ABOUT THE SERIES Co-presented by the Consulate General of France, Villa Albertine in Los Angeles. “What appears in my films is the language of women, the action of women. The men are forced to follow…. It’s already the beginning of an inverted world.” – Marguerite Duras The American Cinematheque is pleased to present highlights from the touring program “Destroy, She Said: A Marguerite Duras Retrospective” including DÉTRUIRE DIT-ELLE, LE NAVIRE NIGHT, LE CAMION, INDIA SONG and HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR, which earned Duras a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination. Unlike her contemporaries of post-1968 cinema, such as Agnes Varda, Chantal Akerman, and Nelly Kaplan; Marguerite Duras was already a successful novelist with a keen interest in deconstructing her own writing on screen when she made her directing debut. Following her monumental first screenplay for Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), she worked for ten years as a screenwriter on film adaptations of her own novels directed by the likes of Jules Dassin, Tony Richardson, and Peter Brook. At the age of fifty-five, Duras directed her first feature DÉTRUIRE DIT-ELLE (1969), and she continued to develop an inimitable style over the next twenty-five years of filmmaking. As a writer/director interested in exploring the intersections of colonialism, female sexuality, and the language of film itself, her influence can be felt within the work of contemporary filmmakers like Claire Denis, who has referred to Duras as an “intellectual hero.” – Zachary Vanes Our thanks to Doc Films at the University of Chicago, the Institut Français and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Chicago for their help with this series.