Wednesday 27 May 2015

Notebook's Fantasy Double Feature of 2012

NEW: Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, USA/Austria)
OLD: Chartres (Jean Grémillon, 1923) + Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958)

WHY: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our special double bill. Tonight, first of all, in Museum Hours, you will see Jem Cohen’s camera getting into paintings and exploring the mysteries and humors of space in this cinematic encounter of recently deceased Chris Marker and Brueghel. During our 10 minute interval, if nature is not calling you, please, stay seated and watch a short film, by the greatest revived director of the year, Jean Grémillon. In Chartres, Grémillon displays more possibilities of spatial representation on film and that “universal anguish transmitted by figurative representation.” He also shows some angels crowning the columns of the Chartres cathedral. In the second half of the program, screening newly restored Bonjour Tristesse, one of those angels, Jean Seberg, will descend from column to embody the story in which each scene is treated like a dense architecture/painting composition. While Cohen sees the essential pleasure in the careful observation of ordinary life, put next to the solidness of art and architecture, Preminger’s world is built on the lives of characters whose being is defined by arts, as if they are elements of the space or brush strokes in motion. I hope you enjoy tonight’s show and my final recommendation is listening to Bill Evans’ You Must Believe in Spring album, on your way back home, so your elation of being in the presence of great art be completed. Bonne projection!

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