Screening program at Ciné 13
Friday, June 20, 8 p.m “Agitators” (1971) by Dezso Magyar. 78min The film was produced by the Bela Balazs Studio in Budapest – one of the main platforms for experimental film in communist Hungary -, and its realization featured some of the most important Hungarian figures of film making and video art of the late sixties and early seventies. The plot follows the unfolding of the Hungarian bolshevik revolution of 1919, however the whole film can rather be read as an allegory of the 1956 revolution and of the late sixties movements. The structure of the scenes in the film gives more the impression of characters monologuing and proclaiming one next to the other rather than dialoguing, an uncanny feeling that makes this film one of the most bitter critiques of the gap between theory and utopian thinking on one hand and reality, on the other hand. “Family Nest” (1979) by Bela Tarr. 108min The first feature film of Bela Tarr, produced by the same Balazs Bela Studio, shows an early, rather naturalistic version of the director who would to reach fame in the nineties with magical realist films such as “Satantango”. The outright naturalistic film shows the same hypocrisy and moral crisis of the system as “Agitators”, but on an almost opposite, micro-level of domesticity. It is the story of a working class family of eight, forced to live in a one room flat by the lack of available housing in late communist Hungary. Sunday, June 22, 8 p.m “I am Cuba” (1964) by Mikhail Kalatozov. 141min A Soviet-Cuban co-production, just a few years after the Cuban revolution and the Cuban missile crisis that brought Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, “I am Cuba” is constructed around a series of vignettes, charicaturizing the pre-revolutionary Cuban society. A perfect product of propaganda in an era when communism was at the top of his self confidence, “I am Cuba” is nonetheless a masterpiece of cinematic photography and composition, seducing and fascinating the viewer in an ethically confilcting way reminding of Leni Riefenstahl’s works. Wednesday, June 25, 8 p.m “Out of the present” (1995) by Andrei Ujica. 96min Andrei Ujica, a Romanian-German film maker and media theorist, produced this subtle and mesmerizing work that is equally a documentary as well as a structural discussion about documentary making. “Out of the present” is the story of a Soviet cosmonaut on space station MIR during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, suspended in a liminal space whilst history was fast on the making. The film program and the talks will take place at the cinema Ciné 13, located in the vicinity of Kadist Art Foundation. Ciné 13 1 ave Junot F-75018 Paris Phone : +33 1 42 51 13 79 http://www.cine13-theatre.com/