A few Tuesdays every quarter, a small gathering that meets in University Library’s Forum Room hushes its French small talk when the lights go dark.
This Tuesday, about 20 students, professors and others watched the Department of French and Italian’s ciné-club present its last film of the quarter, “Allons Enfants.”
The 2022 documentary, titled “Rookies” in English, brought viewers to the heart of Paris, where the film showed a crew of secondary school students who also train to become professional dancers in school.
Beyond French chitchat among attendees, the ciné-club — a long-standing example of language education outside NU’s classrooms — offers a full-scale immersion, taste buds included, before the film even begins.
Tuesday’s iteration featured tartlets filled with chocolate ganache and topped with raspberries. The treats were provided by French Prof. Dominique Licops, whose husband’s company creates the confections.
While Licops supplies the food, Tassadith Lombard curates the films.
Lombard, a visiting lecturer from Paris, has helped shape the selections over the past year. She’s aimed to bring in more contemporary films that students can relate to, and the films are shown with English subtitles.
“That way it’s not just like teaching grammar or just teaching classes,” Lombard said. “It’s also about sharing cultural content. I think it really speaks to people way more than grammar generally.”
She has also sought to widen students’ horizons beyond France itself to other Francophone cultures, such as Belgium and the Canadian province of Quebec by showing a variety of films.
For the students in the documentary, the balance between keeping up with school and excelling on the dance floor comes with struggles, especially for those from fraught Parisian households. Yet the film also drew guffaws from the audience in the Forum Room for the kids’ colloquialisms and one-liners.
After the credits rolled this past Tuesday, Lombard asked for reactions from the crowd. Weinberg junior Manit Amin chimed in first to offer his thoughts in French.
Amin told The Daily that he started attending the ciné-club in Spring Quarter 2024, to help fulfill his cultural requirement for French Prof. Marie-Thérèse Pent’s class. Pent has spearheaded the ciné-club for nearly two decades.
Now, after studying abroad in Paris and maintaining his interest in French, Amin has continued attending. Before the film began, Amin mentioned his frequent attendance within earshot of Pent.
“Voilà!” she said. “The best student.”
Pent said the ciné-club helps promote French culture and widen viewers’ perspectives beyond what they might already know, such as the New Wave films of the mid-20th century.
The ciné-club also attracts an audience beyond just students.
Victor Jourdan recently arrived from France to begin a summer internship in NU’s computer science department. He started working Monday and came to the ciné-club the very next day.
“I actually wanted to go, just to see people speaking French,” Jourdan said. “I like seeing people making progress trying to learn my language.”
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