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Friday, Nov 3, 2017
7:30 PM (104 mins)
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BAMPFA -
Sunday, Nov 5, 2017
7 PM (104 mins)
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BAMPFA
SUBJECTS
Irma Vep
Maggie Cheung, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Richard, Antoine Basler,
Olivier Assayas inserts his passion for visual, chaotic Hong Kong action movies into the verbose, yet equally chaotic, landscape of the French art film in this “remake” of the silent French serial Les vampires. Pop-culture icon Maggie Cheung, as both “Irma Vep” and “Maggie Cheung,” tiptoes through the wreckage, her latex-catsuited presence triggering as much anarchy, confusion, and sexual disruption as did her silent equivalent. Where the original serial featured Irma Vep wreaking havoc upon Paris’s alienated ruling elite, Assayas has Irma/Maggie preying on that most alienated of elites, a French film crew, complete with overwrought director (Jean-Pierre Léaud in classic irascible mode), high-strung artists, and bickering hangers-on united by a shared sense of hopelessness, bile, and thwarted lechery. Simultaneously a bemused look at the neuroses of creative French filmmaking and a spellbinding valentine to the giddily surrealist and sensual cinemas Irma and Maggie each represent, Irma Vep creates a filmic identity that’s decidedly jagged, vibrant, and fascinating.
FILM DETAILS
Screenwriter
- Olivier Assayas
Cinematographer
- Éric Gautier
Language
- French
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- Color
- 35mm
- 99 mins
Source
- Zeitgeist Films
CINEFILES
CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.
View Irma Vep documents
The films of Olivier Assayas (program note), Anthology Film Archives, 2008
Irma Vep (program note), Harvard Film Archive, 2004
Irma Vep (distributor materials), Tournées, 1998
Irma Vep (program note), San Francisco International Film Festival, 1997
Re: Vamp (article), San Francisco Bay Guardian, Chuck Stephens, 1997
To catch a thief (review), Village Voice, J. Hoberman, 1997
Irma Vep (review), Time Out New York, Stephan Talty, 1997
Irma Vep (program note), Vancouver International Film Festival, Françoise Maupin, 1997
Irma Vep (program note), Rotterdam Film Festival, 1997
Life intimidates art (review), Reader (Chicago, Ill.), Jonathan Rosenbaum, 1997
Displaying 10 of 15 publicly available documents.
Preceded By
Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung
Olivier Assayas, France, 1997
Olivier Assayas’s silent Super 8mm portrait of Maggie Cheung was made as a commission for the Fondation Cartier.
FILM DETAILS
Print Info
- Color
- Digital
- Silent
- 5 mins
permission
- Olivier Assayas