Telluride Film Festival Cinematheque at Library, 3/8

06 Mar Telluride Film Festival Cinematheque at Library, 3/8

[click “Play” to hear Susan’s interview with host David Oyster]

Cinematheque, the highly successful collaboration between the Telluride Film Festival and the Wilkinson Public Library, continues its “All About Food” series Monday, March 8. The pre-SHOW reception starts at 5:30 p.m. Curtain up at 6 p.m.

“All About Food” continues with a double feature, beginning with Surrealist Luis Bunuel’s Oscar-winning (Best Foreign Film) “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” (1972,102 minutes). “Discreet Charm” is an episodic spanking of the wealthy French middle-class as it examines the relationship between class and debauchery. In this biting satire, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both real and imagined. The complex structure amounts to a puzzle box of a movie built from stories within stories, dreams within dreams. At several points, the director cuts to one of his dyspeptic gentlemen waking from sleep, horrified by what he –  and by extension, we – just saw. The dreams often go several scenes back, where we find another chap waking up in bed. The second dreamer was actually imagining the first dreamer and his disturbing vision – and so on.