Next up in Cinema RITCS

Week May 5th – May 8th

Week May 12th – May 15th

Special Events

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel (1959–79)

For five times, over a period of twenty years, the legendary Jean-Pierre Léaud portrayed the alter ego of the just as iconic French Nouvelle Vague director François Truffaut. As Antoine Doinel, he first appears in his breakthrough film, and key film of the innovative wave, LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS (1959). Thereafter, four more films follow. In May and June, CINEA brings the entire Doinel series back to Belgian cinemas, in a digitally restored 4K version!

The 1944-born Léaud was chosen from a group of hundreds of children after a casting call by Truffaut in a newspaper – he was fourteen years old. A year later, he was carried on the audience's shoulders after their triumphant screening in Cannes. As Antoine, Léaud expressed Truffaut's not-so-loving youth in LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS. Until his tenth, his grandmother took care of him. When she died, his stepfather – who's family name he carries – thought it was high time he came home, but François' mother didn't want that.

After Doinel fell in love in ANTOINE ET COLETTE (1962) and subsequently started a relationship with the brave Christine in BAISERS VOLÉS (1968), DOMICILE CONJUGAL (1970) shows their first marital years. Nine years later, they parted in L'AMOUR EN FUITE (1979), a mosaic film rich in nostalgia and reverie.

Special Events

Milestones: Wanda

Cinema RITCS and film journal Sabzian collaborate to screen Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970) on May 13th at 7PM. The film tells the story of a woman drifting through rust-belt Pennsylvania, attaching herself to a petty crook as she struggles to navigate a world indifferent to her existence. “She doesn’t know what she wants but she knows what she doesn’t want,” Loden said. Wanda was born from a brief newspaper article about a failed bank robbery.

What struck Loden was not the crime itself, but the image of a woman – an accomplice – standing in court, thanking the judge as he sentenced her. The film, virtually ignored upon release, played in just one American theater before disappearing from circulation for decades.

Although it received occasional passionate recognition worldwide, it remained largely absent from most film histories, including feminist film history. Loden, who starred in the film as well as directing it, died in 1980, leaving Wanda as her only film. Its rediscovery began in 2004 when French actress Isabelle Huppert helped its release on DVD in France, sparking renewed interest in the film.

READ MORE ON THE SABZIAN WEBSITE →

Special attention…

Q&A’s, aftertalks and more

See you in the cinema!