Screening Program:
Alain Robbe-Grillet
from 1963-1974

SALT Beyoğlu, Walk-in Cinema
November 27-29, 19.00 & 21.00

Inspiring art house with grindhouse, experimental filmmaker and writer Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) rarely shied from the more unconventional of film genres. From the illusive universe of his imagination stemmed some of the most non-linear cinematic narratives of the rapid 1960s and 70s.

Unless having witnessed their original cinematic releases, Robbe-Grillet’s films have been a rare spectacle on screen again. Fifty-one years after the release of L’Immortelle (1963), his provocative and unconventional story of love set in İstanbul, the original film was at last given a DVD release with English subtitles, now part of this one-off screening program at SALT Beyoğlu.

After Robbe-Grillet’s death in 2008, it was his wife, theater and cinema actress Catherine Robbe-Grillet, who began the process of bringing his art to new public light.

Free admission

PROGRAM

November 27, 19.00

L’Immortelle [The Immortal One] (1963)
Alain Robbe-Grillet
101 minutes
French; English subtitles
Black and white

This ambiguous story tells of the fate of an affair between a mysterious woman and a professor. After several days of their sadly passionate relationship she disappears. The professor is unable to locate her as all the local Turkish people pretend not to remember any such woman.


November 27, 21.00

Trans-Europ-Express (1967)
Alain Robbe-Grillet
95 minutes
French; English subtitles
Black and white

Three characters on a train from Paris to Antwerp are making a gangster movie about drug trafficking on trains on the same route. The protagonist is not quite sure what the incompetent filmmakers on the train or the elliptical members of the dope ring in Antwerp want him to do. Blank and puzzled, he dashes about in search of the drugs, and the plot.


November 28, 19.00

L’Homme qui ment [The Man Who Lies] (1968)
Alain Robbe-Grillet
97 minutes
French; English subtitles
Black and white

A man arrives in a village in central Europe claiming to have been a friend of a local man who disappeared after the war. His conflicting tale gives rise to doubts about his story. This is fable about the confrontation of a hero and a liar, which purports that lies are the constant companion of mankind.


November 28, 21.00

L’Eden et aprés [Eden and After] (1970)
Alain Robbe-Grillet
98 minutes
French; English subtitles
Black and white

A group of boys and girls imagine all kinds of games. From mock robberies to mock murders, it isn’t till a stranger comes along that the most beautiful of the girls are introduced to a delirious experience of romance, exoticism and death.



November 29, 19.00

N. apris les dés… [N. Took the Dice] (1971)
Alain Robbe-Grillet
79 minutes
French; English subtitles
Color

A young man who plays with dice is haunted by the image of two blonde women, with very short hair, almost like sisters. Each roll of the dice brings on a new image and a new scene, which describes the ability of dangerous and imaginary stories.


November 29, 21.00

Glissements progressifs du plaisir [Successive Slidings of Pleasure] (1974)
Alain Robbe-Grillet
107 minutes
French; English subtitles
Color

Police and judges question a young woman, suspected of being a modern-day witch, after the girl who shared her apartment was found dead with a pair of scissors impaled in her heart, while she lay attached to the bedposts.