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info@chicagocinemaforum.org
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(312) 480-1966
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CHICAGO CINEMA FORUM presents:
A rare screening of
Maurice Pialat's L'ENFANCE NUE
(NAKED CHILDHOOD, 1968, 35mm, 83')
THIS MONDAY, May 14, 8:30PM
CINEMA BOREALIS
1550 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Wicker Park
Wine and hors d'oeuvres will be served.
A discussion will follow the screening.
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BACKGROUND:
Born in the volcanic Auvergne region of France, Maurice Pialat (1925-2003) was well-known in his lifetime as a painter and filmmaker. A controversial figure, he was active making short films and documentaries for TV during the height of the Nouvelle Vague, though he openly opposed it and chose never to ride the publicity glories enjoyed by Godard, Truffaut, and others. Pialat, who encountered financial woes on every one of his filmmaking projects, directed his first feature-length work, L'ENFANCE NUE (NAKED CHILDHOOD), at the age of forty-three and nearly a decade after the successes of THE 400 BLOWS and BREATHLESS.
NAKED CHILDHOOD is about a troubled adolescent, though unlike THE 400 BLOWS, Pialat's film is starkly naturalistic and more fragmented in its narrative approach. It has been argued that NAKED CHILDHOOD is "secretly the better film" (Tim Wong, The Lumière Reader). Indeed, one auspicious quality of Pialat's work is his lack of nationalism: he depicts the French character as complex and frequently unsympathetic (critic Dan Sallitt is correct when he writes that "[his films] are not for people who need to relax after a hard day at work"). The lead protagonist, François, is an orphaned ten year-old who settles in with an elderly couple in the countryside. He proves to be a terror, and his adoptive parents go through several disciplinary motions before François takes it upon himself to make an important change.
L'ENFANCE NUE, originally distributed in the U.S. under the title "Me", was written by Pialat and Arlette Langmann (co-writer on Philippe Garrel's last three films). One of the producers was François Truffaut.
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This screening, presented by the independently organized CHICAGO CINEMA FORUM, is the first of several
community-based film programming efforts planned
for the next several months. Further details
will be announced at Monday's screening.
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CONTACT: info@chicagocinemaforum.org / (312) 480-1966
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