The Case of the Morituri Divisions
At our invitation, Francesca Bozzano, the Director of Collections at the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, has curated a varied selection of short and feature films from their catalog. This program includes ten screenings ranging from silent cinema, experimental films, and animation to underground, documentary, and classic films, with several restorations done by the Cinémathèque de Toulouse or from elements preserved in their vaults.
The Case of the Morituri Divisions will be preceded by the short film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Animated film based on the famous The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolph Erich Raspe.
A bookmaker organizes gladiatorial battles in clandestine underground tunnels. One of them, Ettore, becomes the Spartacus of the 80s... A film somewhere between George Miller's Mad Max and Alain Fleischer's Dedans dehors. An unlikely gladiator story set against the backdrop of the "German affair". Underground betting, death bookmakers and sensory deprivation. A punk pamphlet set against a political-police adventure. Out of the system. The first Ossanginist film and a provocative Brechtian catapult for a cinema of post-nuke poetry. The CNC has restored The Case of the Morituri Divisions, of which the Cinémathèque de Toulouse retains a unique "blue" print (a print with a particular bluish tone). This blue print was used as a reference print for color grading. (Cinémathèque de Toulouse)
F.J. Ossang
F.J. Ossang is a French poet, writer, singer, and filmmaker. He made his first three films, two shorts and one feature, while studying at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in France. His graduation film, The Case of the Morituri Divisions (1985), is a black-and-white science fiction essay in which he stars alongside Lionel Tua, Philippe Sfez, and members of the punk-rock band Lucrate Milk. Influenced by silent cinema and expressionism, F.J. Ossang's films reveal a fascination with genre films, blending various styles into a highly personal combination. He explores anticipation and science fiction in Treasure of the Bitch Islands (1990), and film noir and road movies in Doctor Chance (1997), all while maintaining a strong focus on photography and framing, which is one of his trademarks. As programmer Laurence Reymond once noted, Ossang's cinema appears to drift but never loses its ultimate direction: ecstasy. Ossang won the Best Direction Award at Locarno with 9 Fingers in 2017.
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