French film director François Truffaut with Dermot Breen
Dublin Core
Title
French film director François Truffaut with Dermot Breen
Subject
Cork Film Festival, François Truffaut, Dermot Breen
Description
This is a black and white photo of the French film director François Truffaut and the festival director Dermot Breen at the Harp-sponsored festival club. They are standing close together in conversation. Breen is wearing a festival ribbon marked 'director' and his glasses poke out of his breast pocket. Truffaut, cigarette in hand, is smiling as he talks to Breen. Behind them, the logo for Harp Lager can be seen adorning the umbrellas which are dotted around the outdoor space.
Truffaut’s visit to Cork must have been a great coup for the festival. At the time he was one of the foremost film directors in the world with a career that spanned forty years of filmmaking before his untimely death in 1984, age 52. Around the time of this photograph, Truffaut had released Day for Night (1973) which won him an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It was the film that instigated a bitter rivalry between himself and the French director Jean-Luc Godard for its apparent attack on the commercial nature of Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt), (1963).
Interestingly Truffaut’s colleague, the cinematographer Raoul Coutard, and French New Wave stalwart, worked with the director and Guardian journalist, Peter Lennon, to make the documentary Rocky Road to Dublin in 1967. The documentary looked at the modern state of Ireland and in particular its relationship with the Catholic Church. It was banned in Ireland and the Cork Film Festival refused to show it initially but, following its acceptance by the Cannes Film Festival in 1969, Cork was somewhat embarrassed into showing it the following year (albeit in a lunchtime slot which was badly attended due to the festival organizing a free lunch for delegates at the same time in Kinsale – some distance away). Its success, amongst the French Left in particular, caught the attention of international media and it remains an example of French New Wave’s informality via the work of Coutard who was famous for shooting with a handheld camera. Raoul Coutard also worked extensively with Jean-Luc Goddard and Jacques Demy; he died in Paris, age 92, in 2016.
(Erica Eisen, ‘What do you do with your revolution? Rocky Road to Dublin versus 1968 Ireland,’ Sight and Sound, 18.06.2018; Alan Evans, 'Raoul Coutard, French New Wave cinematographer, dies at 92,' The Guardian, 09.11.2016.)
Truffaut’s visit to Cork must have been a great coup for the festival. At the time he was one of the foremost film directors in the world with a career that spanned forty years of filmmaking before his untimely death in 1984, age 52. Around the time of this photograph, Truffaut had released Day for Night (1973) which won him an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It was the film that instigated a bitter rivalry between himself and the French director Jean-Luc Godard for its apparent attack on the commercial nature of Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt), (1963).
Interestingly Truffaut’s colleague, the cinematographer Raoul Coutard, and French New Wave stalwart, worked with the director and Guardian journalist, Peter Lennon, to make the documentary Rocky Road to Dublin in 1967. The documentary looked at the modern state of Ireland and in particular its relationship with the Catholic Church. It was banned in Ireland and the Cork Film Festival refused to show it initially but, following its acceptance by the Cannes Film Festival in 1969, Cork was somewhat embarrassed into showing it the following year (albeit in a lunchtime slot which was badly attended due to the festival organizing a free lunch for delegates at the same time in Kinsale – some distance away). Its success, amongst the French Left in particular, caught the attention of international media and it remains an example of French New Wave’s informality via the work of Coutard who was famous for shooting with a handheld camera. Raoul Coutard also worked extensively with Jean-Luc Goddard and Jacques Demy; he died in Paris, age 92, in 2016.
(Erica Eisen, ‘What do you do with your revolution? Rocky Road to Dublin versus 1968 Ireland,’ Sight and Sound, 18.06.2018; Alan Evans, 'Raoul Coutard, French New Wave cinematographer, dies at 92,' The Guardian, 09.11.2016.)
Creator
University College Cork, Cork Film Festival, Finbarr O'Connell
Source
Cork Film Festival Collection
Publisher
University College Cork
Date
1973
Contributor
Finbarr O'Connell
Rights
©Finbarr O’Connell. All rights reserved. Please credit Cork International Film Festival & provide a link back to this site.
Relation
1974 festival programme: A Tribute to François Truffaut on page 26.
Format
Photo
TIFF
JPEG
TIFF
JPEG
Language
English, eng
Coverage
1973
Cork, Ireland
Cork, Ireland
Still Image Item Type Metadata
Original Format
Photo
Physical Dimensions
242 x 190mm
Collection
Citation
University College Cork, Cork Film Festival, Finbarr O'Connell , “French film director François Truffaut with Dermot Breen,” Cork International Film Festival Archive, accessed December 21, 2024, https://corkfilmfest.ucc.ie/items/show/315.