In their aesthetically rigorous films Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub have, since the 1960s, led an ongoing critical debate with European history, culture and politics, often through the use of literary and philosophical texts. After the death of Danièle Huillet in October 2006, Jean-Marie Straub has continued making films, at times directly referencing the work he created together Danièle Huillet. Most of these newer films have not yet been screened in the cinema in the UK and we are pleased to present a section of them across two programmes.
STRAUB-HUILLET
TUE 10 MARCH 7PM + THU 12 MARCH 7PM
In their aesthetically rigorous films Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub have, since the 1960s, led an ongoing critical debate with European history, culture and politics, often through the use of literary and philosophical texts. After the death of Danièle Huillet in October 2006, Jean-Marie Straub has continued making films, at times directly referencing the work he created together Danièle Huillet. Most of these newer films have not yet been screened in the cinema in the UK and we are pleased to present a section of them across two programmes.
STRAUB-HUILLET PROGRAMME 1
TUE 10 MARCH 7PM
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13760246v.htm?edit=124847
Europa 2005, 27 Octubre (Europe 2005, 27 October)
On 27 October 2005, two Parisian youths, Bouna and Zyed, were killed in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois while being pursued by police. Trying to elude their pursuers, they hid in a power substation where they were electrocuted, virtually burned alive.
France 2006, colour, DigiBeta (Video), 12 mins. No dialoge, French intertitles.
Directors: Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet
Schakale und Araber (Jackals and Arabs)
Jackals, Arabs and Europeans, mob, mass, individual – following Deleuze: who will solve the riddle of the world in this short story by Kafka? (Viennale)
Switzerland 2011, colour, DigiBeta (video), 11 mins. In German with English subtitles.
Director: Jean-Marie Straub, Screenplay: Jean-Marie Straub based on the short story by Franz Kafka, With Barbara Ulrich, Giorgio Passerone, Jubarite Semaran,.
Dialogue d’ombres (Dialogue of Shadows)
Jean-Marie Straub’s new film closes the circle. The years 1954–2013 are displayed as representing a film produced in collaboration with Danièle Huillet. The two had met in Paris in 1954, around the year they came across the text by Georges Bernanos, to whom Straub has now dedicated a half-hour film. A man and a woman engaged in a dialogue, talking about their love, as if talking across an abyss. Then, in the last take, the two of them close together, motionless for a long time. (Viennale)
France, Switzerland 1954 – 2013, bw & colour, DCP (HD), 29 mins. French with English subtitles.
Directors: Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. With: Cornelia Geiser, Bertrand Brouder.
La Madre (The Mother)
The texts in Cesare Pavese’s “Dialoghi con leucò” have a stake in the old and the new alike. It is the lively tension, the bridge between myth and modernity of these texts that deeply touches us and which as a new experience so wonderfully permeates this film by Jean-Marie Straub. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of La Madre is the complete transparency and darkness that is revealed at the same time. (Viennale)
Switzerland 2012, colour, DCP (HD), 20 mins. Italian with English subtitles.
Director: Jean-Marie Straub, Screenplay: Jean-Marie Straub based on Dialogues with Leuco (Dialoghi con leucò, 1947) by Cesare Pavese, With Giovanna Daddi, Dario Marconcini.
À propos de Venise (Regarding Venice)
The glory and collapse of the grand Republic of Venice: the reasons are numerous, complex, human and all too human. Are these the same ingredients, the mélange that might determine whether the current Europe will survive? And if so, under what conditions? Jean-Marie Straub poses the question in this film, more austere and concentrated than ever. (Viennale)
France, Switzerland 2014, bw & colour, DCP (HD), 24 mins. French with English subtitles.
Director: Jean-Marie Straub, Screenplay: Jean-Marie Straub based on a text by Maurice Barrés. With Barbara Ulrich (voice).
Total Running Time: 96 Minutes
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STRAUB-HUILLET PROGRAMME 2
THU 12 MARCH 7PM
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en14031393v.htm
La Guerre d'Algérie!
In a single static shot a man is threatened with death at another's gunpoint.
France / Switzerland 2014, colour, DCP (HD), 2 mins. With English subtitles,
Director: Jean-Marie Straub, Screenplay: Jean-Marie Straub based on a text by Jean Sandretto.
Kommunisten (Communists)
Jean-Marie Straub pushes this musicality of blocks to a paroxysmal extreme, mixing blocks of time (40 years separate the various extracts that are going to be used, and what is to be filmed), blocks of text (Malraux, Fortini, Vittorini, Hölderlin) and blocks of language (French, Italian, German), and from this ruckus emerges the history of the world, yes, History with a capital H, and from the same movement, the political hope of its being overtaken. So this is an adventure film, about the Human adventure, still one that is always, in the end, overtaken by Nature. (Arnaud Dommerc)
Kommunisten is comprised of six parts: Le Temps du mépris, shot in Rolle, Switzerland, in July 2014 and based on André Malraux’s novel of the same name; L’Espoir, based on Workers, Peasants (2001); Le Peuple, adapted from Too Early, Too Late (1982); Les Apuanes, based on Fortini / Cani (1976); L’Utopie communiste, adapted from The Death of Empedocles (1987); and Nouveau monde, based on Black Sin (1989). (Locarno Film Festival)
France / Switzerland 2014, colour, DCP (HD), 70 mins. In French, Italian and German with English subtitles.
Director: Jean-Marie Straub.
Total Running Time: 72 Minutes
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