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