lumière festival were born at the same time, 22 years ago. 

FICA programs films directed by film makers from all over Asia. The Near East, the Middle East and the Far East draw a geopolitical map of an Orient which is also an Orient of hope. The Lumière festival deals with a quite different kind of East: it is an East with the colors of France through a competition of short films made by film buffs who are students from secondary schools and colleges, and who shown their works to their peers every year in June. The event is organized by students attending the Cinema- Audiovisual optional class at Lumière secondary School. To celebrate this mutual love for cinema, a partnership was tied between the two events. Students from the Lumière secondary school can therefore enter Vesoul festival backstage and see its multifaceted organization and the friendly festive mood which is the signature of the festival. They made a documentary around the large retrospective focus on Chinese cinema held at FICA in 2015, thus helping us to keep a trace of the event and to place it in a historical and critical perspective. 

Clémentine Falvisaner, Marie-Amélie Simard, Marie Tissot et Marie Kébé (all in final year or pre-final year with Cinéma-audiovisual option) have discovered and explored this rich cinema while going into FICA with their cameras and microphones. They recorded the backstage of the festival, made interviews with benevolent, audience and directors attending the whole event. 

Secondary School Students Looking at Chinese Cinema is the result of this collective work. The documentary was written, shot and edited with the help from Cinema-Audiovisual teacher Cécile Marchocki. The four secondary school students make us live the high moments of last festival, while they also give us a subjective look on the cultural event and on Chinese cinema they discovered under the guidance of FICA guests.