French film avant-garde - a set of films

Three short films made by the leading creators of the French film avant-garde: Fernand Léger, Germaine Dulac and Jean Vigo.

Intriguing, ambiguous, full of formal experiments, the films are proof of the artistic audacity of the filmmakers, who use various means to achieve their goals: to highlight social inequalities, to revive seemingly dead objects or to draw viewers into the dreamlike world of dreams.

Live music | live music: Lullahush

ABOUT MOVIES:

MECHANICAL BALLET | BALLET MÉCANIQUE (Fernand Léger/Dudley Murphy) FR 1924, 19'

A Dadaist experiment by the painter Fernando Léger, created in collaboration with the scenographer Dudley Murphy. The main postulate of the film is “the liberation of objects”: to show that the object can also be art. Images repeat, zoom in, move away, pulsate, are shown from different perspectives. An animated and geometrical figure of Chaplin appears on the screen, close-ups of female lips, everyday objects, a laundry woman climbing the stairs. These paintings are interspersed with fragments of Léger's works, full of circles and triangles. The film is presented in a version after digital reconstruction.

SMILING MRS. BEUDET | LA SOURIANTE MADAME BEUDET (Germaine Dulac) FR 1923, 38'

One of the earliest examples of feminist cinema. The story of a woman (Germaine Dermoz) trapped in a loveless marriage who decides to kill her husband (Alexandre Arquillière). The heroine is modeled after a character from Flaubert's famous novel Mrs. Bovary, but Germaine Dulac treats her with distance and seasoned bitter irony. To convey her images, memories and dreams, the director uses a whole range of avant-garde means of expression beloved by the creators of the time, such as image distortions, accelerated shots, slow motion pictures, blackouts, loss of focus. The film was hailed by critics of the time as a “visual symphony”, a work artistically mature and sophisticated.

ABOUT NICE | ABOUT NICE (Jean Vigo) FR 1930, 25'

Jean Vigo, the enfant terrible of French cinema, although before his premature death at the age of 29, managed to make only four films, he secured a prominent place in the history of European cinema. The author's documentary A propos of Nice was his debut, which he filmed as a 25-year-old.

The film portrays Nice - a wonderful resort on the Côte d'Azur, full of beachgoers and people in restaurants. However, this is not a place for everyone, because only tourists with rich wallets can afford entertainment in this city. While aristocrats and wealthy courtiers bask in the sun on the elegant Promenade des Anglais, the poor labourers, in the narrow streets of the port district, work in the sweat of their brow for their meager livelihood.

Jean Vigo's film is a brilliant satire on the class French society of the interwar twenties, whose strength is enhanced by Boris Kaufmann's characteristic photographs and experimental editing.

Screening as part of the 27th Silent Film Festival.

Previously, as part of the 23rd Silent Film Festival.