Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 7:30pm
Luc Moullet's Genesis of a Meal
361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn
Presented with Semiotexte
Luc Moullet, Genesis of a Meal, 1979, digital projection, 115 mins
Semiotexte’s recent publication of The Cinema House and the World, a translation of writings by Serge Daney, is unquestionably one of the most important film books of 2022. Daney was a perspicacious critic, much admired by cineastes—Olivier Assayas, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Godard among them—but, until now, somewhat underappreciated stateside. On the occasion of this new collection, we’re screening a film of particular interest to Daney: Genesis of a Meal by Luc Moullet, one of Daney’s fellow writers at Cahiers du Cinéma.
In his essay “Direct Cinema in Six Images,” Daney describes Genesis as a “genre film.” Its director, he continues, “has always believed that hunger is the only real great subject, because it predates all the others. In his perverse project of illustrating every cinema genre, Moullet had to encounter the militant genre on his route. The film is all the more unstoppable because it has nothing at stake, the point of view being that of absolute knowledge.”
Genesis of a Meal, a work that traces the economic and political trajectory of everyday foodstuffs, was emblematic for Daney of a particular tendency in film. Cinema, he declared, “is never on time. And a fortiori, the cinema of intervention, the only kind whose existence depends on taking the time to establish its material, will never be finished on time. The filmmaker thus finds himself in an impossible, even louche situation, one that he might enjoy, regardless of the conventional piety of his discourse.” In the case of Moullet, this tardiness meant “having the luxury to finally complete a didactic-militant-and-third-world film right when no one knows what do with one anymore (while everyone wanted one when no one knew how to make them).”
Copies of The Cinema House and the World will be available for sale at the event.
Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door, cash and cards accepted.
Seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 7pm.