Love Torn in a Dream: The Illusory Odysseys of Raúl Ruiz
Programmed by: Alexander Fee
Wandering from port to port, laden with lost dreams and exploits, the swirling lives of sailors, priests, philosophers and Knights Templar coincide in Raúl Ruiz’s discursive fictions — untrammeled in their intellectual pursuits, caught within an endless net of circling conspiracies and fabulist frameworks. A Chilean filmmaker who fled his country in the wake of Pinochet’s 1973 coup, Ruiz would find a home in Paris, emerging as one of the most prolific and illustrious surrealist masters. Through his vast range of collaborators and partners that include the Institut national de l'audiovisuel as well as producer Paulo Branco — an exile from Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship —, editor and wife Valeria Sarmiento, and longtime composer Jorge Arriagada, Ruiz would construct a Borgesian lifework built upon stories within stories, myths unto myths, resulting in over a hundred films to his name. A literato with a polymath’s appetite — absorbing theology, philosophy, literature and mythologies — Ruiz defied narrative convention with his alchemic methodology, a nebulous procession of dream logic, byzantine storytelling and the picaresque. Searching for truths, Ruiz’s illusory odysseys are enigmas without keys, a butterfly dream evaporating in the dawn.
Co-sponsored by the France Chicago Center.
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978)
Raúl Ruiz · 66m · DCP
On the grounds of an undisclosed Parisian residence, a pedagogical art collector and off-screen narrator investigate the scandal of seven canvases by the fictional 19th century painter Frédéric Tonnerre. Reenacting Tonnerre’s paintings through a series of tableaux vivants, Ruiz’s esoteric work of speculative analysis — indebted to the writings of Pierre Klossowski — constructs a hypothesis that suggests a connection between its images and an occult ceremony.
Courtesy of the Cinémathèque Française.
Wednesday, January 8th 7:00 PM
Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983)
Raúl Ruiz · 117m · DCP
Fleeing the murder of his teacher, a student encounters a drunken sailor in a decadent dance hall and is offered the chance to escape on the sailor’s ship on the condition that he pay three Danish crowns and listen to the mariner’s life story. Passing from port to port in an endless purgatory as the only member of his vessel, the sailor’s tall tales descend into a surreal fantasy of far-off and exotic lands.
Wednesday, January 15 7:00 PM · Saturday, January 18th 3:00 PM
Manoel’s Destinies (1984)
Raúl Ruiz · 152m · Digital
Originally broadcast in four parts on Portuguese television, Manoel’s Destinies is a work that, despite being made for children, remains as tantalizingly oneiric as Ruiz’s most opaque films. In a quiet seaside village, a young boy meets his future self, embarking on a series of forked paths, each with their own destiny. Described by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum as “an infantile pleasure that all but abolishes the ordinary cause and effect of storytelling.”
Wednesday, January 22th 7:00 PM
City of Pirates (1983)
Raúl Ruiz · 111m · 35mm
A nocturnal odyssey of childhood adventure, City of Pirates follows the odd pairing of a virginal somnambulist and a psychopathic orphan — described by Ruiz as a cross between Pinocchio and Pinochet — who flee their circumstances in search of a mystical isle of pirates. Employing automatic writing techniques to script the film, Ruiz conjures, as he himself described it, a baroque youth fantasy evocative of “Dalí, De Chirico, and Disney.”
Imported 35mm print with live subtitling.
Wednesday, January 29th 7:00 PM
Love Torn in a Dream (2000)
Raúl Ruiz · 123m · 35mm
Relating nine stories that gradually intertwine and spin further tales, Love Torn in a Dream is the apotheosis of Ruiz’s vast body of work: a theology student who has lost faith in his senses, a mirror that makes anything it reflects disappear, a painting that cures illness but in exchange spreads sexual desire, lovers who have only met in dreams … Ruiz populates his branching epic with stories in part configured by Ramon Llull’s ars combinatoria.
Imported print.
Wednesday, February 5th 7:00 PM · Saturday, February 8th 7:00 PM
On Top of the Whale (1982)
Raúl Ruiz · 90m · DCP
A French linguist and his Dutch wife journey deep into South America to the remote stretches of Patagonia to study an indecipherable dying language spoken by two remaining natives. A satirical riff on anthropology, language, and imperialism that reflects on Ruiz’s own exile from his home country, On Top of the Whale also features the talents and tricks of master cinematographer Henri Alekan, known for Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast.
Courtesy of the Cinémathèque Française.
