Susan Sontag. On Cinema

17 april, 2006 - 28 april, 2006
Place
Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Curatorship
Jake Perlin
Peter Hujar. Susan Sontag,1975
Peter Hujar. Susan Sontag,1975

The discovery of some photographs of atrocities committed during the Second World War in a bookshop in Santa Monica marked a before and after in Sontag’s life. After this event, she became aware of the high dose of pain and tragedy that must be accepted to live in the world, operate in it and wish to consume what it offers. For Sontag, this was something that had to be accepted and controlled by taking a critical position. From this point of view, embracing the work of filmmakers whose aesthetic approaches championed political commitment and who always viewed film and the world in terms of their poetics became the only way to live for Sontag.

The first programmes in the series bring together two views of Israel, one by Marker (Description of a Struggle, 1961) and the other by Sontag (Promised Lands, 1974). Interviews with My Lai Veterans (1971) by Joseph Strick (Pittsburgh, 1923 - Paris, 2010) can be seen as a film that engages in a dialogue with Sontag’s book Trip to Hanoi, the result of her trip to Vietnam in May 1968, while the video-essay by Godard Je vous salue, Sarajevo (1994), a shortened version of his film Letter to Jane (1972), which presents a succinct view of a single image of the war in the Balkans, ties in directly with Sontag’s visit to Sarajevo during the period, a process that was documented in her essay Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo (1994). The meditation finally settles its gaze on a desk in 6 Sontag Screen Tests (1964) by Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh 1928 - New York, 1987) and a televised interview from 1969 alongside Agnès Varda (Brussels, 1928) known as Lions and Cannibals (a conversation about Sontag’s film, Duet for Cannibals and Varda’s Lion’s Love).