1 Mb - Consulat général de France à Toronto

Bulletin Culturel
June 2009
FOCUS
The Cinematheque
Ontario
Man Ray
Enrico Macias
in Toronto
LES PLASTISCINES
offer a concert during NXNE
Festival
Editorial
People’s walking side by side, hushers rushing in, M.C. reciting. At the end
on the tiers, the faces are lined-up ready for a schoolyear photo. Heigths,
ages, bodies all different. Is it from Ninive or Assur palace ? Shall we
remember lectures ? Words water, flow, flood, then dry out.
In June students attend their graduation in Canada. Know-how is above
what we may implement in our country. For later time of the highschoolers, and the parents’ pride happiness, the ceremony set images
forever.
The author of the famous painting « Les Onze » in Le Louvre Museum is
the main character of the historical fiction from Pierre Michon and he asks
« What should I paint ? » (*). The French Revolution Comité de Salut
Public imposes a new policy called « La Terreur ».
- « Silence came. Fire burned out. From the large square lantern, light
was beating down on spilled gold at the exact same spot where old bones
had lied down. »
Images appear altogether at the History’s acme, for the daily happy
hours, and even within novel writing.
In June, Enrico Macias, NXNE, and «Alliance Française » celebrate music
for summer. At the Power Plant, artists decipher with « Universal Code »
exhibition our today world. The Ontario Cinematheque companionship
reliable as always.
Joël Savary, Attaché Culturel
(*) Les Onze, Pierre Michon, Verdier, Lagrasse-France, 2009
Contents
Festival - PAGE 3
Music - PAGE 4
Exhibitions
- PAGE 6
Conferences
- PAGE 7
Cinema - PAGE 8
Cultural Calendar - June 2009
Monday
Tuesday
1
2
Wednesday Thursday
3
Cinema:
Entr´Acte
Conferences:
- C. Laudamiel
- F. Migeot
Conference:
Shlomo
Schwartzbe
rg
8
9
4
16
Saturday
5
Cinema:
Man Ray
Cinema:
Painlevé
10
11
12
6
Sunday
7
Music:
Coup de
coeur
Exhibition:
Clarissa
Inglis
13
14
20
21
Cinema:
The Raven
Music:
Enrico
Macias
15
Friday
Exhibition:
All summer
all free
17
Music:
Les Plastiscines
18
19
Music:
Film Noir
Fête de la
musique
Cinema:
Jacquot de
Nantes
22
23
REELHeART REELHeART
Film Festival Film Festival
29
24
25
26
Cinema:
Les Vampires
27
Cinema:
Les Vampires
28
Cinema:
Les Vampires
REELHeART REELHeART REELHeART REELHeART
Film Festival Film Festival Film Festival Film Festival
30
2
Festivals
Fête de la musique in Toronto
As last year, the Alliance
Française of Toronto organises
an event during the French Fête
de la Musique. On the outdoor
stage of the Harbourfront theater, next to the lake!
Program :
- Jaffa Road with Aviva Chernick
from 12 :30 pm to 1 :15 pm,
funky Jewish world music (Ann
Tindal Stage)
- Children’s choirs: “Le chœur
d’enfants des patriotes” and Le
grand choeur du festival choral
“Chantons en choeur” from 1
:15 pm to 2 :00 pm (Lakeside
Terrace Tent)
- Joanna Moon from 2:00 pm to
2:45 pm, flamenco with a twist
(Sirius Stage)
African griot (Ann Tindal Stage)
- Paul Reddick & Philippe Flahaut
from 5 :00 pm to 6 :00 pm, not
your daddy’s blues (Sirius
Stage)
- Dave Neill Trio from 3:00 pm
to 3:30 pm, the next wave in
jazz (Ann Tindal Stage)
- Marie-José Houle from 3:30
pm to 4 :10 pm, cabaret
songstress & accordionist (Lakeside Terrace Tent)
- Tamsir Seck from 4:15 pm to
5:00 pm, mezmerizing West
Sunday June 21
From 12:30 pm
to 6:00 pm
REELHeART International Film Festival
Two French movies will be
presented during the ReelHeART International Film Festival
SANTA CLAUS IS BACK IN TOWN
Adrien Comelli, France, 2008, 24mn
June 21
Fête de la Musique à
Toronto
Harbourfront Center
235 Queens Quay West
Free event
June 22-27
is bitter about his behavior and he
convinces John to distribute some
of the presents they just robbed in
a disadvantaged hometown. But
sadly, they choose the wrong house
to
perform
their
salvation…
Thursday, June 25, 8 PM
595 Markham Street, Toronto
an idea of the show and the magic
.
of the city of Milan.
Wednesday, June 24, 7 PM
Innis College, 2 Sussex Street,
U of T, Toronto
At Christmas night, in the city’s
streets, a young Santa Claus, Sam,
is giving candies to the people
passing by, when he’s mugged by a
bunch of young angry people. Sam
is saved by another Santa Claus,
John. Then John takes Sam with
him and they start to rob houses in
a wealthy neighborhood. But Sam
ÉTOILES
ET
PETITS
PAS
Liliane de Kermadec, France, 2008, 30mn
An insiders POV to a special ballet
at the Teatro alla Scala. Stars and
music backstage, on stage and in
the streets of Milano. The performance was filmed on the occasion of
a special New Year’s eve ballet performance at the Scala de Milano
2007/2008. You’ll get to feel the atmosphere and energy of the last rehearsals, backstage and on stage
Festival International du
Film ReelHeART
June 22-27
Tickets: $10
Seniors and students ticket : $5
www.reelheart.com
3
Music
“Coup de coeur”
Les voix du cœur present their last
June 6
show untitled « Coup de cœur ». To
celebrate the fifteenth birthday of
the vocal ensemble, the 30 chorists
and their musicians suggest an
eclectic travel through time and
styles thanks to the extraordinary
contribution of the Torontonians
French-speaking personalities. The
audience will be seduced by the
dynamism and the diversity of the
repertory. Children from the choir
of Sainte-Madeleine school will take
Enrico Macias
Born in an Algerian Jewish family, Gaston Ghrenassia grew up
in a very strong North African
musical tradition.
Gaston’s father was a violinist in
the Cheikh Raymond Band
leaded by Ra y m o n d L e y r i s .
“Coup de Coeur”
Saturday June 6,
8:00 pm
Studio Glenn-Gould,
250, Front Street West
To buy tickets, call
905.883.7951
9 juin
Instead of following his father’s
step Gaston decided to learn
guitar with his gypsy friends,
which gave him the nickname
Little Enrico and bring to his
music a touch from Andalousia.
He became a teacher at first but
he didn’t wait too long to dedicate his life to music and join his
father in the Cheikh Raymond
band.
In Paris, Gaston became Enrico
Macias (he found his artist’s
name after Raul Macias, a boxer
from the 50’s), he was working
unequally until the night he did
the first part of a Gilbert Bécaud’s live show and then happened to be on famous TV
show. Very appreciated by the
Israelievitch
“Pieds-Noirs” community, his
audience grew very quickly and
of his songs became some really
big hits such as “Les filles de
mon pays”.
Internationally recognized for
his talent , Enrico is awarded
“Peace singer” by Kurt Waldheim from the United Nation in
1980, he also received the prestigious “Legion d’Honneur”.
Enrico Macias
Tuesday June 9,
8:30 pm
Music Hall Theater
147 Danforth Avenue
21 juin
All TEN Beethoven Violin and 1:00 pm – Sonatas 1 - 5
Piano Sonatas IN ONE DAY 4:00 pm – Sonatas 6 - 8
(with two breaks)
7:30 pm – Sonatas 9 & 10
“How crazy do you
have to be to do this?”
part in the show.
Tickets: $25 per set, $65
whole day
Jacques Israelievitch, violin Information: 416-822-9781
[email protected]
Kanae Matsumoto, piano
Jacques Israelievitch
Sunday June 21,
Gallery 345,
345 Sorauren Ave.
Info: 416-822-9781
4
Two French bands in Toronto
for the NXNE Festival
Les Plastiscines
June 17
, “LP1” released in February 2007,
13 tracks alternating pop and rock
with energy.
First band signed by the very hip
Nylon’s Records, they just recorded
their second album “About Love” in
Los Angeles, EP Barcelona its first
track is available on Itune since
April 21st and it’s already a hit. The
album produced by the famous
Butch Walker (Katy Perry, Pink,
Avril Lavigne) and the mix-master
is Claudius Mittendorfer (Foo Fight-
ers, Franz Ferdinand, Muse), will be
released in June when the band will
begin the Rock’n roll Nylon’s Summer Tour 2009 with Patrick Wolf,
Living Things and Jaguar Love.
Les Plastiscines will be in concert in
Toronto on June 17 at the Modclub
at 7 PM along with the other bands
of the tour.
Les Plastiscines
Born from the Parisian’s rock scene
revival, the 4 Plastiscine’s girls give
to their audience some wild live
rock performances close to those
from the 60’s or the 70’s. The four
girlfriends met in High School, at
the Saint-Cyr-L’Ecole next to Paris.
From a meeting with Jacques
Dutronc came out their first album
Wednesday, June 17,
7:00 pm
ModClub
722 College Street
www.themodclub.com
Film Noir
What could possibly happen when a classic music composer meet with a jazz guitar player? They rock!
Imagine Radiohead writing the music for a movie
shooting Bob Dylan playing the Velvet Underground
along with the Clash! You can find this great family picture in the very accomplished “ I had a very happy
childhood” their auto-produced first album, released in
2008. Thanks to the success of this album they have
June 18
been signed by the label “Son du Maquis/Harmunia
Mundi” and the album will have an official release in
October 2009.
Film Noir will be in Toronto for the Noth by NorthEast
Music festival and will play live at El Mocambo on June
18 at 10pm.
Film Noir
Thursday, June 18,
7:00 pm
El Mocambo
462 Spadina Avenue
www.elmocambo.ca
5
Exhibitions
Universal Code
For the fourth year running, The
Power Plant is pleased to announce
that it will be offering free gallery
admission all summer. This year,
the gallery’s featured summer exhibition is ‘Universal Code,’ a largescale group exhibition presenting
responses from a broad range of
contemporary artists to cosmology
and ideas of the universal in our
current information age.
‘Universal Code’ considers the response of artists to these relationships
in
the
aftermath
of
globalization, reflecting the current
complexity of the world we inhabit.
Ultimately their response is poetic,
positioning the universe as a void
full of potential but also as a field
riddled by elision and enigma.
From June 12
of contemporary
society. This includes,
on
a
larger scale, the
positives
and
negatives
of
globalization is
work follows in
the tradition of
Marcel Duchamp
in that he employs
Readymade objects or iconography to elicit
the ambiguities of everyday life in
this postmodern era of cultural overlap with the disintegration of cultural
boundaries.
Adel Abdessemed
This exhibition is an opportunity to
discover four major artists currently
living in France.
Tania Mouraud
Mouraud reveals the identity of the
different environments she visits
through a close examination of the
site’s distinctive temperament and its
inhabitants’ ways of thinking. In an
increasingly global society, she is interested in the remaining cultural
characteristics that distinguish different regions from one another.
Mircea Cantor
Mircea Cantor (born 1977) is a visual
artist who has received wide acclaim
for his subtle commentary on issues
Thomas Hirschhorn
Thomas Hirschhorn came to international attention with his perishable
monuments. Neglecting material
worth, his work encompasses diverse
sculptural models in an impoverished
taste for the product wrappings of
consumer industry such as aluminum
foil, plastic, cardboard and plywood.
Following a logic of ephemerality,
Hirschhorn’s perishable monuments
to Benedict de Spinoza (Amsterdam,
1999), Gilles Deleuze (Avignon,
2000), Georges Bataille (2002, Kassel) and Antonio Gramsci, reflected
upon communal commitment and
“the quality of internal beauty”
Universal Code
T. Mouraud, M. Cantor, A. Abdessemed et
T. Hirschhom
Abdessemed transforms everyday
materials and images into unexpected, charged, and sometimes
shocking artistic declarations. He
pulls freely from myriad sources- personal, social, and political- to create a
visual language that is simultaneously rich and economical, sensitive
and controversial, radical and mundane.
Des Vosges au Luxembourg by C. Inglis
Des Vosges au Luxembourg
A walk through the parks, gardens and squares of Paris
Photos by Clarissa Inglis
This exhibit is not a collection of
postcard-type images of Paris.
Rather, it casts a sociologist’s eye
upon the manner in which Parisians
occupy spaces that are both « natural » and deeply rooted in the
urban fabric.
The exhibit is based on four broad
themes: reading, lazing about, conversation and inhabited nature.
From June 12
to August 30
The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery,
Harbourfront Centre
231 Queens Quay West
Free Entrance
From June 6
Jardins et squares
parisiens
Photos de Clarissa Inglis
From June 6
to September 26
AFT Spadina
Galerie Pierre-Léon
24 Spadina Road
Free Entrance
6
Conferences
Contemporary Venezuelan poetry
The Consulate general of the
Bolivarian
Republic
of
Venezuela and the Consulate
general of France in Toronto are
pleased to present Contemporary Venezuelan poetry, special
focus on José Antonio Ramos
Sucre, by François Migeot
As a specialist of Latin-American
contemporaneous poetry, François
Migeot will initiate us to the
Venezuelan poetry from the XXth
and XXIst century. He will present
some important poets of this time,
with a special focus on José Antonio Ramos Sucre, a Venezuelan poet
that he translated. Based on this experience, he will also explain to us
his work as a translator of poetry
from Spanish to French.
José Antonio Ramos Sucre (1890 1930) was a Venezuelan poet, professor and consul. He is best remembered for his work on poetry
and literature, amongst them :
Trizas de papel (1921), Sobre las
huellas de Humboldt (1923), La
torre de Timón (1925), Las formas
del fuego (1929), El cielo de esmalte (1929). In the 1960s he became to the new generation, one of
the most valid references of excellence. According to Francisco Pérez
Perdomo, Venezuelan poet and literarature critic, Ramos Sucre is
"the poet of pain, a poet who felt a
hypnotic fascination for the obscure
and the abyss, a poet that suffers
in his loneliness".
Les Parfums du Parfum by C. Laudamiel
Mr. Laudamiel began teaching
chemistry at MIT and received his
perfume creation diploma from
Procter & Gamble in 1997. Rising
through the ranks, he became senior perfumer at Proctor & Gamble,
then at the IFF.
Christophe
Laudamiel
explores the relationship
between the worlds of
perfume, art and design.
Christophe Laudamiel’s
many
creations
are
known throughout the
world, and include Happy
Heart and Happy in
Bloom (Clinique); HN for
Men and HN for Women
(Harvey Nichols); Le baiser de
l’Artiste (Orlan), Absinth et Mimosa
(Slatkin & Co.); Les Parfums du
Parfum (Thierry Mugler for Patrick
Süskind); Polo Blue For Men and
Bougie Pink Pony (Ralph Lauren).
With Thierry Mugler,
Mr. Laudamiel created
a box including 15
scents featured in key
scenes from Perfume,
Tom
Tykwer’s
film
based
on
Patrick
Süskind’s best-selling
novel. A first in the
world of perfumes, this
project reflects their
shared desire to create
June 4
Research professor at the University of Franche-Comté (France),
François Migeot is a specialist of the
analysis of literarature and didactic.
He also translated many LatinAmerican poems. His work as a
writer is focused on poetry, poetic
prose and the conjunction of various artistic expressions. He published several books, as Orly-Sud,
Clair de page, Entre les lames, lectures de Robbe-Grillet, Chronique,
Flux tendu.
Contemporaneous
Venezuelan poetry
Spanish Centre
46 Hayden Street
Thursday June 4th,
7:00 pm
In spanish
Free admission
June 4
an anthology of perfumes and to
use various concepts, technologies,
molecules and raw materials to give
people a « sense » of the world of
perfumes in the 21st century.
Les Parfums du
Parfum, C. Laudamiel
Thursday June 4th,
6:30PM
AFT Spadina
Galerie Pierre-Léon
24 Spadina Road
In French
Free admission
7
Lecture on French Cinema by Shlomo Schwartzberg
LOVE AND SEX
and delightfully erotic,
those are the elements
paramount in French
love stories. Films to be
discussed include: Betty
Blue, A Very Long Engagement,
Going
Places, Fat Girl, La
Ronde, Bad Blood, A
Christmas Tale.
Join us for the third of
five lectures on French
cinema by the film
critic and arts reporter
Shlomo Schwartzberg.
Nobody makes movies
about love the way the
French do. And no one
treats sex in cinema
like them, either. Passionate, provocative
June 2
The Genius of French
Cinema
Tuesday June 2,
7:00 pm
400 Roncesvalles Avenue
In English
For more informations:
www.revuecinema.ca
Cinema
SPECIAL EVENT Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
For the World Environment Day, we
all have a date with the planet !
In 200.000 years on earth, humanity has upset the balance of the
planet, established by nearly four
billion years of evolution. The price
to pay is high, but it’s too late to be
a pessimist : humanity has barely
ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its
spoliation of the Earth’s riches and
change its patterns of consumption.
By bringing us unique footage from
over fifty countries, all seen from
above, and by sharing with us his
wonder and his concern, with this
film Yann Arthus-Bertrand lays a
foundation for the edifice that, altogether, we must rebuild.
Home by Yann ArthusBertrand
Wednesday, June 10th
6:30 pm
AFT Spadina
24 Spadina Road
Free admission
Jacquot de Nantes
France, 1991, 118min, French with
English subtitles
Starring Philippe Maron, Edouard
Joubeaud, Laurent Monnier
Once upon a time, there was a
young boy who grew up in a garage
where everone loved to sing. This
was in 1939, he was 8, and he
loved puppets and operetta. Then,
he wanted to make movies, but his
father wanted him to become a mechanic…
That childhood – and those memories – belong to Jacques Demy. The
story of this particular childhood is
a happy one in spite of the painful
June 10
June 10 and 17
Jacquot de Nantes
by Agnès Varda
Wednesday June 10,
7:30 pm
AFT North York
95 Sheppard Avenue W.
North York
events of the war and the post-war
years.
« When a filmmaker meets a filmmaker... what you get is a kaleidoscope of memories rooted in a
shared vocation ».
Wednesday June 17,
7:30 pm
AFT Spadina
24 Spadina Road
Free Entrance
French with English subtitles
8
All screenings take place at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall
317 Dundas Street West (Please use McCaul Street entrance)
Regular screenings cost $10,14 for non-members and $5,90 for members,
students, seniors and children up to 13.
Entr’Acte by René CLAIR
France, 1924, 22 min, silent
Cast: Jean Börlin, Francis Picabia,
Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray
concerned with the unconscious as
they were with the disruption of social order. The humorous chase
scene resulting from a funeral procession is filled with visual gags and
gender-bending quirks that prefigure their Surrealist kin.
This movie will preceed the
screening of Monkey Business
(director:
Norman
McLeod,
USA, 1931, 77mn).
René Clair’s Entr’acte is the Dada
film par excellence and begins with
Francis Picabia and Eric Satie pointing then firing a canon directly at
the audience. This in-your-face assault was no doubt an inspiration
for the early works of Surrealist cin-
June 2
ema. Entr’acte’s frenetic, giddy and
anarchic energy, however, was resolutely Dada and its playful images
and sudden transitions were less
Entr’Acte
A short-movie by
René CLAIR
Tuesday June 2, 7:00pm
Films by Jean PAINLEVÉ
Championed by Antonin Artaud,
Luis Buñuel, Jean Vigo, and Sergei
Eisenstein, the unique body of work
of the French scientist artist Jean
Painlevé has always enjoyed a cult
following. His personal credo, “science is fiction,” informed his scientific research as much as his
art-making, and was perfectly simpatico with the Surrealist attempt
to “obtain the marvelous” within “la
vraie vie.” Painlevé’s numerous (he
made close to two hundred films
until 1982) and eccentric studies of
the subaquatic world reveal the
fantastic habits of sea creatures.
Painlevé was affiliated with the Surrealists, though he refused official
entry into the circle, choosing to remain removed from Breton’s authoritarianism. Still, he filmed the
image of the starfish for Man Ray
and Robert Desnos’ L’Étoile de mer,
and both he and Artaud appear in
Methuselah, which includes five
filmed sequences originally pro-
jected onto a background of white
clouds in 1927 during a Surrealist
play by Ivan Goll. The Fourth Dimension elaborates a Lewis Carrolllike universe, while The Vampire
studies the killing habits of a
species of South American bats,
and alludes to the myth of Nosferatu. Painlevé’s deep knowledge of
the animal kingdom led to his contribution to the narration of
Georges Franju’s brilliant and chilling documentary about a slaughterhouse, Le Sang des bêtes, “an
everyday nightmare, at once atrocious and outlandishly beautiful”
(Time Out).
June 4
THE OCTOPUS
France, 1925, 10mn, silent
THE SEAHORSE
France, 1934, 15mn
METHUSELAH
France, 1927, 7mn, silent
Translated intertitles will be distributed to
the audience.
THE FOURTH DIMENSION
France, 1936, 10mn
THE VAMPIRE
France, 1945, 9mn
BLOOD OF THE BEASTS
Director: Georges Franju
France, 1949, 20min
Films by Jean
PAINLEVÉ
Thursday June 4,
9:00pm
Free screening
9
Films de Man RAY
Known primarily for his sensual
black-and-white
photographs,
American-born Man Ray was also a
painter and filmmaker who dabbled
in Parisian Surrealism. He joined
the movement in 1925 and had a
solo exhibition at the Galerie Surréaliste in 1926.
His
handful
of
films, made between 1923 and
’29, were collaborations with some
of the main figures
in
the
French
avant-garde,
including
Marcel
Duchamp, Robert
Desnos, and the Vicomte de Noailles.
Man Ray’s films are
sexy and playful,
part experimentation, part documentation of this fertile time. The very brief Le Retour à
la raison includes some of the most
erotic images captured on film,
transposing experiments in light
exposure onto a nude woman’s
torso. Ray’s famous Rayographs
were brought to life through the
cinema. His night wanderings in
Emak-Bakia recall Vertov’s Man
with a Movie Camera, using the cinema-eye to capture modern life as
an artist sees it. He also did the cinematography for Duchamp’s anagrammatic Anémic Cinéma, a
Dadaist study in kineticism and alliterative verbal punning.
Duchamp’s
Rotoreliefs, or “kinetic paintings,” are concentric
circles designed on
flat disks containing
word plays. These
jeux de mots are further explored in Ray’s
L’Étoile de mer, one of
the few Surrealist
scripts to become a
film. Written by poet
Robert Desnos, this
ciné-poème
ties
Magritte
to
Deleuze in its polysemic play. The
starfish, as a hermaphrodite, was
thought to exude a potent eroticism
and was a famous Surrealist subject, an extension of amour fou and
its association with irrationality and
automatism. Man Ray’s final film,
Le Corbeau by Henri-Georges CLOUZOT
France, 1943, 93 mn
Cast: Pierre Fresnay, Ginette Leclerc
The peace of a small French village
is mysteriously shattered by an
outbreak of poison pen letters,
signed "Le Corbeau" (the Raven),
which create suspicion and misery.
The prime target of these scandalous letters is Dr Germain, who is
accused of having an affair with the
wife of one of his colleagues and of
practising abortion. Although much
is revealed about the hidden lives of
the village’s inhabitants, the identity of the letters’ author remains a
mystery...
Le Corbeau is regarded today as a
masterpiece of French cinema it
Les Mystères du Château de Dé, is
a charming, enigmatic and eerie
exploration of chance made at the
Vicomte de Noailles’ opulent summer abode in le Midi.
LE RETOUR À LA RAISON
France, 1923, 3mn, silent
EMAK-BAKIA
France, 1926, 18mn, silent
Cast: Kiki de Montparnasse,
Jacques Rigaut
ANÉMIC CINÉMA
Director: Marcel Duchamp
France, 1926, 7mn, silent
L’ÉTOILE DE MER
France, 1928, 21mn, silent
Cast: Kiki de Montparnasse, Robert
Desnos
LES MYSTÈRES DU CHÂTEAU DE DÉ
France, 1929, 27mn, silent
Cast: Georges Auric, Le Comte de
Beaumont, Le Vicomte de Noailles
Films by Man RAY
Friday June 5, 9:00 pm
Free screening!
June 12
created a storm of controversy
when it was released. The film was
banned after the war because of its
perceived subversive and immoral
overtones. The story was based on
a real-life case which took place in
the French town of Tulle in the
1920s.
Le Corbeau, by henriGeorges CLOUZOT
Friday June 12,
8:45 pm
10
Les Vampires by Louis FEUILLADE
Director: Louis Feuillade
France, 1915, 383mn, silent
Cast: Musidora et Edouars Mathé
appartements. Led by cross-dressing temptress Irma Vep, whose
cryptic name is an anagram for
Les Vampires, by Louis
FEUILLADE
Episodes 1 - 4, 148min
Friday June 26, 7:00 pm
26, 27 et 29 Juin
vaged the film from a garbage can
behind the Gaumont studios. An
acknowledged influence on the collage work of Max Ernst, and a film
which Alain Resnais has called “one
of my gods,” Les Vampires is essential viewing.
Presented with live piano accompaniment by William O’Meara.
Episodes 5 - 8, 130min
Saturday June 27,
7:00 pm
Episodes 9 - 10, 105min
Monday June 29, 7:00 pm
11.56$ for non-members
7.08$ for members, students,
seniors and children up to 13
NB: Les Vampires runs 6 hours and
23 minutes in total and is composed of 10 episodes ranging in
length from approximately 15 minutes to 1 hour.
A sensation during Toronto’s Nuit
Blanche festival in 2007, Louis
Feuillade’s celebrated serial makes
a rare return, giving audiences another opportunity to venture deep
inside the underbelly of early twentieth-century Paris, into the mysterious, sinister and marvelous world
of Les Vampires. Made and released
with breakneck speed during WWI,
the ten-episode film chronicles an
anarchic gang of cunning criminals
who terrorize the city of lights’ narrow, cobblestone streets, sootdusted rooftops, and grands
“vampire,” the anti-bourgeois clan
practices the arts of abduction, secret messages, hypnotic trance,
outlandish and sexy disguise, and
euphoric dance in the infamous
cabarets of Montmartre (where
vampy Musidora, the Surrealists’
beloved femme fatale, who plays
Irma Vep, was discovered). Their
gutsy jewel heists set off an investigation by an obsessive journalist
who attempts to foil their semi-improvised rondo of robberies. Anticipating Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock,
Jacques Rivette, David Lynch,
graphic novels and James Bond,
Feuillade’s epic, pulpy serial was a
favourite of the European avantgarde thanks to the larger-than-life
head
of
the
Cinémathèque
française, Henri Langlois, who sal-
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