Genre Cinema

The programme section on Genre cinema is devoted each year to a specific film genre and explores the ways that it is adapted all over the world. In 2012, the starting gun will usher in the Western – with Soviet, South African, Brazilian, Mexican or Indian origins.

The Western – the ultimate genre! One that made the past what it was, but which also plays a superb role in the present. Pronounced defunct for at least 40 years, the Western repeatedly rises from its ashes. After more than a century of existence, it has distanced itself from the conventions that ensured its place in the annals of film history and today it is more alive than ever. The Western is a shared value throughout the world of cinema, as the 15 films selected by Jean-Philippe Bernard (film journalist and critic) in Once Upon a Time in the South so magnificently remind us! Artists everywhere adapt it to their own culture and their own sociological, ideological, or political preoccupations.