start

EVIDENCE CYCLE

We are looking for the proliferation of evidence - the camera as evidence - courtrooms where evidence is presented, the evidence of civil war in the backdrop of fiction films, the evidence of being reincarnated by a Druze historian and the lack of evidence leading to existentialism.

*excerpts from Emma Zunz, Jorge Borges (Aleph
Collection)

Je Vous Salut, Sarajevo (Jean Luc Godard)
A picture of a member of Arkan Tigers kicking a Bosnian civilian. Photographed by Ron Haviv

Life, and Nothing More...(1992) is the second film in Abbas Kiarostami's Koker trilogy. Shot in a semi-documentary style, the film follows a director much like Kiarostami himself, searching for the actors of his previous film in the ruins of a recent earthquake. The fault lines between faithful recording and manipulation are also at stake in James Kienitz Wilkins's Special Features (2014), a short which sits uncomfortably between amateurish interview and collective cinematic dream.

Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour L'Échafaud, 1958) by Louis Malle is a noir film often claimed as the first work of the French New Wave and tells the story of two lovers plotting to kill the woman's husband. A story of love, murder, sleepwalking, urban alienation, and mistaken identity which unfolds over one Parisian night.
The film has one of the most extraordinary opening sequences in modern cinema and brings together the atmospheric cinematography of Henry Decaë, the acting debut of Jeanne Moreau, and the legendary jazz score of Miles Davis.We are also watching Jean-Luc Godard's short film Je Vous Salue, Sarajevo (1993), a poetic take on the Balkan war presented in the form of photo-montage with text.

#3 in our Evidence Cycle is a mix of erotica, reincarnation and dreams. Abu Hamdan's Once Removed (2019) explores the archives and lives that emerge from the ruins of Lebanese civil war through the eyes of a young Druze historian. Where the dreamlike meets history and the classic feature Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970)- an exuberant tale of a young girl's sexual awakening, mingling horror, desire and fantasty Czech nouvelle vague with a gothic touch.

This week in Series 10: EVIDENCE - Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov's Kosh ba Kosh Odd and Even (1990) This film follows a funambulist narrative between game & guerre, it traces the evidence of transformation in the Tajik capital - some of which the protagonist, Mira tries to suspend by seeking refuge and control between sky and land. To explore further the details of totalitarian calculations as documents of controlling truth, we are also watching Two and Two (2011), a BAFTA winning short film by Babak Anvari.

Directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, Court (2014) follows the legal trial of the folk singer, Narayan Kamble who has been marked by authorities as a dissident. The ageing singer is accused of abetting the suicide of a sewage worker through the seditious lyrics of his songs. With no evidence and few witnesses, the events that unfold in a lower Mumbai courtroom sheds light on the judiciary system in contemporary India.

The first film in our 'Evidence' series is Jacques Rivette's film, 'Paris Belongs to Us'. Set in 1957, this film follows a young university student as she discovers a deepening set of mysteries among a group of artists and intellectuals, a state of total conspiracy which involves almost nothing concrete. A noir with its object removed, full of red herrings and portentousness, this film brings the idea of 'evidence' into doubt within a context of Cold War ennui and suspicion.