Newcastle University is delighted to host a roundtable discussion followed by a screening of Les Jeunes Amants (Carine Tardieu, 2022), adapted and written by Agnès de Sacy and Carine Tardieu from a story by Sólveig Anspach.
The event will take part in the Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building.
The speakers
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Agnès de Sacy, winner of the SACD Cinema prize, 2021, has been a screenwriter for 30 years. After studies in acting and theatre studies, she wrote her first play, Sanguine in a workshop run by Michel Vinaver, before going on to study at the FEMIS. Throughout her intense career, she has worked with Hélène Angel (Peau d’homme cœur de bête/Skin of Man, Heart of Beast), Mostéfa Djadjam (Frontières/Borders), Orso Miret (De l’histoire ancienne/Ancient History), Roschdy Zem, Philippe Godeau, Jean-Marc Moutout, Michel Spinosa… She has co-authored three films with Zabou Breitman and another three with Pascal Bonitzer (including Cherchez Hortense/Looking for Hortense and Tout de suite, maintenant/Right here, right now). Her most sustained collaborative partnership has been with Valéria Bruni Tedeschi, with whom she has written five films, from the director’s first, Il est plus facile pour un chameau/It’s easier for a camel, to her most recent, Les Amandiers/Forever Young, presented at Cannes this year in Official Competition. |
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Jonathan Hourigan was Head of Screenwriting at London Film School from 2017 to 2021 and is now Programme Director for the MA in Screenwriting at University of Manchester. He is a former assistant to Robert Bresson (L’Argent) and continues to work with Mme Bresson in caring for her late husband’s legacy. He is chairing Notes on Bresson, a major conference taking place at University of Manchester in March 2023. He is a graduate of the National Film and Television School, a screenwriter and script consultant. He plays Head of Screenwriting in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Parts I and II and his most recent screenwriting credit is co-writer of the feature debut, a fiction/documentary hybrid, of the acclaimed Serbian documentary filmmaker, Maja Novakovic, currently in post-production. |
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Tina Gharavi is a BAFTA-nominated, award-winning TV and film showrunner and director. Born in Teheran, she trained as a painter in the United States and later studied cinema in France. Her debut feature, I Am Nasrine, a coming-of-age story of two teenage Iranian refugees, was nominated for a BAFTA in 2013. She has made films from unique perspectives on subjects as diverse as Muhammad Ali, teenage sexuality, Yemeni-British sailors, the Lackawanna 6, death row exonerees, refugees and lighthouses. Since leaving Iran in 1979 she has been a true nomad; carrying no less than 4 passports she resides in Northern England and Los Angeles where she is working on her follow-up feature, The Good Iranian, with the BFI and Film 4; a gangster tale set in Europe and Iran, and a biopic about the Persian modernist poet, Forough Farrokhzad… and a further feature documentary about tribalism and othering, Tribalism is Killing Us. She recently worked directing on the high-end drama, The Tunnel, the UK version of The Bridge, and a Netflix series for Nutopia/Westbrook on the life of Cleopatra. Currently she is developing and showrunning a returning episodic TV series, Refurinn (The Fox), an Icelandic Noir with a British twist in collaboration with partners Kidda Rock and Steinarr at Polarama in Reykjavik. |
The film
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Elegant, retired architect, Shauna (70), crosses paths with Pierre, a happily married doctor in his 40s, who had first made an impression on her 15 years earlier. When they begin an affair, Pierre’s family life is turned upside-down and Shauna struggles with feelings she thought belonged to the past.
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Les Jeunes Amants was adapted by Agnès de Sacy and Carine Tardieu from a story by the Icelandic-French filmmaker, Sólveig Anspach (Haut les coeurs!; Lulu femme nue; The Aquatic Effect…). Before her premature death in 2015, Anspach was collaborating with de Sacy on a film based on her own mother’s life. When she realised she would not be able to finish the film, she asked de Sacy to continue the work and to bring the film, directed by a woman, to the screen.
‘Stories move through us, we give them body, a rhythm, breath, a look, but they don’t fully belong to us. Solveig taught me a lesson in humility when she told me, “the story is bigger than me”. Stories come from the world and return to it; with patience, we give them form and animation…’ Agnès de Sacy
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The organisers
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Sarah Leahy (Newcastle University) and Isabelle Vanderschelden (Université d’Orléans), are authors of Screenwriters in French Cinema (Manchester University Press, 2021):
Screenwriters have been central figures in French cinema since the conversion to sound, from early French-language talkies for the domestic market to lavish literary adaptations of the notorious ‘quality tradition’ of the 1950s, and from the ‘aesthetic revolution’ of the New Wave to the contemporary popular and auteur film in the 2000s. The first English language study to address screenwriters in French cinema, this volume will be of particular interest to scholars and students of French film and screenwriting. Taking a diachronic approach, it includes case studies drawn from the early sound period to the present day in order to offer an alternative historiography of French cinema, shed light on these overlooked figures and revisit the vexed question of film authorship. |
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This event is proudly supported by the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute and Institute for Creative Arts Practice, in collaboration with mk2 Films. Images from Les Jeunes Amants courtesy of MK2, © Christine Tamalet & Thibault Grabherr.
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