Penn in Cannes: She has to see HOW many films?!

Felisha Liu (W’09) is part of a semester long Penn in Cannes program which will have her and other Penn undergrads attending the festival from May 14 – 25.

There she will be acting as special Dueling Tampons Correspondent and giving us the exclusive early scoop about some of the great (and not so great) films to come out of the festival.

A few weeks ago, she wrote her first post about:

her experience with the program thus far
some of the risqué films she’s already seen
what tactics she will consider in order to get into the most screenings while at Cannes

The night before she leaves, Felicia sends me her thoughts and tells me exactly how many films (!) she has to see for this class:

Read her post…+/-

It is midnight on the night before I leave for Cannes. C-A-N-N-E-S! It is finally here. The last month has been a whirlwind of group presentations, finals, papers and move-out. As a part of the International Survey of Film Cannes class, I was required to write about two films I saw during the Philadelphia Film Festival. The two I picked were Darling and The Sun Also Rises.

Darling is about the downfall of a spoiled Swedish young woman, and her unlikely friendship with 61 year-old divorcee Bernard. People can change—right? The Sun Also Rises captures the tales of three different Chinese women in post-revolution China. The three are inextricably linked, although in very bizarre ways. The moral: don’t tempt forbidden love or have extramarital affairs. As if we needed another warning!

Tomorrow is going to be an intense travel day. After waking up at 8:30am, I will be taking Amtrak to New York Penn Station. There, I will get on a shuttle bus to JFK airport and take off to Rome. The second leg of the flight will finally take me to Nice. Another train will bring me to the heart of Cannes. Amongst a sea of people, I will elbow and shove until I secure a cab to the Collčge International de Cannes, 1, avenue du Docteur Pascal, 06400, which will be my new home for the next two weeks. The student dormitory is a haven for foreign students “studying” abroad in the south of France. Right, as if one could study in paradise.

During the two weeks, there are several lectures held in the dormitory. The rest of the time, we will be attending screenings and waiting in lines under the blistering sun. The goal is to attend 40 screenings under several categories (silent, black & white, short film, animation, etc). The grading of the class is based on one large paper due in the middle of July summarizing our film analyses of screenings of our choice. Throughout the two weeks, we are also keeping journals which are to be typed and turned in with the final paper. Not bad in exchange for meeting A-listers and strutting down the red carpet!

Tomorrow morning will bring new challenges. Mostly, this consists of getting my 49.5 pound luggage into that Cannes dorm without tripping, falling, or any variation of embarrassment.

Au revoir!
XOXO Felisha