FOFF Programs

Film Series: Film Maudit/Accursed Films

Parisian ciné-club Objectif 49 held a festival in Biarritz in 1949 dedicated to "Film Maudit", or "Accursed Cinema". With the express mission of reevaluating and redefining cinematic art, Jean Cocteau's jury held up a slate of ignored, unfairly maligned, and/or transgressive works as representative of a new filmic vanguard. Films now long accepted as major works of world cinema such as Vigo's Zéro de conduite and L'Atalante, Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, and Visconti's Ossessione were for the first time given their due. Cinematic and sexual radicalism were endorsed by Cocteau awarding the Poetic Film Prize to Kenneth Anger's Fireworks, the first serious acknowledgment of a budding genius.

Many great works of cinema spent years languishing in this uncherished category: Welles's The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil, Hawks's Bringing Up Baby, and Ophuls's Lola Montes were greeted with scorn upon release. The reputations of Cimino's Heaven's Gate and Antonioni's Zabriskie Point have undergone radical revision in recent years. In this series we revive the anti-conformist approach initiated by Objectif 49's Festival du Film Maudit, and propose for your reconsideration works we believe to be unfairly maligned and/or forgotten.