In the run-up to the Night of Ideas on 9 February, a film programme will be exploring different themes of the Night, providing further food for thought!
La Panthère des neiges
In the heart of the Tibetan highlands, wildlife photographer Vincent Munier brings writer and adventurer Sylvain Tesson on his quest to find the almost legendary snow leopard. He introduces him to the subtle art of waiting from a blind spot, tracking animals and finding the patience to catch sight of the beasts.
Through their journey in the Tibetan peaks, inhabited by many animals often invisible to us, writer and photographer engage in a conversation on our place among the living beings and celebrate the beauty of the world.
In this poetic tribute to Sable Island, a remote piece of land off the coast of the Northeast Canada, naturalist and environmentalist Zoe Lucas, who has lived on the island for over 40 years, becomes part of her habitat. Each day she collects, cleans and documents the marine litter that persistently washes up on the land. Director Jacquelyn Mills delivers intimate, tactile 16mm images that feel like we are witnessing one of Zoe’s solitary excursions.
“Despite its apparent gentleness, Geographies of Solitude delivers an urgent missive about the global environmental disaster whose reach has touched even the most remote places.” (BFI)
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. Inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Eo follows the journey of a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, as he meets good and bad people along the way, including Isabelle Huppert, and endures the wheel of fortune that randomly turns his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected happiness. Winning the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film is Poland’s entry to the 2023 Academy Awards.
Between climate change and the 6th mass extinction of wildlife, the planet could be uninhabitable in 50 years. Nominated for the César for Best Documentary in 2022, Cyril Dion’s third feature film Animal follows teenagers Bella and Vipulan on a journey to meet activists from around the world and prominent scientists such as Philippe Descola, Baptiste Morizot, Jane Goodall, in search of a harmonious way for humans and all living beings to live together.
In this poetic tribute to Sable Island, a remote piece of land off the coast of the Northeast Canada, naturalist and environmentalist Zoe Lucas, who has lived on the island for over 40 years, becomes part of her habitat. Each day she collects, cleans and documents the marine litter that persistently washes up on the land. Director Jacquelyn Mills delivers intimate, tactile 16mm images that feel like we are witnessing one of Zoe’s solitary excursions.
“Despite its apparent gentleness, Geographies of Solitude delivers an urgent missive about the global environmental disaster whose reach has touched even the most remote places.” (BFI)
This programme curated by film critic and curator Federico Rossin addresses the ambiguous position taken by Jean-Luc Godard all along his film career as a commentator of images: was he really considering everybody equal before images or was he dominating the audience with his male authoritative voice?
“Letter to Jane (1972), an essay in the form of a film centered on a single photograph, has been criticized as statement of the male dominance over the female figure. Taking as a point of departure a photograph of actress Jane Fonda in Vietnam, Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin reflect on the role of intellectuals in the revolutionary process, but as male narrators they impose their authority and dominance as masculine subjects. In Photos et Cie (1976) Godard broke this monolingual male voice-over working with his partner Anne-Marie Miéville.” – Federico Rossin
Programme:
Letter to Jane: An Investigation About a Still
FRA | 1972 | dir. Jean-Luc Godard et Jean-Pierre Gorin | 52 mins
Six fois deux / Sur et sous la communication 3a : Photo et Cie
FRA | 1976 | dir. Jean-Luc Godard et Anne-Marie Miéville | 46 mins
London by Godard will be celebrated through the outlook of the seminal UK film magazine Afterimage which emerged in the wake of post-1968 cultural and political change and published thirteen issues between 1970 and 1987, including Jean-Luc Godard’s manifesto on making political films.
In British Sounds, Godard, believing that the narrative film was outdated and bourgeois, let loose a propagandistic audio-visual barrage on the senses that combines Maoism, the Beatles, multiple soundtracks, minimal cinema, nudity (accompanied by a women’s liberation statement), and excerpts from Nixon, Pompidou, and the Communist Manifesto, all ending with a blood-spattered hand painfully reaching for a red flag.
The screening will be introduced by Simon Field, former editor of Afterimage
In partnership with Open City Documentary Festival
About Simon Field
Simon Field, is one of the contributors to the recently published The Afterimage Reader (edited by Mark Webber, The Visible Press, May 2022) and a former editor of the Afterimage journal
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. Inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Eo follows the journey of a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, as he meets good and bad people along the way, including Isabelle Huppert, and endures the wheel of fortune that randomly turns his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected happiness. Winning the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film is Poland’s entry to the 2023 Academy Awards.
La Panthère des neiges
In the heart of the Tibetan highlands, wildlife photographer Vincent Munier brings writer and adventurer Sylvain Tesson on his quest to find the almost legendary snow leopard. He introduces him to the subtle art of waiting from a blind spot, tracking animals and finding the patience to catch sight of the beasts.
Through their journey in the Tibetan peaks, inhabited by many animals often invisible to us, writer and photographer engage in a conversation on our place among the living beings and celebrate the beauty of the world.
Abel (Louis Garrel) and Marianne (Laetitia Casta) discover that their 13-year-old son Joseph has been selling the family’s valuables in secret. They soon find out that he is not alone as a worldwide network of hundreds of children comes to light. On a crusade to save the planet, they have been raising money to fund a mysterious project.
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. Inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Eo follows the journey of a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, as he meets good and bad people along the way, including Isabelle Huppert, and endures the wheel of fortune that randomly turns his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected happiness. Winning the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film is Poland’s entry to the 2023 Academy Awards.
“We’re riveted by what we’re seeing, which can be both hard to stomach and transfixingly beautiful in the way that an abstract expressionist canvas can be, filled with multitudes of colors, shapes, shadows and light.” (The Hollywood Reporter)
Five centuries ago, anatomist André Vésale opened the human body to science for the first time in history. Today, De Humani Corporis Fabrica opens the human body to the cinema. It reveals that human flesh is an extraordinary landscape that exists only through the gaze and attention of others. As places of care, suffering and hope, hospitals are laboratories that connect everybody in the world.
About the directors:
Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor are filmmakers, artists, and anthropologists, who work at the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. Their work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the British Museum, has been screened at the AFI, BAFICI, Berlin, CPH:DOX, Locarno, New York, Toronto, and Viennale Film Festivals, and exhibited at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Centre Pompidou, the Berlin Kunsthalle, Marian Goodman Gallery, The X-initiative.
Abandoned in the harsh Australian outback, a young sister and brother must learn to fend for themselves in the wilderness without their usual comforts. Along the way, they meet a young Aborigine during his “walkabout”, a rite of passage in which adolescent boys are initiated into manhood by venturing out alone into the wilderness. In this hypnotic masterpiece by Nicolas Roeg, characters, relationships, the contrast between the modern and the natural, are all skillfully woven together by stunning cinematography and an unorthodox approach to editing.
This screening pays tribute to director Nicolas Roeg and will be followed by a Q&A with actors Jenny Agutter & Luc Roeg moderated by writer Tony Rayns
In partnership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. Inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Eo follows the journey of a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, as he meets good and bad people along the way, including Isabelle Huppert, and endures the wheel of fortune that randomly turns his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected happiness. Winning the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film is Poland’s entry to the 2023 Academy Awards.
“We’re riveted by what we’re seeing, which can be both hard to stomach and transfixingly beautiful in the way that an abstract expressionist canvas can be, filled with multitudes of colors, shapes, shadows and light.” (The Hollywood Reporter)
Five centuries ago, anatomist André Vésale opened the human body to science for the first time in history. Today, De Humani Corporis Fabrica opens the human body to the cinema. It reveals that human flesh is an extraordinary landscape that exists only through the gaze and attention of others. As places of care, suffering and hope, hospitals are laboratories that connect everybody in the world.
About the directors:
Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor are filmmakers, artists, and anthropologists, who work at the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. Their work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the British Museum, has been screened at the AFI, BAFICI, Berlin, CPH:DOX, Locarno, New York, Toronto, and Viennale Film Festivals, and exhibited at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Centre Pompidou, the Berlin Kunsthalle, Marian Goodman Gallery, The X-initiative.
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. Inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Eo follows the journey of a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, as he meets good and bad people along the way, including Isabelle Huppert, and endures the wheel of fortune that randomly turns his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected happiness. Winning the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film is Poland’s entry to the 2023 Academy Awards.
La Panthère des neiges
In the heart of the Tibetan highlands, wildlife photographer Vincent Munier brings writer and adventurer Sylvain Tesson on his quest to find the almost legendary snow leopard. He introduces him to the subtle art of waiting from a blind spot, tracking animals and finding the patience to catch sight of the beasts.
Through their journey in the Tibetan peaks, inhabited by many animals often invisible to us, writer and photographer engage in a conversation on our place among the living beings and celebrate the beauty of the world.
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. Inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Eo follows the journey of a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, as he meets good and bad people along the way, including Isabelle Huppert, and endures the wheel of fortune that randomly turns his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected happiness. Winning the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film is Poland’s entry to the 2023 Academy Awards.
Sois belle et tais-toi
Delphine Seyrig interviews 24 French and North American actresses, including Jane Fonda, Maria Schneider and Anne Wiazemsky, about their experiences as professional women in cinema, their relationships with directors and crew, the roles they have played and the demand to “be beautiful and shut up”. An illuminating film highlighting the stereotyping and alienation of women by the industry, presented for the first time in the UK in its restored version.
UK Premiere of the 2K Digital Restoration
Followed by a conversation between Nicole Fernández Ferrer, Producer and former Managing Director of the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir (Paris), who oversaw the film’s restoration, and Dr. Ros Murray (King’s College London), author of several essays on Delphine Seyrig and Carole Roussopoulos.