A Dream Longer Than the Night
Giants, fairies, magicians, ghosts, dragons, and monsters of all kinds… Here’s what your Cinémathèque has in store this summer! Since Méliès, filmmakers have embraced the fanstastic potential of cinema, creating infinite phantasmagorias and extraordinary spectacles where the unreal becomes real. Step into a world of fantasy and boundless imagination: whatever your generation, the monsters and wonders that once filled your childhood dreams are back this summer 2025!
Young Princess Camélia, magically transformed into an adult, must traverse a phantasmagoric and surreal landscape filled with enchanted beings, fantastical goblins, and human-like ghouls. Throughout her journey to adulthood, she navigates a minefield of patriarchy, facing a series of frightful encounters in this whimsical and surreal new world.
Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle was a French sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of colorful hand-illustrated books. Widely noted as one of the few female monumental sculptors, she was also known for her social commitment and work. Her most comprehensive work was the Tarot Garden, a large sculpture garden in Toscany containing numerous works ranging up to house-sized creations. Saint Phalle's idiosyncratic style has been called "outsider art"; she had no formal training in art, but associated freely with many other contemporary artists, writers, and composers. Throughout her creative career, she collaborated with other well-known artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, composer John Cage, and architect Mario Botta, as well as dozens of less-known artists and craftspersons. For several decades, she worked especially closely with Swiss kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, who also became her second husband. A critic has observed that Saint Phalle's "insistence on exuberance, emotion and sensuality, her pursuit of the figurative and her bold use of color have not endeared her to everyone in a minimalist age". Another critic said: "The French-born, American-raised artist is one of the most significant female and feminist artists of the 20th century, and one of the few to receive recognition in the male-dominated art world during her lifetime". As a filmmaker, she directed Daddy (1973) and A Dream Longer Than the Night (1976).
