Cat People
Cinema is a screen onto which we can project our fears, torments and the monstrosities of the world. The screen protects us from what we see, but cinema has also permanently anchored our nightmares around a few powerful images (empty houses, hostile attics and basements, demonic masks, bloodcurdling grimaces, disturbing postures). Throughout the summer, the Cinémathèque québécoise will be presenting a series of films encompassing more than one hundred and twenty years of horror, reminding us that what scares us most is to make the deepest of our fears tangible and credible.
Irena, a young fashion designer, meets Olivier, a shipbuilding engineer. The two young people fall madly in love and decide to get married. But Irena is haunted by an old Serbian legend according to which she will turn into a feline as soon as her lover kisses her, and will end up devouring him.
Jacques Tourneur
Jacques Tourneur was a French film director known for the classic film noir Out of the Past and a series of low-budget horror films he made for RKO Studios, including Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Leopard Man. He is also known for directing Night of the Demon, which was released by Columbia Pictures.