The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978) – Wednesday, January 8th 7:00 PM

On the grounds of an undisclosed Parisian residence, a pedagogical art collector and off-screen narrator investigate the scandal of seven canvases by the fictional 19th century painter Frédéric Tonnerre. Reenacting Tonnerre’s paintings through a series of tableaux vivants, Ruiz’s esoteric work of speculative analysis — indebted to the writings of Pierre Klossowski — constructs a hypothesis that suggests a connection between its images and an occult ceremony.

Courtesy of the Cinémathèque Française.

Love Torn in a Dream: The Illusory Odysseys of Raúl Ruiz

Wandering from port to port, laden with lost dreams and exploits, the swirling lives of sailors, priests, philosophers and Knights Templar coincide in Raúl Ruiz’s discursive fictions — untrammeled in their intellectual pursuits, caught within an endless net of circling conspiracies and fabulist frameworks. A Chilean filmmaker who fled his country in the wake of Pinochet’s 1973 coup, Ruiz would find a home in Paris, emerging as one of the most prolific and illustrious surrealist masters. Through his vast range of collaborators and partners that include the Institut national de l’audiovisuel as well as producer Paulo Branco — an exile from Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship —, editor and wife Valeria Sarmiento, and longtime composer Jorge Arriagada, Ruiz would construct a Borgesian lifework built upon stories within stories, myths unto myths, resulting in over a hundred films to his name. A literato with a polymath’s appetite — absorbing theology, philosophy, literature and mythologies — Ruiz defied narrative convention with his alchemic methodology, a nebulous procession of dream logic, byzantine storytelling and the picaresque. Searching for truths, Ruiz’s illusory odysseys are enigmas without keys, a butterfly dream evaporating in the dawn.

Co-sponsored by the France Chicago Center.