Chronicling the paradoxical and the absurd, decentering the normative and the exploitative, the filmmaker and film critic Luc Moullet has portrayed overlooked localities, deconstructed fossilized social and cultural practices, and parodied capitalist aberrations. Throughout his career, he has entertained an ambivalent relationship with the places he portrayed, the matters he tackled, the formats he (mis)used and the public or private instances that commissioned them. Confronted with meagre funding and the rise of private television in France in the 1980s and the 1990s, he spent two decades making mostly short films. In this seminar, we will take as our starting point the films Foix (1994, 13’), Imphy, capitale de la France (1995, 28’) and Le Ventre de l’Amérique (1996, 25’), to discuss the (counter-)travelogue form, questions of parody and absurd, Moullet’s critique of urban planning and use of cartography, as well as the challenge of creating auteur pieces upon commission.

1 April 2025, 16:00-18:00
5.F01
ZHdK, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, 8005 Zürich

To attend the seminar, please register by 27 March 2025 by writing an email to nikola.radic@fiwi.uzh.ch.

This event is part of an ongoing cooperation between the SNSF-funded research project Paranational Cinema – Legacies and Practices at the Department of Film Studies, University of Zurich and the Master Cultural Critique in Curatorial Studies at Zurich University of the Arts.