India Song
Dir. Marguerite Duras France 1975 119’ (adv. PG) 35mm transferred to digital video | French with English subtitles
Whether or not India Song properly qualifies as ‘slow cinema’, its pace is deliberate, its action unfolding as if in a dream. Painterly, hallucinatory, Duras’ film rewards a different mode of viewing, one in which the audience member becomes part of the film, sunk in its dark embrace. It screens here in response to Rachel Lancaster and Laura Lancaster’s exhibition Remember, Somewhere — echoing not only the themes of memory and representation in both artists’ work but particularly the palette and treatment of Rachel Lancaster’s canvases.
“Born out of one of Duras’s childhood memories in French Indochina – to which she returned obsessively across different forms – India Song follows Anne-Marie Stretter (played by the inscrutable, magnetic Delphine Seyrig), the wife of the French ambassador to India, who spends her days inside an opulent mansion, soaked in sweat and ennui.
With beautiful tableau-like compositions and a regal colour palette – rich in greens, reds and whites – India Song moves as sumptuously and as gracefully as Seyrig’s Stretter, choreographed to the sounds of a chattering disembodied chorus; the desperate cries of a beggar woman; and the unforgettable tangos and rumbas composed by the Argentinian, Carlos d’Alessio.” —ICA
Part of Baltic Cinema’s Sources strand, exploring the themes of Baltic’s exhibitions.
Level 1 Cinema
Doors open 6.30pm; Film starts 6.45pm. Baltic Kitchen is open until 6.30pm for drinks, which you are welcome to take up to the cinema.
