A Film by EtiEnnE FAurE

2015 / France, US / English / Drama98 min/ HD / 1.85 / Dolby 5.1

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LOGLINEA French youth with a dark past takes refuge in a Brooklyn underground cabaret bar, becoming im-mersed in its eccentric, liberating world of outcasts.

SYNOPSISAn eccentric, unconventional fable, Bizarre follows Maurice, an 18-year old boy from France with a dark past. Having just arrived in Brooklyn, New York, he has no friends and no place to stay. On a chance encounter, he is taken in by two beautiful girls, Kim and Betty. Maurice is given room and board and a job at their famous underground cabaret club, the Bizarre, where he begins to form a whole new family.

In this ephemeral refuge of fantasy and freedom, he begins a disturbing relationship with a fascinat-ing bartender, Luka, who also has a mysterious background. But Maurice’s past catches up to him, and the liberating world he has become a part of begins to fall apart. As an adolescent still strug-gling towards maturity, it won’t be long before he is compelled to flee his surroundings once again.

TECH SPECSRun Time: 98 minAspect Ratio: 1.85Shooting Format: HDSound: Dolby 5.1Country: FranceLanguage: English

CREW

ETIENNE FAUREWriter / Director / Producer / Editor

Etienne Faure started his career directing several short films: the award-winning The Invisible Lyrics starring Guillaume Depardieu, Thomas Langmann, and Olivier Martinez, All The Boys starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Elodie Bouchez and Thomas Langmann, and The End of the Night starring Sebastien Roch. He also directed the documentary Looking for Tadzio, about Luchino Visconti’s search for the actor who would play Tadzio in Death in Venice. Faure pro-duced and directed his first feature film, In Extremis, starring Se-bastien Roch, Julie Depardieu, Aurélien Wiik, Jean Claude Brialy, and Christine Boisson. Faure is a member of the French Society of Authors-Directors-Producers (L’ARP). With Stéphane Gizard he founded Eivissa Productions, where he has directed many short- and feature-length films and documentaries that have been to

numerous international festivals, including the documentary What? Eternity and The Illusions starring Aurélien Wiik, Catherine Wilkening, Caroline Guerin, Baptiste Caillaud, and Lea Seydoux. In 2012, he wrote and directed Chaos, starring Isaach De Bankolé, Sonia Rolland, and Niels Schneider. Bizarre is his fourth feature film. Starting September 2015 he will begin production on his new feature film River Bank.

STÉPHANE GIZARDProducer / Art DirectorBorn in Paris, Stéphane Gizard discovered the camera at the age of 7 and produced his first personal work, Boys and Girls..., at 23. He has worked for major advertisers and magazines including Monde, Be, and Figaro. His photos have been exhibited throughout France and abroad, and in 2012, he was invited by the Embassy of France in Abu Dhabi to create a special work with the University of Sor-bonne. In 2013, he released his first book, Modern Lovers. He co-founded Eivissa Productions with Etienne Faure.

PAVLÉ SAVICDirector of PhotographyPavlé Savic was born in Serbia and lives in Paris. A self-taught video artist with a passion for music and film, he has traveled a great deal and worked for brands such as Adidas and Clinique. He is also the video director for the art collective Gang Corp. and the CEO of the studio What The Film, based in Paris. Bizarre is his first feature credit as cinematographer.

DIRECTOR’S Q&A

Bizarre is your fourth feature film. What was the inspiration for the film?It was mostly the location, the Bizarre Bar in Brooklyn, that triggered my ambitions to make the film. A friend and fellow director, Jean Stéphane Sauvaire, founded the Bizarre, and it was absolutely nec-essary for me to try and create a film that would capture its unique, peculiar atmosphere.

How did you go about casting the leads?First we had to cast the French boy. I saw many people but there was no ‘love at first sight.’ Then, my partner Stephane Gizard, who is a photographer and just finished publishing a photo book called ‘Modern Lovers,’ told me about a young boy that he had photographed. Once I met with Pierre Prieur I said to myself, ‘it’s him!’ The only thing left to do was convince his parents: it was the year of his high school graduation so he would have to miss a lot of classes. For Luka’s part, I wanted an an-drogynous boy. When I first saw Adrian James, something told me he was the one but would he also be a good actor? I did some camera tests and, fortunately, he was stunning.

The story is centered on Maurice, a teenager who finds himself sharing the lifestyle of the people at the Bizarre Bar.Yes, I wanted to superimpose two ephemeral stages. The Bizarre Bar, with its transgressive shows, and the youth of a boy with a dark mind, subjected to desires and about to leave his adolescence behind him to start adulthood. I wanted to bring together these two transitional, fragile universes. ‘Freedom’ is the word that I kept in the back of my head while writing the script and shooting the film. The Bizarre Bar is like a place of resistance next to the fascinating but dangerous, tough Man-hattan. But, the Manhattan spirit invades Brooklyn more and more; Manhattan crosses the East River! Thus, this little spot of freedom, of madness, of mixing, of creativity, which is the Bizarre in Brooklyn, is a bit like the independent cinema versus Hollywood. Vulnerable but at the same time an incredible force of creativity and energy.

The shows at the Bizarre are amazing. How did you go about building these sequences? I spent a lot of time at the Bizarre in order to see what acts would be interesting to use in the film. It was important that every spectacle that punctuated the narrative flow had a theme that also fit the story. One talks about accepting what’s different, the other about the fight against extremes, and another one about the dominance of the male sex, about violence and sex. So we made a selection and then we tried to give the artists as much freedom as possible, all while taking into account the imperatives that come with making a fiction film.

One cannot help but recognize a plea for acceptance of all forms of difference in the subject of the film.It’s an ongoing theme in my films. In France, we have had big demonstrations against gay marriage, where the banners of protesters show a dad, a mom, and two children. For those people that’s it, that’s a family! My film’s goal is to say, ‘NO, it’s not JUST that!’ My 5 main characters, by uniting, want to form a type of family that is based on love and the need to find oneself, all living under the same roof. Then, they could have children and these children would certainly be very happy to live with this ‘family.’ Oh well, maybe they would have to rearrange the apartment a bit [laughs].

How would you define the relationship between Maurice and Luka?More than anything, it is a wonderful love story to me. A beautiful cinema couple. They share a deep desire to be together, even though Maurice cannot fully embrace this love because of his traumatic past. Maurice is scared. He knows he’s in danger. Luka demonstrates his love for him throughout the entire film just until [pause] but, I will say no more.

Do you not fear that some of the images will shock a certain part of the audience?We are confronted with shocking images every day on the news and on the Internet. A reality of extreme violence is thrown right in our face. I create fictional images with actors who act to make you react. Everything in cinema is fake. One should never forget that a film is in fact just one big, beauti-ful scam.

It’s your first film in the United States. Why make a film in the US?I had already shot a bit in NYC for a documentary, but actually I just didn’t feel like shooting in France. I got a bit tired of France. This older country lives too much in fear at the moment. The gen-eral ambiance resembles an afternoon’s game of Scrabble at a retirement home. Paris, the ‘city of burning lights,’ is a bit of an old museum, while New York, with all its faults, always keeps evolving. So I always feel like shooting there and my two next films will be shot abroad as well.

CAST

PIERRE PRIEURMaurice

ADRIAN JAMESLuka

RAQUEL NAVEKim

REBEKAH UNDERHILLBetty

CHARLIE HIMMELSTEINCharlie