Repost: Cousin Jules (May 3rd at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[COUSIN JULES screens Saturday May 3rd at 5:15 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

There's a name you don't hear enough in movies, unless you're deep into cinema-verite documentaries: David Sutherland. The fellow makes intimate portraits, sometimes covering many years, in the lives and travails of rural Americans - farm-country and cattle-ranch folk, the sorts of honest, real people whom Hollywood either generally ignores or patronizes in widely scattered awards-bait dramas such as A THOUSAND ACRES. Sutherland's features, such as OUT OF SIGHT, THE FARMER'S WIFE and KIND HEARTED WOMAN are typically aired on PBS as docu-miniseries, showing what "reality-TV" could be if done well and unscripted.

But in today's high-speed days of NSA terrorism, "twerking" Disney starlets, Browns coach firings and economic death spirals, WHO HAS THE TIME??!! to get absorbed into a David Sutherland-style narrative. The Cleveland Cinematheque has an answer to farm-cinema, with a rediscovery of French filmmaker Dominique Benicheti's 1972 COUSIN JULES.

Cousin Jules (February 22nd and 23rd at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[COUSIN JULES screens Saturday February 22nd at 5:15 pm and Sunday February 23rd at 6:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

There's a name you don't hear enough in movies, unless you're deep into cinema-verite documentaries: David Sutherland. The fellow makes intimate portraits, sometimes covering many years, in the lives and travails of rural Americans - farm-country and cattle-ranch folk, the sorts of honest, real people whom Hollywood either generally ignores or patronizes in widely scattered awards-bait dramas such as A THOUSAND ACRES. Sutherland's features, such as OUT OF SIGHT, THE FARMER'S WIFE and KIND HEARTED WOMAN are typically aired on PBS as docu-miniseries, showing what "reality-TV" could be if done well and unscripted.

But in today's high-speed days of NSA terrorism, "twerking" Disney starlets, Browns coach firings and economic death spirals, WHO HAS THE TIME??!! to get absorbed into a David Sutherland-style narrative. The Cleveland Cinematheque has an answer to farm-cinema, with a rediscovery of French filmmaker Dominique Benicheti's 1972 COUSIN JULES.

Beginning his film shoot in 1968 and covering several years, Benicheti eavesdropped on his octogenarian cousin Jules Guiteaux, dwelling as a farmer in the French countryside. The resulting film compresses the agrarian existence of Jules and his wife Felicie into just 91 minutes.