Thursday 5 November, 2009

Critically acclaimed as a profound and expansive meditation on war, society, subjectivity, memory and loss After Hiroshima Mon Amour is one of the most significant critical essays on contemporary politics and militarism in recent years. An extraordinarily affecting, multi-layered video, it splices scenes from Alain Resnais’ powerful 1959 film Hiroshima Mon Amour (written by Marguerite Duras) between and onto raw footage of the American incursion into Iraq and the Bush administration’s neglect of post-Katrina New Orleans, coloured by digital effects and rich superimpositions. Scenes from the original film are re-presented and re-enacted. Duras’ story of a love affair between a man and woman in post-atomic Hiroshima (played here by a variety of actors, blurring ethnicity, race and gender) becomes the catalyst for a fresh and urgent examination of the relationship between the personal and the political.
The video is shown alongside Alain Resnais’ essay on the holocaust; with other recent American work by David Dempewolf and Leslie Thornton; and a live reading of published correspondence between Silvia Kolbowski and the Lebanese artist Walid Raad and a video by Akram Zaatari documenting the aftermath of Lebanese occupation.

The Film Programme is curated by Ian White, curator, writer, artist and facilitator of the LUX Associate Artists Programme. He has worked on projects including The Artists Cinema at Frieze Art Fair, the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival and Kino Arsenal, Berlin and as an artist has performed at Tate Modern, MoMA, New York and with De Appel, Amsterdam.

Tickets will be available to purchase at the Information Desk for this event. Doors open at 7pm.

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