Five films by a renowned French director-including the Chicago premiere of his documentary about the Algerian war-will be screened over the next week and a half at Facets Multimedia.
In 1991 Bertrand Tavernier (best known to American audiences for his jazz-musician homage, “Round Midnight”) made “The Undeclared War,” a four-hour documentary in which he talked to infantrymen, laborers, teachers, farmers and others whose lives were impacted by the war France prefers to forget. (Show times are 6:30 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.)
“While they were talking to us, the interviewees appeared to be searching for some form of truth which had been long buried,” the director has said.
Tavernier, now 52, quit law school to write criticism for Cahiers du Cinema and other journals, then worked as an assistant director and publicist. He is known for making films that blend French and American (i.e., dynamically visual) cinematic styles.
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Other films to be shown (for dates and times call 281-9075) will be “A Sunday in the Country” (1984), a moving depiction of the interaction between an elderly, celebrated artist (Louis Ducreux) and his offspring; “Coup de Torchon” (1981), a black comedy set in 1938 colonial Africa, with Philippe Noiret as a laid-back village policeman cuckolded by his wife (Stephane Audran) and given respect only by his mistress (Isabelle Huppert); “Spoiled Children” (1977), which concerns a writer-director (Michel Piccoli) who seeks peace away from his family but instead becomes involved in a tenant strike and a love affair; and “The Clockmaker” (1974), Tavernier’s feature debut, based on a Georges Simenon novel, about a clockmaker (Noiret again) who must re-evaluate his life when his son is accused of murder.