Marguerite Durasin elokuvien sarja jatkuu Orionissa (Eerikinkatu 15, Helsinki).
Films by Marguerite Duras in Orion (Eerikinkatu 15, Helsinki) - highly
recommended!
http://www.kavi.fi

Here is a survival kit for the films in English directed by Marguerite Duras 
screened in Orion, Eerikinkatu 15. All the films have english subtitles.

MARGUERITE DURAS

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) was one of the most widely read French writers of
the postwar era. She authored 34 novels from 1943–1993 and was also the
screenwriter of Alain Resnais´ celebrated film Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959 -
this film is shown on Sunday in Orion on Sunday 16.3. - 17:30). Disliking
others’ adaptations of her work she began to direct after the rebellious spring
1968 in Europe — 16 films in all. Her work is characterized by its
self-reflexiveness and intertextuality; she often moved one story, or elements
of a story, through genres: novel, film, play — even from film to film. Duras
was born in French Indochina, referring often to her early years there, as also
to the personal events of WW II in Europe and Asia.


THE FILMS

DÉTRUIRE, DIT-ELLE (Destroy, she said 1969) (Wednesday 12.03.2014 19:00; Friday
14.03.2014 18:40 in Orion)
Duras aims to present the characters as something more than clearly defined
individuals. There is no central character but all of them are reflections of
the same kind of fatigueness in the zero point between the history and the
future. One of the characters Max Thor teaches in the school "the history of the
future" which is about "nothing": he doesn´t say anything and the students
sleep. In the interview in the magazine Cahiers du cinéma Duras says that she
tries to find a definition for the gap between despair and hope. He calls it
first the void, but says then that it´s more like a point zero, a neuter, where
there are chances to find a new place, to establish a new kind of order for
sensibility.

AGATHA ET LES LECTURES ILLIMITÉES (1981) Thursday 13.03.2014 19:00; Saturday
15.03.2014 17:00, Orion)
A woman (Bulle Ogier) and a man (Yann Andréa) are two siblings in a milieu of an
Art Deco -hotel at the beach remembering l´amour fou between them and their
childhood summer times. According to Laure Adler, Duras said that this was her
first film about happiness. She wrote Agatha after reading Robert
Musil´s unfinished novel (in three books) The Man Without Qualities (1930–43;
German: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), where among other things the incestuous
siblings Ulrich and Agathe talk endlessly. Duras´ own longing for her dead
brother who died very early was also part of the process in making this film.
It is filmed in Trouville, in Hôtel des Roches Noires, where she filmed the
first film of "India-cycle" La femme du Gange (1973).

LES ENFANTS (The Children, 1985) (Tuesday 18.03.2014 17:00 Friday 21.03.2014
19:00, Orion)
Based on the story "Ah! Ernesto". Ernesto has gone to school for the first time.
When he comes home, he goes straight to his mother and says to her: "I'm never
going back to that place !" His mother stops peeling the potato in her hand.
She looks at him. "why?" she asks. "Because!" says Ernesto. "Because at school
they teach me things that I don't know!" "Oh, no!" says his mother, "not
another one!" She sighs and picks up the potato again. Ernesto is played by
adult actor.

NATHALIE GRANGER (1972) (Tuesday 01.04.2014 19:00; Friday 04.04.2014 19:30 in
Orion)
is “a celluloid equivalent of atonal music or free verse” (Time Out). It is shot
at Duras’ own house, where the director creates a cycle of laconic domestic
ritual over the threat of impending doom. Two women (Jeanne Moreau and Lucia
Bosé) share a home with their children. Barely able to contain their
indifference to life, they’re distracted by the expulsion of one child from
school, escaped convicts lurking in the neighborhood, and a bumbling washing
machine salesman (Gérard Depardieu) who keeps pestering them. ("Of Language and
Longing: The Films of Marguerite Duras in Walker Art Centre", 2010)

LE CAMION (1977) (Wednesday 02.04.2014 19:30; Saturday 05.04.2014 17:00, Orion)
The conversation in a dark room between Elle (Duras) and Lui (Gérard Depardieu)
is interspersed with images of life on the highway. Duras and actor Gerard
Depardieu do an on-camera read-through of a movie script. Occasionally, the
director comments about the characters or their motivations, and sometimes the
actor does. That's all -- there is no action, there are no location shots, no
one pretends to be anything else. The script itself tells about an encounter
between a blank-slate of a woman hitchhiker, and a communist truck driver.

SON NOM DE VENISE DANS CALCUTTA DÉSERT (1976) (Tuesday 08.04.2014 18:45;
Saturday 12.04.2014 17:00, Orion)
consists almost entirely of images of the deserted, deteriorating Rothschild
palace near Reims, and uses the soundtrack of another film, India Song (1975).
The decaying Rothschild mansion, the setting for most of India Song, stands now
for any structure that once served as the public image of authoritarian rule.
(...) The dilapidated condition of the mansion even suggests wanton
destruction, leaving us to imagine acts of gratuitous violence committed by
passersby. The effect is that of a body violated. ("Art and politics in Duras'
India cycle" by Lucy Stone McNeece, pg. 151-152).



– Shortened and translated from the texts by Tytti Rantanen in Kavi pages,
and other sources. Rantanen´s sources include i.e. Adler,
Laure 1998/2001: Marguerite Duras. A Life. (Marguerite Duras.), Marguerite
Duras, “La destruction la parole.” Cahiers du cinéma 217 (1969) 45–57:
Sylvie Loignon 2007: ”Lectures latentes: sur le cinéma de Marguerite Duras"
(teoksessa Le réel à l'épreuve des arts. L'écran, la rue, la scène)