La femme publique

About this event

The screening on August 23rd will be introduced by writer Daniel Bird. The screening on October 1st will be introduced by filmmaker Craig Williams. An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed . The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into committing a political assassination. Never shown theatrically in the UK upon it’s original release and long available on DVD only, La femme publique will be screened during the season from the 2025 restoration by LCJ Editions. Daniel Bird is a writer based in France. Since interviewing him as a student, he has worked frequently with Andrzej Żuławski, helping with the North American release of the director’s cut of Possession, as well as assisting with subtitling, restorations, and script editing. Alongside curated programmes at Ciné Lumière and the Horse Hospital, Daniel has also worked with some of Żuławski’s key collaborators including composer Andrzej Korzyński, cinematographer Andrzej J. Jaroszewicz, and costume designer Magdalena Tesławska. Cast: Valérie Kaprisky, Francis Huster, Lambert Wilson