A Terra! The Cinema of Marta Mateus
Program III
History is full of authority figures who, under the guise of moral propriety, impose restrictive rules to control the masses. Resisting them are those who, embracing risky vulnerability, rise up to free themselves from the entrenched power structures. The protagonists of these three films commit the heresy of exalting an ethical commitment to the freedom of the spirit and its creative strength. Marked by an exceptional empathy for the inner movement of characters whose presences are physically constrained, all three concise cinematographic transgressions blur our gaze from the surface and anchor us in the depths of the space and time of thought. — Marta Mateus
PROGRAM
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The Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d’Arc)
Directed by Robert Bresson.
With Florence Delay, Jean-Claude Fourneau, Roger Honorat.
US, 1962, DCP, black & white, 65 min.
French and English with English subtitles.
DCP source: mk2 Films
In Procès de Jeanne d'Arc, Robert Bresson captures the inner listening of Jeanne, a look inwards, its intimate bond with the anima escaping the chains of materia—a body imprisoned and consigned to flames, the body of a woman who became a towering figure in defiance of the Inquisition’s pyres that ravaged Europe and left deep wounds still to heal, particularly in Portugal and Spain.
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En rachâchant
Directed by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub.
France, 1982, 35mm, black & white, 7 min.
French with English subtitles.
En Rachachânt is a precious seven-minute testimony of childhood’s fertile challenge against conformity, denouncing the preposterous ignorance of those who claim to teach “things they don’t know.” Comical and provocative, both in the cadence and tone of the text and the low and high angle shots, the film critically parodies the absurdity of certainty and the inevitability of learning from life.
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Saute ma ville
Directed by Chantal Akerman.
Belgium, 1968, DCP, black & white, 13 min.
French with English subtitles.
Reflecting the narratives inherited from history that emerge in a domestic arena saturated with symbols—culturally and ideologically attributed to the “feminine universe”—Saute ma ville explodes, both literally and metaphorically, the monotonous patterns of convention. Fusing the gesture of framing with the presence that inhabits it in a single choreographic breath, filmmaker Chantal Akerman takes on the role of the protagonist in her own body. Comedy is the truth of tragedy. An emancipatory impulse, paraphrasing Godard on "What is Cinema?": a girl and a film camera.
