Chronicle of a Summer, 50 years later
presented by Will Zavala
"Are you happy?"
If a stranger posed that question, could you answer truthfully? If we can only "be ourselves", can we be any but truthful? And what has been captured when the whole encounter is filmed? These are the kind of questions tackled by the engaging film Chronicle d'un été (Chronicle of a Summer).
If documentary history has a Citizen Kane-- a landmark film--it might be Chronicle of a Summer. It is an experiment, a test of film’s ability to capture a kind of truth (cinéma-vérité), a technological breakthrough, formally daring, and layered with meanings. Taking to the streets of Paris and the beaches of St. Tropez, a sociologist, Edgar Morin, an ethnographic filmmaker, Jean Rouch, and a cinematographer, Michel Brault shot the film in 1960, not so long after the horrors of the Second World War, on the tail end of colonialism, on the cusp of a youthful rebirth of culture. Its release in 1961 heralded the beginning of the modern documentary.
Friday, August 12
6:30p
Admission is free.
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