Histories of Cinema

What would a running history of cinema be like if it revisited its sources again and again so as to be continually rewritten? We've asked Santos Zunzunegui –professor, historian and screenwriter– to make his personal selection of films from the history of the cinema so that, from that list of titles, (titles which are, to a greater or lesser extent, canonical, personal, profound, chronological) a certain "common ground" may be found to continue reflecting on the possible and impossible histories of the cinema.These sessions are part of EQZE's academic syllabus; therefore, all screenings will be accompanied by a prior presentation/lecture.

“I see myself enter into an old neighbourhood cinema. When I reach the screening room, darkness reigns over it while, on the screen, a few pretentious aristocrats denounce all that defies self-righteous appearances. A horse killed by bullets hangs, not moving, from one of the bridges that span the Neva. Suddenly, the prisoners rise up and sing La Marseillaise, defiant, while the camera pans around them with a warm movement. At the door of his house, a devastated man watches as his wife and his small children abandon him without understanding that he has an inexorable mission to fulfil. In the sullen early morning, the partisan forces are thrown to a river that will serve as a shroud. The caravan of outcasts crosses the never-ending desert in search of a new home. After the family's breakup, the only thing that remains is the wind which moves the barley in the fields waiting to be harvested. A little old woman sits on the veranda with a rifle in her lap to defend the innocence of childhood. On the gridded page of a notebook, identical to so many others like those that I so often filled in my childhood, a hand writes: "je sais que d'habitude...". The sun rises over the sea in the vicinity of Lubeck, while the dual choir implores Jesus to have mercy on us. In the distance, Hossein catches up to Tahereh amongst the olive trees, in search of the long-awaited answer. A whispering voice reminds me that the cinema is a space that is inhabited by all histories, all that have been, all that will be. Fateful beauty. I get up. I struggle to get to my feet and I go outside, after having passed through paradise in a dream. That is my profound experience as a cinema spectator. The experience of having attended (and of continuing to attend) an imaginary, never-ending film in which, tied together, in a continuous circle, are images that the winds of many a story have gathered in a unique narrative that only has been told to me”. Santos Zunzunegui

Programme:

October 7, Sunday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, EE.UU, 1925, 98 min.)

October 28, Sunday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Oktyabr (Sergei M. Eisenstein, URSS, 1928, 100 min.)

November 16, Friday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• La grande illusion (Jean Renoir, Francia, 1938, 114 min.)

December 1, Saturday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Genroku Chûshingura I-II / The 47 Ronin (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japón, 1941, 241 min.)

December 7, Friday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Paisà (Roberto Rossellini, Italia, 1946, 134 min.)

December 16, Sunday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Wagon Master (John Ford, EE.UU., 1950, 86 min.)

January 25, Friday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Bakushu / Early Summer (Yasujiro Ozu, Japón, 1951, 130 min.)

February 15, Friday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, EUA, 1955, 93 min.)

March 24, Friday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, Francia, 1959, 75 min.)

March 31, Sunday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach / The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Jean-Marie Straub y Danièle Huillet, Alemania, 1968, 94 min.)

May 3, Friday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Through the Olive Trees, (Abbas Kiarostami, Irán, 1994, 108 min.)

June 28, friday

• Introduction by Santos Zunzunegui
• Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1999, 268 min.)