Michael (1924) by Carl Th. Dreyer.

“I wanted to talk about Carl Th. Dreyer whose cinema is often represented by The Passion of Joan of Arc. It was strange for me to discover recently, thanks to German historians of homosexual movements, that Dreyer directed a really surprising film. Michael tells the story of a painter and his model. The model is heterosexual but we see all the desire of the painter born and grow, and a very ambivalent relationship. Though history repeats us that Dreyer’s best film is The Passion of Joan of Arc or Ordet, it brings up questions on the look to put upon Dreyer’s work. It brings up questions about Dreyer’s identity. How could he treat such a subject in the twenties? It also brings up the question of the adapation because it is adapted from a novel by Herman Bang. It also brings up the question of how to look back on Joan of Arc considering this Michael. Behind this film is the question of identity.”

More information about Michael.

Patrick Cardon had many lives and an important history in homosexuality activism. A militant in the seventies of the Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action, close to the International Situationist, publisher of homosexual literature, he was for twelve years the head of the film festival Question de genres in Lille.