DELHI — Bushel is pleased to screen La Pointe Courte (dir. by Agnès Varda, 1955), on Friday, May 27, at Bushel, 106 Main Street, Delhi. This is the fourth in the Mid-Century Movie Nights six-part series on Friday nights through June 10. This program is free to attend with a suggested donation of $5. Doors open at 7 pm; screening begins at 7:20 pm. Seating is limited to 30; attendance is mask optional.
La Pointe Courte tells the dual story of a marriage in trouble and the daily struggles of the hardscrabble inhabitants of a small Mediterranean fishing village in the south of France. Both the cosmopolitan couple and the working-class community are working out their survival in their own ways.
In the 1950s there were very few women directing full-length feature films, as they required hefty studio investment and institutional support, typically reserved for men. In this hostile environment, Agnès Varga made her directorial debut with La Pointe Courte on a shoestring budget that she financed on her own. She had no formal training as a filmmaker but used her eye and experience as a photojournalist to blend documentary and fiction, casting both professional actors and inhabitants of the fishing village where she shot the film. A true visionary, Varga incorporated ground-breaking compositional and editing techniques in this film, ushering in the French New Wave to come.
Co-curated by Hobart poet Cheryl Clarke and Bushel collective member Mina Takahashi, the Mid-Century Movie Nights film series offers present-day viewers the opportunity to ponder the weight of the post-World War II era on its generation. From Rome to Tokyo, to the US Southwest, then to France, over to the Indian subcontinent, and back to gritty Manhattan, the films ask us to consider their subjects’ alienation, perseverance, and survival. As we witness the 1950s fascist regimes, exploitative working conditions, the loneliness of ageing, the indignities of poverty, the complexity of racial ambiguity, and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways racism and sexism play out, we ask ourselves today, what has stubbornly endured, and what has changed for the better?
Upcoming films in the series: Pather Panchali (June 3); and Shadows (June 10). Full descriptions of the films are on Bushel’s website (www.bushelcollective.org) and in a pamphlet available for pick up at Bushel, 106 Main Street.
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