Spirits of the Dead
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!
Based on three short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, this sketch film leads us into the fantastic world of the great American novelist. Love and death collide, and it's hard to get enough of Fellini's Toby Dammit (played by Terence Stamp). Completely excessive!
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini was one of the greatest Italian writers and directors of the 20th century, and one of the most illustrious filmmakers in the history of cinema. He won the Palme d'or at Cannes in 1960 for La dolce vita, and took home the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film four times (La strada, Nights of Cabiria, 8½, and Amarcord), a record he shares with his compatriot Vittorio De Sica. Initially associated with neo-realism, Fellini’s work evolved over the course of the 1960s toward a unique approach related to European modernism, a movement associated with Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and Andrei Tarkovsky. His films grew increasingly to embrace a proliferation of themes, deliberate artifice and the complete erasure of boundaries between dream, imagination, hallucination and reality. In 1993, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him a lifetime achievement award in recognition of his place as one of the screen’s master storytellers.
Roger Vadim
Roger Vadim was a French director, screenwriter, actor, novelist, and poet. Passionate about cinema, literature, and music, but also known for his multiple romantic relationships, he wrote and directed films featuring some of his romantic partners, including Brigitte Bardot, Annette Strøyberg, Catherine Deneuve, and Jane Fonda. At the age of 19, he began working as an assistant to Marc Allégret, with whom he worked on several films. In 1956, Vadim wrote and directed his debut film, ...And God Created Woman, which propelled Brigitte Bardot to international fame. This success marked the beginning of Vadim's focus on directing. He became renowned for his visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as Blood and Roses (1960), Barbarella (1968), and Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971).
Louis Malle
Louis Malle was a French filmmaker. He made his debut during the rise of the French New Wave, a movement with which he initially shared several characteristics before charting his own course. He directed his first feature film, Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, 1958), at the age of 25. Starring Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet, the film draws on film noir conventions while challenging the dramaturgy of classical cinema. With films like The Lovers (Les amants, 1958) and The Thief of Paris (Le voleur, 1967), he took aim at the bourgeoisie and the political elite, his favorite targets. Malle also directed various documentaries, including Phantom India (L’Inde fantôme : réflexions sur un voyage, 1969), a seven-part series. After the controversies surrounding Murmur of the Heart (Le souffle au cœur, 1971) and Lacombe, Lucien (1974), he moved to the United States, where he directed several films before returning to France. He then achieved the crowning moment of his career with Au revoir les enfants (1987). Marked by the fluidity of its narrative and the sobriety of its direction, this film is widely considered the most moving and personal of his career. It received critical and public acclaim, as well as numerous awards, including Venice's Golden Lion, the Louis Delluc Prize, and seven César Awards, among them Best Film and Best Director. Malle later confided that it was this tragic story that had first drawn him to cinema.
