Roman Polanski’s films perfectly combine frivolousness with gravity, tragedy with irony, humor with drama, absurdity with fantasy, and realism with concreteness through different genres and technically brilliant stage direction. He is driven by the joy of storytelling and by capturing the overlooked details of human existence that resonate with Central European artists. His inept heroes are thrown into an existential labyrinth filled with a multifaceted evil which chases them like a shadow, taking the form of a circle and a doppelgänger. This unique aesthetics, this comical, disillusioned and absurd perspective on life will be traced in eight films: starting from the intimate triangle of a couple and a student (The Knife in the Water), the ridiculous romp of losers (Cul-de-sac), the gloomy comedy (The Vampire Ball), the police investigation inspired by the Greek tragedy (Chinatown), the existential loneliness of a man in Paris (The Tenant), the disenchanted pastoral (Tess), the historical madness (The Pianist), up to the Kafkaesque thriller (The Ghost Writer). Roman Polanski’s filmography is coherent, simple, and complex.
Programmers:
Yannick Rolandeau , is a screenwriter, filmmaker, contributor to the literary magazine L'Atelier du roman, and author of several essays on cinema (Le Cinema de Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino ou le crépuscule de l’image, Nouvelle Vague: essai critique d’un mythe cinématographique, and Roman Polanski: L'Ironie et le mal), novels (Deus Sex machina and Les Yeux des autres) as well as a collection of short stories (L'Impromptue de Caen). He is the co-founder of the YouTube site Odysseus, a journey to the center of the big screen.
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