Agenda

Films à (p)art

The Cinémathèque at les Abattoirs

Les Abattoirs
Auditorium
Admission fee

Taking up residence in an institution born of the merger of the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de la Ville de Toulouse and the Fonds régional d'art contemporain is no mean feat. The move cannot be made without first singing the refrain that rivals entertainment - and the other arts. A reminder that yes, cinema is also an art...

And it has many strings to its bow. Hence the parenthesis in the title of this proposed programme. It's not so much a question of defining how cinema is an art, or at what point its ticket to art is no longer valid, but rather of taking it through the singularity of films that don't really have anything to do with each other, but which have something to do with cinema as an artistic approach to the world, or quite simply because they redefine the codes of a cinematographic genre: from chambara (Japanese swordplay) to documentary.

M

Joseph Losey. 1951. USA. 88 min. B&W. VOSTF.

Twenty years after the release of Fritz Lang's M le Maudit, Joseph Losey dares to remake it. A great film noir with obvious political overtones, shot in part in the Bradbury Building, later used as the setting for Blade Runner.

The Legend of Zatoichi: The Blind Masseur
(Zatoïchi monogatari)

Kenji Misumi. 1962. Jap. 96 min. B&W. VOSTF.

Based on the short story The Legend of Zatoichi: The Blind Masseur by Kan Shimozawa. A milestone in the history of yellow cinema

La rabbia

Pier Paolo Pasolini. 1963. Italy. 51 min. B&W. VOSTF.

This was originally a commissioned film when producer Gastone Ferranti asked Pasolini to make a documentary based on his archive holdings. The death of Marilyn, Soviet painting, French abuses in Algeria, Yuri Gagarin and the exploitation of workers. The end result is a remarkable poetic essay, painfully close to the edge of the abyss.

The Black God and the Fair Devil
(Deus E O Diabo Na Terra Do Sol)

Galuber Roha. 1964. Brazil. 115 min. VOSTF.

Cinema unlike any other. A rejection of Western cinematographic norms for a baroque allegory of a Brazil in despair, with an exploited peasant, a large landowner, a false prophet of the Apocalypse, a cangaceiro who kills the poor to save them from starvation and a hired killer...

Who are you Polly Maggoo?

William Klein. 1966. USA. 105 min. B&W.

Dense, abundant, ultra-pop and messy in the noble sense of the word. The glorious sixties revisited by William Klein! After Broadway by Light, a short film made in 1958, this is the American photographer's first feature film.

Wanda

Barbara Loden. 1970. 105 min. Color. VOSTF.

A raw and corrosive portrait of a woman. Barbara Loden's only film and a unique one at that. Wanda, elusive, irredeemable, neither a feminist nor a submissive trophy wife, neither a mother nor a Bonnie Parker. Subversive, haggard, her eyes fixed on an unobstructed beyond.

Zabriskie Point

Michelangelo Antonioni. 1970. USA / Italy. 114 min. Color. VOSTF.

Antonioni's lost America. The lyrical apogee of the protest spirit of the 1960s. Formally, a film of absolute splendour that in no way conceals its purpose: the exploration of the bankruptcy of a country, of a civilisation.

A Bigger Splash

Jack Hazan. 1973. UK. 106 min. Color. VOSTF.

Between 1971 and 1973, three years in the personal and artistic life of the English painter David Hockney. A documentary portrait, then, but conceived as a fiction film - unless it's the other way round - interspersed with dreamlike sequences, some of which reproduce Hockney's paintings to perfection.

Simone Barbès or Virtue

Marie-Claude Treilhou. 1980. Fr. 77 min. Col.

The unprecedented reconciliation of social fantasy, poetic realism and the formal audacity of the New Wave. The wandering of solitudes. Pieces of stories that we can guess at and that take us from the gallery of comical portraits to the intimate, from the futility of words to stretches of silence.

Europa

Lars von Trier. 1991. Denmark / Sweden / France / Germany / Switzerland. 112 min. B&W / Colour. VOSTF.

Hallucinatory formal discoveries in a surreal environment where colour and black and white clash. After Element of Crime (1984) and Epidemic (1987), this is the third part of the ‘Europe’ trilogy created by filmmaker Lars von Trier.

Le Festin nu
(Naked Lunch)

David Cronenberg. 1991. Canada / UK / Japan / USA. 115 min. Color. VOSTF.

The story of Bill Lee, an ex-junkie turned cockroach exterminator, his mission, his setbacks and his encounters in the Interzone. David Cronenberg's impossible adaptation of William S. Burroughs' unadaptable novel The Naked Feast. In fact, it's almost an organic, visceral, elusive biopic, with writing as a murderous act of impulse.

This film was banned for under-12s at the time of its release.

Simple Men

Hal Hartley. 1992. USA. 105 min. Color. VOSTF.

Pared-down, chaotic and surly, and very much apart in the landscape of independent cinema made in the USA. When Yo La Tengo takes us on a road movie punctuated by scenes of waiting for Godot. Offbeat characters who put us back in the world by staring at it where we (they) least expect it.

The Ashes of Time
(Dung che sai duk)

Wong Kar-wai. 1994. Hong Kong. 100 min. Color. VOSTF.

A chivalrous fresco that blossoms in the melancholy of its tired heroes. A strange marriage between the swashbuckling film (wu xian pian) and the very special world of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai. A film about loneliness and the wounded heart.

Jeannette, the childhood of Joan of Arc

Bruno Dumont. Fr. 105 min. Coul.

Dumont is fearless and proves it once again with this musical film that bears no resemblance to anything known. The filmmaker adapts two texts by Charles Péguy and evokes the youth of the woman who was not yet Joan of Arc. Philippe Decouflé's choreography and the fragility of the non-professional actors. A mythical, mystical and fantastic experience.

Nature

Artavazd Pelechian. 2020. France / Germany / Armenia. 63 min. B&W. VOSTF.

Volcanic eruptions, titanic floods, devastating storms, earthquakes and tsunamis. So many cataclysms and so many images of ecological disasters gleaned from the internet. A film by Artavazd Pelechian, an indispensable Armenian filmmaker renowned for his lyrical, avant-garde documentaries.

Diary of Tûoa
(Diários de Otsoga)

Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes. 2021. Portugal. 98 min. Color. VOSTF.

A genuinely mischievous mockumentary, shot on a shoestring in the middle of a confinement. The mysterious Tûoa of the title is none other than August in reverse. So it's hardly surprising that this singular piece of cinema works backwards, starting with the last day and working backwards to the first!

All the practical information: La Cinémathèque de Toulouse