REEL FILM: IRMA VEP on 35mm

JUNE 23, 29, 30
IRMA VEP on 35mm
$9 GA / $6 OFS
Olivier Assayas’s live-wire international breakthrough stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic 1915 crime serial Les vampires. What she finds is a behind-the-scenes tangle of barely controlled chaos as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision. Blending blasts of silent cinema, martial arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Ali Farka Touré into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Assayas composes a witty reflection on the nineties French film industry and the eternal tension between art and commercial entertainment.
Dir: Olivier Assayas / 1996 / France / 97 min

“There are innumerable great touches, big and small, in Irma Vep, which is organic and alive like few movies ever are.” – Scott Tobias, AV Club

“Irma Vep by Director Olivier Assayas represents a moment in 1996 when a filmmaking lexicon was codified that has remained as expansive, intimate and peerless now as it was then. The dizzying cinematography captures the restless, centuries-old obsession we have with power, crime, creation and skintight cat suits. Since no singular medium can contain the collective creative process, this film had to made…with Maggie Cheung and Jean-Pierre Léaud as the eternal witnesses to the hope and hubris of the creative act.” – Joaquin de la Puente, OFS cinema technician

SCREENING: SUN 6/23 7:30PM; SAT 6/29 9:00PM; SUN 6/30 5:00PM
Tickets available at the box office 1/2 hour before showtimes.