After Cousin Jules took home the Special Prize of the Jury after it’s premiere at the 1973 Locarno Film Festival, Dominique Benicheti’s masterfully constructed observational documentary on the quiet life of his cousin Jules Guiteaux and his wife Félicie amongst the picturesque French countryside seemed to have vanished into the vastly overlooked void of cinema history. Forty years later, the film has returned triumphant, playing the likes of the New York, Berlin and Vienna Film Festivals in all its gorgeous CinemaScope glory. It was Benicheti himself who brought his dormant work out of storage to attempt a full restoration from the original negatives, but the process was stalled when the director suddenly passed on, leaving the project to be finished by his co-workers at the Arane-Gulliver film laboratories, where he was a leading consultant on 70mm and special format film projects.
Benicheti’s debut remains his only credited complete feature,...
Benicheti’s debut remains his only credited complete feature,...
- 6/17/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Taking five years to shoot and forty years to get across the Atlantic, Dominique Benicheti’s “Cousin Jules” is a stunning living portrait of the director’s country cousin Jules and his wife Felicie. Having originally premiered in 1972, spending some time on the festival circuit (picking up a few awards along the way, including the grand prize at Locarno), the film was unable to pick up distribution initially and only reached American shores last year at the 2012 New York Film Festival. Nearly lost to the annals of cinema, the film had been mostly regarded as a footnote in Benicheti’s career and as but a precursor to his more prominent work with 3D technology. But now, with the film screening currently at New York’s Film Forum and being distributed by the Cinema Guild, a larger audience is able to appreciate this real masterpiece and have their breath taken away...
- 12/8/2013
- by Diana Drumm
- The Playlist
Formally ambitious on the grandest scale, Dominique Benicheti's 1973 documentary Cousin Jules earns an oft trotted-out maxim: This film is unlike any other you will see all year.
Well, one exception: Cousin Jules is an antecedent to Leviathan, the fishing doc rightly billed as a work of sensory ethnography. Like Leviathan, which doesn't tell a story but rather relates the sensuous immediacy of its subjects' lives through raw, visceral images presented without narrative context, Cousin Jules concerns the essence inherent in actions, the way quotidian existence can be suffused with poetic peacefulness — and overwhelming sadness.
...
Well, one exception: Cousin Jules is an antecedent to Leviathan, the fishing doc rightly billed as a work of sensory ethnography. Like Leviathan, which doesn't tell a story but rather relates the sensuous immediacy of its subjects' lives through raw, visceral images presented without narrative context, Cousin Jules concerns the essence inherent in actions, the way quotidian existence can be suffused with poetic peacefulness — and overwhelming sadness.
...
- 11/27/2013
- Village Voice
Awarded the jury prize at the Locarno Film Festival in 1973, Dominique Benicheti's beloved documentary "Cousin Jules" has remained unreleased in the U.S. until now. Ahead of its first stateside theatrical run at New York's Film Forum, Indiewire is pleased to exclusively premiere the trailer for the unreleased film. The documentary is the result of five years of painstaking work by Benichetti and cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn, who over that period tracked the daily lives of Jules (the filmmaker's cousin) and his wife, French farmers living alone in the countryside. Watch the trailer below. "Cousin Jules" opens at Film Forum on November 27th.
- 10/8/2013
- by Indiewire
- Indiewire
For its first repertory release, independent distributor The Cinema Guild has acquired theatrical rights to a new restoration of Dominique Benicheti's "Cousin Jules," four decades after it won the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival. The new restoration debuted at the New York Film Festival last year, and the film will receive a theatrical release later this year. The deal was negotiated by Ryan Krivoshey of The Cinema Guild with Patricia Matthews and Peter Agoos on behalf of Dominique Benicheti's sister, Genevieve Benicheti. Richard Pena and Dan Talbot, who have been among the film’s most passionate supporters over the years, advised Matthews and Agoos. Benicheti, who passed away in 2011, was an incredibly technologically minded filmmaker who is best known as being on the forefront of artfully using 3D in French cinema, "Cousin Jules" is an achievement of an experimental documentary in which he filmed in...
- 4/25/2013
- by Mark Lukenbill
- Indiewire
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.