Cinema

(de voertaal van deze avond is Engels).

Jeffrey's Underground Cinema has been showing neglected and forgotten films for the last decade. This night:  

PEAU D’ANE 1970
(Donkey Skin)
Directed by Jacques Demy
100 minutes
In French with English subtitles

This is a movie based on a fairytale called Donkeyskin written in 1695 by Charles Perrault. It’s an example of a movie full of bright colours, set designs bursting with imagination, shimmering costumes … all the trappings of a fairy tale, but it isn’t made for children, in fact, it relishes the mix of naïveté and sophistication.

The premise of the movie is simple – when a king’s wife is dying he promises her he won’t remarry unless he finds a woman even more beautiful than she is. This turns out to be more difficult than it would seem. What unfolds is a visually enthralling journey that refuses to fit in any box, a perfect example of how in the 1970s European movies refused to be standardised or stereotypical… they were more interested in breaking open doors, with skill and intelligence. Here we have a donkey that defecates jewels, a woman who coughs up frogs. It’s a crazy surreal mix, and that’s what makes it adorable. It’s as hilarious as it is beautifully depicted, and its humor comes from its giddy flash of watching a fairy-tale from an adult perspective.

And once again, this is a film where the creativity is hands-on, made with craftsmanship rather than cheap computer software. In a film like this, nothing is pre-made, everything has to be invented from scratch. So much physical and artistic determination was necessary to create these worlds, and their magic comes precisely from the interplay between material and imagination. Exactly what also happens with the art of puppetry.

The director of this film Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) was the partner of filmmaker Agnes Varda… but at the same time he was also bi-sexual, and he brought a strong colourful queer edge and visual flair to his best movies. This one is absolutely magnificent and stars Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais and Delphine Seyrig.

With a short introduction by Jeffrey Babcock

20:30 (doors and bar open at 20:00)
Free entrance / no reservations
We advise you to come early: max. 70 people /
no admittance after 20.30