BMORE: MoreFree Films @ BMA (10/4: Claire Denis)

onetet

From the director of the art-house hit Beau Travail comes Nenette et Boni, the trancelike erotic tragedy co-starring Vincent Gallo that plays for FREE at the Baltimore Museum of Art Thursday, October 4th at 8pm. Director Claire Denis served as assistant director on an astounding array of pivotal and even revolutionary films, including Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie, Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, and both Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders. Building from those extraordinary experiences, fearlessly exploring issues of race and gender, and working closely with sublime cinematographer Agnes Godard (Golden Door, Dreamlife of Angels), Denis has crafted a unique, dreamlike, explicit cinema that many consider the most important body of work in French cinema since the initial explosion of the French New Wave in the early 1960s. Nenette et Boni tells the story of two siblings, disaffected and disconnected as a result of their parents' divorce. Their strangely (and sometimes abstractly) intertwined sexual awakening forms the backbone of this 1996 film, which anticipates the explosion of trangsgressive French cinema (Bruno Dumont, Catherine Breillat, Gaspar Noe) that has taken place since. Yet Nenette et Boni is not an angry film, but a sumptuous, playful one, made all the odder for the presence of Hollywood bad boy Vincent Gallo as the local baker. Don't miss this rare, FREE 35mm screening from one of the major voices in world cinema! This film is NOT available on DVD in the United States and has never played on a Baltimore movie screen before. ______________________________________________________ UPCOMING FREE 35mm SCREENINGS at the BMA: October 4: Claire Denis' Nenette et Boni (1996, 103 min.)November 1: New Thai psychedelia: Syndomes and a Century (2006, 105 min.)December 6: Alain Resnais' bizarre sci-fi entry Je T'aime Je T'aime (1968, 91 min.)

onetet

Tonight.

bassie

I LOVE Nenette et Boni. One of the things Denis does in her films (as does Jarmusch, who she has worked with) is not translating folks who are not speaking French (English in Jarmusch's case). I know it was part of the plot in Ghost Dog with the ice cream truck guy, but he didn't do it for guy building the arc on the roof bit...and Denis does it in Nenette et Boni as well. It's a great way to illustrate city life.

onetet

Glad to hear you like the film... I haven't seen it in 8 years or so, so my memory of it isn't as strong as for some of her others. Most of her films are n/a in the US any more... my rosetta stone film to screen is her "Trouble Every Day" but the company that released it in the US is kaput and the head of that company claims not to know what happened to the physical prints.

I like the nontranslating thing, too. The wealthy old grumpuses in my audience will assume it's a translator's error and complain, possibly by walking up to me during the movie and asking me to "fix it."

bassie

I guess you don't want to do any screenings off DVDs?

onetet

yeah, my mission is to show film prints only. I've done two off DVD... Wattstax, because the museum insisted on that one being off of DVD for reasons unclear to me, and the S. Korean film Woman Is the Future of Man, because the only 35mm print in the US got lost by Fed Ex on the way to us.

Trouble Every Day came out on DVD in Canada, right? I'm 99% sure it never did in the US.

bassie

Yea - uncut, but the sound is not very good at all.

onetet

that's too bad, sound design is so important to all her films, particularly that one.

bassie

Yea, but you know, I've watched it with the sound off a couple of times out of sheer frustration (first time around, I had to rewind Gallo visiting the lab like four times to understand what he was saying) and it is so stunning visually, that it works just fine. With the right soundtrack on the stereo - even better!

onetet

I'm trying to think of albums that would work as an alternate audio track for Trouble Every Day... something cold and sterile punctuated by moments of strange violence and/or dissonance?

the screening of Nenette et Boni went over fairly well. The film's more lively than I remembered, which goes over well with my impatient and easily frustrated audience.

bassie

For a screening, I'd go with something like Mahler, Bach or Satie (for that real Francais flavour) or something like Fire Music. Or you can totally mess with them and play The Shirelles.

onetet

Oh, I meant more hypothetically for home viewing, as you said the audio on the DVD was all wanky.

bassie

I liked it with the Bach solo cello suites, but I think I will try it with the Shirelles this weekend!