On the occasion of the DVD release of the documentary feature A Little Family Conversation by Helene Lapiower, a very special screening is taking place ON MONDAY the 18th of JUNE at 20:00 in Paris at Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme (71, rue du Temple, Paris 3, métro Rambuteau or Hôtel de Ville).

“When I began filming my family, I wanted to preserve images of my own world, which seemed to be slipping from grasp. A particular Jewish world on the brink of extinction like many such worlds. I also wanted to create a link between two worlds: me, the actress in Paris, in mine, and my family, working-class Polish Jewish immigrants, in theirs. The typical immigrant dilemma: you’re suffocated if you stay within the family; you’re an exile in the outside world. I filmed my family of Jewish tailors over a seven-year period; all their offspring have married blacks, Belgians and Arabs. Today I realize exactly what sort of film I’ve made. The burning question happened all by itself: At what point has my generation, and me along with it, been deeply affected by the weight of “history?” Did these great values of openness which had been passed down to us – and which are even drawn from the history of Jewish persecution – carry within them a contradiction which lead to the breakdown of Jewish identity? My film centers around this breakdown, full of rips and tears, and what is left of our identity. What will become of it all? Should something be left of it? And what exactly is “it all?””
Helene Lapiower

The screening will be followed by a debate with producer François Margolin and Alain Lapiower, Helene Lapiower’s brother.
Free entrance

A Little Family Conversation is available on DVD now with an exclusive tribute to Helene Lapiower (with François Margolin, Claire Denis, Yolande Zauberman, Andre Wilms and Adrien Walter) and the award-winning short film “Elle et Lui” by François Margolin with Helene Lapiower.
The DVD is NTSC and fully French/English bilingual (with optional English subtitles).

More details and reservation:
Blaq Out at 01 42 77 88 20

TUESDAY the 19th of JUNE AT 19:15 at Blaq Out la boutique, meet with French director Alain Guiraudie on the occasion of the DVD release of his cult short films Du soleil pour les gueux (2001) and That Old Dream That Moves (2001) (Shellac) with English subtitles available.

Du soleil pour les gueux (literally: Sun For The Beggars) features the bizarre cinematic world of experimental director Alain Giraudie: a coming-of-age comedy which skips breezily between a range of genres and styles, in a universe where the boundaries between dreams, nightmares and reality are hard to distinguish.
“Every story has already been told, and it’s only through tone that I can bring out something new“, says Guiraudie. “What I don’t understand is why people don’t mix genres more after a hundred years of cinema. (…)  I am also reacting against a certain kind of French cinema -rban, set indoors, bourgeois. I need to make films that take place outside and are by nature ‘populist’… My characters have difficulty paying their bills and finding work.”
His 50-minute featurette, That Old Dream That Moves (New York Film Festival, 2001), was set among the skeleton crew of a closing factory, and even as its sober social realism turned unexpectedly hot and heavy, the hard facts of underemployment stayed front and center.
Characterized by a complete absence of foreshadowing, Guiraudie’s films are premised on the unexpected harmony between discordant elements. His quaint neo-surrealism effectively reconnects a debased language to its political imperative. “Surrealism is by definition engaged in social reality,” says Guiraudie. “Dreams are fed by reality, and in turn shine a new light on reality. Cinema must not content itself with copying life. It’s necessary to sublimate the daily grind and to bridge the gap between reality and utopia. We have to try, in any event.”

The presentation will be followed by a drink.
Blaq Out la boutique: 52 rue Charlot - 75003 Paris - tel. 01 42 77 88 18