Innovative Curatorial Projects – Paris / SingaporeMarguerite Duras
*1914, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. †1996, Paris, France.
Marguerite Duras needs no introduction. She worked in cinema as a dialogue and script writer, as well as a director. She made her first movie, Détruire, dit-elle (Destroy, She Said) in 1969, and produced several experimental films leaving the codes of narrative cinema behind. This is how Les Mains négatives (Negative Hands), Aurélia Steiner, L'Homme atlantique (Atlantic Man), and Césarée came into being. In the latter we find the caracteristic elements of her filming style which consist in long travelling shots in wide open spaces - in this case the Tuilerie Gardens - over which Duras places her deep voice, filled with intelligence and dignity. A close friend of Marcel Mazé, then programmer of the experimental section of the Hyères Film Festival, but also of Dominique Noguez whom she often meet there, she became a member of the CJC cooperative and a symbolic figure of "different" cinema about which she would say: "To make different cinema is above all refusing to put up with the cinema of consumerism. The place of different cinema is a tragic place, above all a place of denial."
Césarée / France / 1979 / 11' / 4:3
"On mostly motionless shots of Paris the text, a true musical poem, speaks of Berenice, Queen of the Jews repudiated for political reasons and the city of Caesarea in Palestine. The film is a plastic composition which mixes statuary elements, voices and music." Bernard Sarrut
Les Mains Négatives and Césarée are made from unused shots of Le Navire Night.