A screening of two films by pioneering Chilean filmmaker Raul Rúiz.
A screening of Chilean filmmaker Raul Rúiz’s surreal film Genealogies of a Crime (1997), starring Catherine Deneuve, Melvil Poupaud and Michel Piccoli, was presented as part of a Raúl Ruiz Weekend in July 2014. This was followed by a screening of the rarely seen director’s cut of Rúiz’s film Klimt (2006), starring John Malkovich.
The winner of the Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival, Ruiz’s Genealogies of a Crime follows Solange (Deneuve), a defence lawyer, in her attempt to defend her client René (Poupaud) in the trial for the murder of his aunt, the Freudian psychoanalyst Jeanne (also played by Deneuve). Inspired by an actual event that took place in the 1920s, Genealogies of a Crime is a mysterious and surreal film that “glistens with paradoxical wit” (Ed Kelleher, Film Journal International).
“Elegantly creepy one minute and cheerfully absurdist the next, Genealogies of a Crime is lively and inventive, suggesting that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Of course, in the spirit of surrealism, one could argue that the reverse may also be true.” (Ed Kelleher)
Klimt documents the life and work of the painter Gustav Klimt, following his feverish death-bed visions back through his life and loves, work and friendships. Hailed as “an old-fashioned art house movie, self-consciously elegant and calculatedly enigmatic”. (Philip French, The Observer), Klimt endures as one of the most beautifully crafted artist biopics of the last 10 years. With Veronica Ferres, Stephen Dillane, Saffron Burrows and Nikolai Kinski as painter Egon Schiele.
