Straub / Huillet: Too Early, Too Late
Saturday 12 February 2011, 19.00
Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium
A Reflection on Revolution in Egypt:
Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Too Early, Too Late (Trop tôt, trop tard)
Momentous events have been unfolding in the Middle East, pressing for meaningful ways to engage with what is happening in Egypt. As instantaneous newsfeeds pull us in different directions, there is a need to counter the speed of media coverage overwhelming our present. This event features a screening of the rarely seen film Too Early, Too Late (Trop tôt, trop tard) by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, as a means to open up and reflect on the current moment. It will also include voices of artists and curators speaking from Egypt.
Shot in the summer of 1980 in France and spring of 1981 in Egypt, Too Early, Too Late (Trop tôt, trop tard) investigates the changing relationship between people, land and society within successful and failed revolutions in both countries. The formal and structural basis for the film consists of two texts: a letter sent by Friedrich Engels to his disciple Karl Kautsky, and Mahmoud Hussein’s Class Struggles in Egypt (1969, Maspero Editions). The latter is a historical account of the squashed Egyptian revolts prior to Naguib’s revolution of 1952, narrated as a voice-over of footage of the specific places where the uprisings occurred.
What emerges is a document that functions as a history of Marxist thought, a contemplative landscape film and a potent commentary on Egyptian society. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s films are concerned with the politics of place and its topography, tackled through film-making as a structural medium: Trop tôt, trop tard starts with an 8 minute shot filmed from a moving car circling the Place de la Bastille in Paris; a visually constructed argument on revolution through the repeated revolutions of a camera.
The screening will be introduced by artists Céline Condorelli and Uriel Orlow, and will be followed by a conversation with Bassam El Baroni and Mahmoud Khaled from Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) speaking from Egypt, and an open discussion with the audience.
With kind support from the BFI.
Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub
Too Early, Too Late (Trop tôt, trop tard)
Germany / France / Egypt 1981, 16mm, 105 minutes
Camera: William Lubtchansky, Caroline Champetier (in France); Robert Alazraki, Marguerite Perlado (in Egypt)
Sound: Louis Hochet, Manfred Blank
Voice over: Danièle Huillet (part A), Bhagat el Nadi (part B)
Production: Straub-Huillet
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Free, first-come, first-served, no booking required
Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
Nearest Tube: Southwark / London Bridge
www.tate.org.uk/modern/film
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