Screen/Society--Jean-Claude Rousseau | Duke Experimental Film Society

-- Join us for a rare screening of two films by Jean-Claude Rousseau presented by Screen/Society and the Duke Experimental Film Society

"Ever since the late eighties French filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau has been a name commonly attached to the most adventurous...type of filmmaking. Far from the American, well-established niches of experimental film, he has been working sparsely in Europe (and Japan) for over thirty years becoming a sort of mythological, solitary figure for this continent's avant-garde." - Mubi Notebook

"Jeune femme à sa fenêtre en lisant une letter"
(1983, 45 min, France, Super 8mm to DCP)

"Through the window, we cannot distinguish the scene: a street, a canal, a view of Delft, perhaps a port. We are on the inside, with the light pouring in. The maps on the wall are bigger than the paintings, yet we do not know where we are. The woman stands at the window reading a letter. She loses track of location as she reads. She could be anywhere, at any random point on the map. Outside. Through the window, we cannot distinguish the scene: a street, a canal, a view of Delft, perhaps a port. We are on the inside..." - Jean-Claude Rousseau

"[F]rom my first film ["Jeune femme à sa fenêtre en lisant une letter"], what I looked for was unity, inside of the [Super 8] cartridge. As if every cartridge was a brick in the composition, in the construction of a film. This can only be done on Super 8. ... I like to use the word brick. To make a sort of building with the bricks of Super 8 cartridges." - Jean-Claude Rousseau

"Keep in Touch"
(1987, 25 min, France, 16mm)

Sitting at a table, the filmmaker is in a room in New York. Various messages on an answering machine are heard: whispers punctuated by a "love, love", a voice seeking an appointment. The film tells the vacancy, the time between the meeting and the wait.