CFS Presents: Two Films by Germaine Dulac

8:00pm.

Two Films by Germaine Dulac

Directed by Germaine Dulac • 1923 - 1928

With English intertitles

No other filmmaker of her era had a career quite like Germaine Dulac. Having spent her twenties writing for foundational feminist publications La Fronde and La Française, Dulac became interested in the emergent art of cinema, founding her own production company in the early years of World War I. Specializing in perverse chronicles of marital discord, Dulac's early films bore a close enough resemblance to the cinematic melodramas of the day to bring her a measure of commercial success. Dulac's films from the 1920s, however, count among the most daring and stylistically explosive of the era, the wellspring for a subsequent hundred years' worth of radical avant-garde cinema. This program brings together two of Dulac's most provocative and iconic works from this period. The Smiling Madame Beudet (1922, Colisée Films) is a scabrous portrayal of a disintegrating marriage, marked by disquieting daydream visions and constant, ironic threats of suicide. Featuring a screenplay by the transgressive writer Antonin Artaud, The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928, Délia Film) follows a priest's descent into psychosexual madness through a series of destabilizing, erotic hallucinations. (CW)

Approx. 70 min, plus an intermission • 16mm from the University of Chicago Film Studies Center

Live musical accompaniment by Where We Were (Erez Dessel - keyboard, Beth McDonald - tuba & electronics, Tyler Damon - drums)

ABOUT CFS:

Founded by projectionists in 2011, the Chicago Film Society promotes the exhibition and preservation of film in context. CFS screenings provide access to the restoration efforts of archives, studios, and private collectors, the work of artists exploring the film medium today, and the experience of seeing film projected live in a theater, with an audience. As physical artifacts, the film prints we show hold the stories told by films — but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the labs that printed them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. Through screenings, writing, film preservation projects, and workshops, CFS works to make all of this context visible and accessible to the public.

CFS Website: https://www.chicagofilmsociety.org/

ABOUT THE BAND: Featuring Erez Dessel on keyboard, Beth McDonald on tuba, and Tyler Damon on drums, Where Were We is a group based around close contact and deep exploration. Free to float between styles and textures, the band's completely improvised approach keeps the music strongly rooted in the present moment. Their commitment to spontaneous composition pervades each performance, and their intensity, both in quiet and loud moments, is unmatched.

Band socials: @54bpm    

Band website: erezdessel.com