Âmes de fous
A few scenes and photos is all that remains of the film Âmes de fou. What might it have been? This performance reconstruction offers one splendid vision.
24'
France
IFFR 2019
On 2 March 1974, Henri Langlois, co-founder of the Cinémathèque française, screened a partly impromptu edit of films and fragments from the nation’s silent film production. Langlois started his presentation/performance/edit with views by Nadar and the Lumières, then continued with excerpts from works by pioneers such as Lucien Nonguet, Ferdinand Zecca, Léonce Perret and Georges Monca, and went on to show examples of the genius of René Clair, Abel Gance or Marcel l’Herbiert, ending with a scene from the rather obscure Minuit… Place Pigalle (1928; René Hervil), made at the twilight of the silent era.
In between, we find complete films of special cultural prestige such as Clément Maurice’s Le duel d'Hamlet (1900) featuring Sarah Bernardt, or a film version of Oedipus with the Belle Époque’s most famous interpreter of that role, Mounet-Sully. As with so many works seen here, nothing is known of the latter. It’s a knowledge that maybe passed with Langlois, and has to be re-acquired.
IFFR 2019
Programme IFFR 2019
Total cinema: from historical treasures to the edge of the technically possible – film as a laboratory of constant re-invention, an archive of dreams and futures.
Read more about this programmeA few scenes and photos is all that remains of the film Âmes de fou. What might it have been? This performance reconstruction offers one splendid vision.
24'
France
IFFR 2019
When the termination of the film Maritime Climates created a quota problem for Rīgas Kinostudijā, a shelved documentary instead became the loveliest of teenage romances!
76'
Latvia
IFFR 2019
A cinematographically minimalist prose poem crafted using nothing but the titles of movies that are lost. A reverie supreme.
8'
Japan
IFFR 2019