Shadow Visionaries Film Series: The City of Lost Children
Inspired by the Shadow Visionaries exhibition, the Clark presents a series of twentieth-century French films that echo with meditations on memory and longing. Prepare yourself for fantastical allegories and crumbling, ruined cityscapes.
A child smiles delightedly in his toy-filled room as Santa emerges from the chimney-piece, but joy turns to terror as the bearded visitor is followed by more of the same; cut to a man screaming in a laboratory where, unable to dream himself, he has stolen the nightmare of a kidnapped orphan. The opening of another of Caro and Jeunet's forays into the fantastique is the perfect introduction to what is essentially an inventive blend of dream, fairytale, and myth, and to a strange, sinister sea-girt world that functions according to its own crazy logic. After his infant brother is abducted by a gang of semi-robotic Cyclops, kindly strong-man One (Perlman) sets off on a search that will unite him with feisty nine-year-old orphan Miette (Vittet) and lead him to the sea-rig laboratory inhabited by the evil Krank (Emilfork), his six cloned brothers (Pinon), their diminutive "mother," and Uncle Irvin, a sardonic brain floating in a fish tank.
FREE. No registration required.
Accessible seats available. Call 413 458 0524 with any questions.
Image: The City of Lost Children, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1995