Alain Resnais Tribute and Marguerite Duras Centenary: Special Screening

Introduced by Dr. Brigitte Le Juez, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature, School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, DCU and President of the Comparative Literature Associate of Ireland.

A film where the literary and the cinematic merge. In 1958 when Alain Resnais, after Night and Fog, received a commission to make a documentary on Hiroshima, he chose to create a feature film instead, using documentary footage with a fictional dimension dominating the film. To assist him he asked a novelist who had poignantly explored human despair in her work, Marguerite Duras. They agreed that their film should convey the impossibility of ever knowing what happened in Hiroshima. Today their perspective still raises ethical questions: what do we perceive? how do we react to images of human suffering?

Duras once recalled that Resnais insisted she write a literary text for Hiroshima mon amour and forget the camera, which she achieved to the most stunning effect. For Eric Rohmer, together they had created the first modern film of sound cinema.

With the support of l’Institut Français

Showing  as part of the  Carte Noire IFI French Film Festival 2014 (November 19th – 30th).