Strangers In Strange Lands
A Film Series Featuring Travel Documentaries By Great French Diectors
Program One: Louis Malle
Traveling in India with only a cinematographer and a sound recordist, Louis Malle recorded what he observed—often without knowing he was seeing or why it drew him, yet inspired by this striking, ancient land. Culled from 30 hours of footage (none of which Malle developed or watched until after he’d returned home to France), Phantom India’s seven episodes are grouped by themes or locations, with the director’s own voiceover on the soundtrack. Working with Suzanne Baron—editor of Malle’s My Dinner with André, Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum, and Jean Rouch’s Les Maîtres Fous, among other films—long scenes in Phantom India, often five or ten minutes in length, unfold without interruption. Their rhythm reflects the freedom and spontaneity of Malle’s trip, and the film that emerges is highly instinctive and sometimes controversial, as well as political, spiritual and deeply thoughtful.
Program Two: Jean Vigo and Chantal Akerman
Jean Vigo’s first film is a study of Nice, the celebrated French resort town to which tuberculosis had confined both him and his wife. Inspired by cinematic city portraits like Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City and Alberto Cavalcanti’s Paris classic Rien que les heures, Vigo worked with his neighbor, Russian émigré cinematographer Boris Kaufman (the brother of Dziga Vertov and Mikhail Kaufman). Shooting clandestinely on scraps of film saved from his job as an assistant cameraman, Vigo pushed Kaufman through town in a wheelchair with a camera hidden on his lap to obtain much of the film’s beautiful photography. Though the project began with a detailed script written by the two couples, this was soon abandoned. Instead, Vigo juxtaposed the seaside idyll’s extravagant, wealthy elite with their counterparts in the little-seen, impoverished local underbelly to create one of cinema’s most poetic and political works.
Gorgeous empty alleyways, scowling strangers, and sprawling, seedy urban decay make Chantal Akerman’s vision of New York City one of the era’s finest. She visits the downtown streets and subways that were brought to life in narrative films such as Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer, and James Toback’s Fingers, while letters from her mother in Belgium add intimate detail to the soundtrack. Rare English subtitles on this newly-released Eurpoean DVD version provide rare translation of this crucial element of the film, a displaced and distant audio foil to the director’s distinct visual experience in America.
Program Three: Agnès Varda
Pregnant with her first child, the sole female auteur to hold her own during the French New Wave here records her neighborhood on the rue Mouffetard in glorious black and white. The voiceover is Varda’s own, contemplating her body’s changes and life in Paris with characteristic insight, sensuality and humor. Young lovers, street vagrants, and the vibrant local vegetable market are all captured with her keen eye for texture and detail in this rich, sensual, and rarely-seen film.
“Rather than a “road movie” [this is] a “wandering-road-documentary,” explained Agnès Varda of personal exploration of the practice and history of “gleaning” in many different regions of southern France. Resourceful, opinionated interviewees wrest food and art from trash and refuse, acts which Varda sees as part of a long tradition dating back to the 1500s, when King Henry IV legalized “the right to glean.” Varda finds further historical evidence of gleaning in celebrated rural paintings by Jean François Millet (“The Gleaners,” 1857) and Vincent Van Gogh, and she speaks with her countrymen and women about their versions ofn the practice. In a perfect counter-point to Varda’s early ruminations and travels in L’opéra Mouffe, this in turn prompts the filmmaker’s ruminations on her country, the process of aging, and her place in the world.
Program Four: Jean Painlevé
Four Rare Painlevé Films:
Elegant, formal and fearless, these four lilting, rarely-seen documentaries by Jean Painlevé take an experimental approach to scientific exploration. Filming non-human environments that sometimes appear otherworldly, and at other moments are remarkably familiar, Painlevé explored everywhere from bat caves to the grottos of sea horses, creating over 200 nature films over the course of his career. In the whimsical, humorous and sometimes savage moments between the inhabitants of seemingly inhospitable landscapes, Painlevé captures the sublime.
Jean Painlevé’s life was every bit as fascinating as his films, as this wonderfully-researched and entertaining documentary reveals. The son of the France’s prime minister, learn of the way his childhood rebellion against his powerful father slowly morphed into his career; the techniques that he employed to capture rare scientific moments that are still used today; and the technological innovations he designed and inspired in the fields of scuba diving, marine biology, and cinematography. This film also examines the changing reactions to Painlevé’s work by the film and science communities over time, and the many friends—from Luis Buñuel to Alexander Calder, May Ray, and Jean Vigo—that he collaborated with, providing live ants or bizarre scientific specimen upon request.
Program Five: Jean Epstein
Shown for the first time in the U.S. in a new restoration by Gaumont-Pathé Archive, Jean Epstein’s remarkable film weaves documentary footage of coastal life on Ouessant Island, Brittany, with the tale of a wounded fisherman’s journey for medical assistance. Born in Poland, Epstein began making narrative films with Pasteur in 1922; Luis Buñuel was Epstein’s assistant Fall of the House of Usher (1928). Epstein he was also a noted critic, film theorist, novelist; Finis Terrae or “Ends of the Earth” was one of several films Epstein shot on the islands off the coast of France. Finis Terrae showcases its director’s artist’s eye for landscape, technician’s prowess at special effects, and documentarian’s loving attention to intimate detail.
Photo Credit: Still from À Propos de Nice (1930) by Jean Vigo.
Where / When
Dates:
Written on Jul. 09, 08
News
-
France Honors Mahen Bonetti, Norman Manea, and Jackie Raynal
On Monday, April 12, Kareen Rispal, Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy, [+] -
Tim Burton to Head 2010 Cannes Festival Jury
American film director Tim Burton is to be Jury President for the 63rd Festival de [+] -
Open Call for the Student Selection of the Cannes Film Festival
The Cinefondation, student film selection of the Cannes Film Festival, will present [+]
Latest Articles
-
The Signs of Rohmer, a Retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
New Wave icon Eric Rohmer, director of more than 50 films, including the [+] -
Laurent Grasso, SoundFossil
French artist Laurent Grasso will be present for his first ever solo exhibition in [+] -
The Space Between Reference and Regret
In 1951 Robert Rauschenberg made his white paintings which were called by his friend [+]
