July 4 - July 18
BORDERLINES: SELECTED WORKS BY CLAIRE DENIS
Claire Denis (1948-) began directing relatively late. Graduating from the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques in 1971, she worked as an assistant director for Costa-Gavras, Dusan Makavejev, Jim Jarmusch & Wim Wenders. Denis’ feature debut, Chocolat (1988), exhibited a clearly developed stylistic & thematic sensibility, which she has refined in scope & complexity over the last 20 years.
Denis’ approach to cinema can be characterised by a brooding, & at times playful, sense of restlessness. Her formally experimental & startlingly cinematic work engages complex questions concerning human experience in a postcolonial political landscape, the philosophy of the body & the power of the gaze. Each of her films documents in some manner the minutiae of character & marginalised communities in states of transition, dissolution, transgression, escape & abandonment, harbouring an obsession with imagery of bodies, borders, margins & interstices. Frequently drawing overt inspiration from literature (Herman Melville’s Billy Budd in Beau Travail), philosophy (Jean-Luc Nancy in The Intruder) & cinema (Ozu in 35 Shots of Rum) her works are never simply adaptations or homages, but complex revisions.
This season of 35mm prints showcases her most critically successful recent features – 35 Shots of Rum, White Material, The Intruder – & her breakout cinematic masterpiece, Beau Travail, alongside 2 of her rarely screened, & controversial, earlier features: I Can’t Sleep & S’en fout la mort. Her films are linked by their regard for the migrant experience, with 3 of the recent films notably featuring Michel Subor (from Godard’s Le Petit Soldat) as a retiring yet menacing figure of patriarchal authority.
Presented in conjunction with:
Institut français is the agency for the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs with responsibility for cultural activity outside France. It works to promote artistic exchange and dissemination of the French language, books and knowledge. Institut Français also complements the role of UniFrance Films in promoting French patrimonial cinema, the non-commercial screening of recent films, and showcasing its professionals. Institut français supports world cinema through the “Cinémas du Monde” pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, the Cinémathèque Afrique, and Fonds Sud Cinéma for the funding of films, which Institut français manages alongside the National Centre for Cinematography and the Moving Image.
July 4
7:00 – THE INTRUDER
Claire Denis (2004) 130 mins
A dying man (Michel Subor) lives in the mountains on the French-Swiss border, alone. He undergoes a heart transplant & searches for his lost son in Tahiti. Denis was inspired by the work of philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, & this “adaptation” emerges as one of her most daring, sensual & sensorial films. Nancy’s book was a reflection on the author’s own mortality, & as a pure cinematic experience, Denis’ rendition is a beautifully constructed existential piece communicated with almost dreamlike fluidity. Photographed by long-time collaborator Agnès Godard. With Grégoire Colin & featuring a startling cameo by Béatrice Dalle.
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
9:20 – BEAU TRAVAIL
Claire Denis (1999) 92 mins M
Partly inspired by Herman Melville’s ‘Billy Budd, Sailor’ & Benjamin Britten’s subsequent opera, Denis’ defining work is one of the great portraits of male camaraderie, jealousy & North African colonialism. Focusing on the physical & experiential dimensions of its Foreign Legion characters’ lives, Denis’ passionate yet ambivalent film features one of the most remarkable final scenes in all cinema. Michel Subor’s Commander Bruno Forestier is a continuation of the character he played in Godard’s Le Petit soldat. With Grégoire Colin & Denis Lavant.
July 11
7:00 – 35 SHOTS OF RUM
Claire Denis (2008) 100 mins
Denis regular Alex Descas plays a quietly charismatic widowered train driver living with his loyal yet soon-to-be-leaving-home university student daughter, Joséphine (Mati Diop). Orbiting their domestic bliss are a cabdriver friend & a handsome neighbour, but nothing can break the unspoken intimacy father & daughter share. As with late-period Ozu (to which this film is evidently indebted), Denis’ film is ostensibly simple in its quotidian observations of life, yet the director’s unmistakable sensuality is omnipresent in the characters’ shared glances & brilliantly selected music (including the Tindersticks).
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
8:50 - S’EN FOUT LA MORT
Claire Denis (1990) 90 mins
Jocelyn (Alex Descas) & Dah (Isaach De Bankolé) are illegal African immigrants working for a disreputable restaurateur, training cocks to fight in an illicit gambling hall outside Paris. The cruelty, desperation & violence of postcolonial socio-economic vectors are made manifest in a film whose graphic, seemingly vérité depictions of cockfighting and claustrophobic mise en scène was partly improvised. “I don’t think I made this film, I think it happened”, Denis has said; following her unorthodox preparatory method, the film was rehearsed not from a shooting script but from Jean Eustache’s script for La Maman et la Putain.
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
July 18
7:00 – WHITE MATERIAL
Claire Denis (2009) 106 mins MA
Denis’ most recent feature is a brooding & sobering survey of tension, dissolution & violent revolution in an unidentified region of postcolonial West Africa. Ostensibly centred on the futile efforts of Maria (Isabelle Huppert), an obstinate plantation owner, to avoid displacement, the film’s expansive focus deftly illustrates the struggle of a startling panorama of figures – including wayward rebel fighters, groups of workers & servants, Maria’s own disintegrating family, & a troupe of orphaned child soldiers – ensnared in the inchoate & uncertain climate of an escalating land conflict. With Michel Subor & Isaach De Bankolé.
9:00 – I CAN’T SLEEP
Claire Denis (1994) 110 mins
Intelligent, meditative & with a slow undercurrent of horror, Denis’ disturbing yet subtle 3rd feature calmly entices viewers into a seemingly ordinary world where the menacing & the benign wear similar masks. The film is based on an infamous French murder case from the 1980s, in which a homosexual couple killed more than 20 elderly women before they were arrested. Denis’ direction presents the murders as an aspect of the couple’s sexual hold on each other: where dissatisfaction, boredom & desire combine with nightmarish implications.
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
Backdrops:
Claire Denis
THE INTRUDER
BEAU TRAVAIL
35 SHOTS OF RUM
S’EN FOUT LA MORT
WHITE MATERIAL
I CAN'T SLEEP