PROGRAMME FRENCH INST. THURSDAY DECEMBER 5th
5:30 pm
Souvenirs de Paris ou Paris Express
by Pierre Prévert, Marcel Duhamel
France, 1928, 39’, without dialogues
Walking down the streets of Paris, the striking images of the film perfectly capture the spirit of les années folles with the beauty of the Parisian women. On a car or on a coach, walking or riding a taxi, the Parisian women of Prévert brothers and Duhamel are the real soul of the ville lumière.
Les Nuites Électriques
by Eugène Deslaw
France, 1930, 9’, without dialogues
Against a background of night skies, Deslaw films the lights of Paris, Berlin, Prague and London in a symphony made of graphics and lights having a clear futurist spirit. Through plays of light and shade “in negative”, forms, reflections, geometrical lines and double exposures, the night is stripped of any narration and portrayed in the immediate enchantment of the visual effect. The lights sparkle, switch on and off, overlap and dance, celebrating the modernity and dynamism of a rejoicing city.
6:30 pm
Rien que les Heures
by Alberto Cavalcanti
France, 1926, 58’, without dialogues
Paris in a day: in one of the first examples of “urban symphony”, Cavalcanti explores the city and its various facets, from the working-class neighborhoods to the slums, from dawn and the daily activities to late night, when the new day begins. In a deep relationship between urban space, time and movement of urban life, this avant-gardist work, between reality and fiction, reveals a social consciousness in the contrast between the rich and the poor of Paris in the Twenties.
Bois d’Arcy
by Mehdi Benallal
France, 2013, 24’, v.o. eng. sub.
Bois d’Arcy is a “a small municipality with a small bourgeoisie” a few kilometres away from Paris in which Mehdi Benallal decides to face his past and to retrace the places of his childhood through the memories of those times. The memories of ordinary racism, the insolence of children imitating adults, the suspects towards a non poor immigrant family suffering humiliations as a response for their discretion, fill the apparently calm everyday life of this town in the Parisian banlieu.
Watch thel trailer