The Savannah School of Artwork and Design is once more bringing a beneficiant serving to of Southern hospitality to France’s Luberon Valley for the SCAD Lacoste Movie Pageant, which runs June 27 to 29. Now in its third 12 months, the fest was conceived as a top-up spotlight for faculty college students doing their semester overseas at SCAD’s luxurious campus in Lacoste, an inexcusably picturesque medieval village within the coronary heart of Provence.
“[SCAD founder and president] Paula Wallace at all times needs to ensure our college students have entry to the very best of every thing,” says Christina Routhier, government director of SCAD Theaters and Festivals. “The main target [at SCAD Lacoste] is on movie majors: performing, directing, manufacturing, costume design. So it was an ideal match to herald a movie competition.”
The occasion is a complement to the varsity’s long-running foremost fest in Savannah, Georgia, which runs Oct. 26 to Nov. 2. Attracting expertise to Lacoste, with its Instagram-ready cobblestone streets and lavender fields, hasn’t been an issue.
After snagging Jeremy Irons for its inaugural version and the incomparable Leslie Manville final 12 months, SCAD Lacoste 2024 “has about triple the programming,” says Routhier, with a VIP visitor checklist that features BAFTA-nominated director Sam Taylor-Johnson (Fifty Shades of Gray, Again to Black), Golden Globe-winning actress Miranda Richardson (Injury, The Crying Sport), Oscar-nominated French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie, Delicatessen) and Oscar-winning costume designer Janty Yates (Gladiator, Napoleon).
Additionally attending are Again to Black producer Alison Owen; French manufacturing designer Anne Seibel, well-known for her work on Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Netflix’s Emily in Paris and Apple TV+’s The New Look; and award-winning documentarian Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Journey).
The competition remains to be placing the ultimate touches on its program, however highlights will embrace screenings of Again to Black, the unique Gladiator, The New Look and Amélie, adopted by Q&A classes with filmmakers. “We do a lot of our screenings outside, and the backdrop is, nicely, simply phenomenal,” says Routhier, underselling the school’s Maison Basse location, a restored sixteenth century farmhouse and backyard that was as soon as used as a playing den by the Marquis de Sade.
SCAD’s hyperlinks to Lacoste return a long time to when Wallace started buying and restoring historic buildings within the village. The faculty’s European hub consists of greater than 30 properties, together with such beautiful rehabilitations because the Résidence du SCAD, a four-story medieval stone inn that now serves as a scholar residence corridor and consists of such luxuries as a heated pool on its secluded backyard terrace, and the Boulangerie, the previous village bakery that capabilities because the campus social middle. Each window appears out onto the cherry orchards and fields of lavender that reach into the gap underneath that well-known Provence daylight.
“It is among the most magical areas on the earth, the place artists from throughout time have come to review the sweetness, the structure and, in fact, the sunshine,” says Routhier, name-checking the A-list painters — Monet, Picasso, van Gogh, et al — who’ve made the pilgrimage to Lacoste, looking for inspiration. “That clearly makes the Provence area very thrilling for our college students, who not solely take courses in these historic buildings and stroll these streets however do excursions all through the complete area as nicely.”
If the placement is one distinctive promoting level for the SCAD Lacoste competition, one other is the viewers. The screenings, panels and Q&A classes are open to the general public, and the fest attracts a wholesome crowd of locals and vacationers from the village and the encircling area. However SCAD college students make up the core; some 150 shall be in Lacoste for the summer season semester.
“Clearly, individuals wish to come as a result of the competition is in stunning Provence, however additionally they know that our college students are severe about artwork, they’re severe about studying, and so they wish to work together with trade professionals,” says Routhier. “That makes the largest distinction for our company. We go to numerous completely different festivals all year long, and I can positively say that ours has this youthful vibrant power that units it aside and makes the company wish to come.”
This story first appeared within the June 19 situation of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.