Ciné-voyage. Documentary Fictions by Nicolas Rey.
11/14 – 11/17, @HFA

“I wanted to make a film based on a novel that I couldn’t read, since it was written in a language that I don’t understand, and there’s no translation. Strange idea, you might say.” So it is, and so Nicolas Rey’s DIFFERENTLY, MOLUSSIA (2012) stands as one of the most beguiling narrative experiments in recent memory. The novel in question is Günther Anders’ The Molussian Catacomb, a hybridized narrative combining allegory and theoretical dialogues in its prescient musings on the nature of state power. Rey’s lingering images of the post-industrial landscapes surrounding Paris open a visual correspondence with the text. Perhaps most radically, Rey approaches the narrative as a kind of slide puzzle, with nine chapters/reels randomly arranged for each screening (with 362,880 possible combinations, the film is close to inexhaustible). For Rey, who helps run an artisanal film laboratory in Paris, the hand-processed images represent an underlying commitment to the unique properties of cinema—not only its tactile pleasures, but its possibilities as a medium for philosophical inquiry. DIFFERENTLY, MOLUSSIA (2012) screens along with two of Rey’s earlier 16mm features during his visit to the HFA.

– Max Goldberg