Now that we have to maintain physical distance, our experience of cinema has become a solitary delight. But in this time of confinement, we can find our cinephile community in the non-endemic space of the online environment. In the next weeks, Sabzian will select three films a week, available on online platforms. You can find more information about our online selection here.
Ingmar Bergman has once called Peter Watkins’ Edvard Munch (1974), the first film of this week’s selection, a “work of genius”. A biography of the Norwegian expressionist painter, it testifies to the personal affinity felt for Edvard Munch by the director, who acknowledges in the artist’s life the hardships he himself has encountered. It is, by Watkins’ own admission, his most personal film. The British filmmaker has dedicated his life to develop an exceptional and uncompromised oeuvre. Edvard Munch is one of his most vigorous, fiery and confidential films, that has left a scorching mark in our hearts. The film is available for viewing at Tënk, with French subtitles.
For the second film, we opted for Wang Bing’s Three Sisters (2012), available on Doc Alliance. On Sabzian, we’ve repeatedly drawn attention to the work of the Chinese documentary filmmaker. In 2018, Sabzian, Courtisane and CINEMATEK compiled a publication on Wang Bing, which later became available on our website as a Dossier. Three Sisters brought him to a broken, impoverished farmer’s family in a small mountain village in the Chinese province of Yunnan. As Wang Bing has put it himself, “Three Sisters is set in a poverty-stricken environment, but the film as a whole is not about poverty, it is about the lived experience of the girls’ existence.” Many films that are discussed in our dossier can also be viewed on Doc Alliance. Here you can rent Three Sisters.
On 27 March, Olivier Assayas would have presented his text together with his film of choice, The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975), at the State of Cinema, our yearly tradition where a guest of honour holds the art of film against the light. To compensate for the postponement of that evening, we invite you to discover one of the recent films of the French director: Doubles vies (2018), in which the digitalisation of the book world serves as a mirror to reflect on the future of cinema. Now, you can rent his film Doubles vies on Univers Ciné.
Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, 1974) | Watch here
Three Sisters (Wang Bing, 2012) | Watch here
Doubles vies (Olivier Assayas, 2018) | Watch here
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