Talk following a screening of Marguerite Duras' two Aurélia Steiner films of 1979 - with writer & critic Sophie Mayer and artist Jonathan Whitehall, introduced by Adam Roberts of A Nos Amours.

Marguerite Duras, celebrated pillar of modernist French writing, also made distinctive, experimental, intensely authored films, in which she often detaches voice from the image, an effect that opens a space for the creation of prayerful, meditative moods. And when the images are created with the help of cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, as they are in these two Aurélia Steiner films, the result is extraordinary – work that casts an incantatory spell, in which we experience a state, perhaps, of waking dream. These are films infused with a sense of loss, dealing s they do with the Shoah. 

The films were followed by a dialogue between Sophie Mayer and Jonathan Whitehall.

Sophie Mayer is the author of The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love (Wallflower, 2009) and Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (IB Tauris, 2015), as well as several collections of poetry. She is currently a lecturer in Film Studies at Queen Mary University London, a member of queer feminist film curators Club des Femmes, and a regular contributor to Sight & Sound and The F-Word.

Jonathan Whitehall is an artist whose practice explores temporality and desire. He completed his PhD by practice at the Royal College of Art, writing on the work of Duras; his article L’Image menaceé: Trois moments d’Aurélia Steiner, was published in Photographies (Routledge).  Working principally with video, drawing and photography, Whitehall’s work is informed by psychoanalytical theories of fantasy and subjectivity. He has exhibited  internationally, most recently in /seconds, at Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah. He teaches on the BA Fine Art, at Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design, London Metropolitan University.

Event: 24th February 2015

Talk following an A Nos Amours screening of Marguerite Duras' two Aurélia Steiner films

Question and answer session following a screening of Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete organised by the Tavistock Clinic Foundation (www.tavistockclinicfoundation.org) and A Nos Amours (www.anosamours). The speakers are Mark Kermode, Sir Christopher Frayling & Margaret Rustin. Phoenix Cinema, London. 4th March 2013. 42 minutes.

Belle et la bete q&a with Mark Kermode etc

A Nos Amours is a collective founded by film-makers Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts dedicated to programming over-looked, under-exposed or especially potent cinema. A Nos Amours is a moveable feast that goes wherever and whenever opportunities arise. A Nos Amours invites film-makers and others to advocate and present films that they admire or would like to see on a big screen. A Nos Amours  believes in the value of watching film as a shared experience.

A Nos Amours

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