A DIRTY STORY / "Alix's Pictures"

ABOUT THE FILMS:

A DIRTY STORY, 1977, Dir: Jean Eustache, 50 Minutes, Janus Films, France. 

In French with English subtitles. 

Deceptively simple in form and content, Eustache’s A DIRTY STORY is a fascinatingly complex investigation of the relationship between fiction and documentary, verbal and visual storytelling, and personal and universal desires. The film’s two sections mirror each other: in the first Michael Lonsdale acts in the role of a man explaining to a roomful of friends his past voyeuristic obsessions, while the second section shows an unscripted recording of Jean-Noël Picq, the man Lonsdale has played, recounting the same real-life tale. Eustache presents dramatic and authentic versions of the “dirty story” without authorial commentary and thus encourages the viewer to untangle a web of structural correspondences between the two sections as well as the sexual and moral implications of Picq’s candid confession.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Janus Films

COUNTRY: France

“Alix’s Pictures”, 1980, Dir: Jean Eustache, 19 Minutes, Janus Films, France. 

In French with English subtitles. 

Winner of the 1982 Cesar Award for Best Short Film, “Alix’s Pictures” is Jean Eustache’s playful meditation on the ambiguity of images and the elusiveness of interpretation. In a room a young woman (Alix Clio-Roubaud) describes to a young man (Boris Eustache, the director’s son) the stories, techniques, and meanings behind several of her meticulously composed black-and-white photographs. But at some point her explanations don’t seem to match what we see. Is this because language can never accurately account for the visual? Because the viewer is being asked to perform more than a surface-level comprehension of art? Because Eustache is perpetrating some sort of absurdist practical joke? Or all of the above?

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Janus Films

COUNTRY: France