The Three-Sided Mirror (La Glace à trois faces)
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The Three-Sided Mirror (La Glace à trois faces)

The Three-Sided Mirror (La Glace à trois faces)

Based on a short story by Paul Morand, this acclaimed film traces the life of a man involved with three mistresses. The audience follows him but also sees him through the eyes of each of his lovers. Jean Epstein artfully casted a film that mixes truth with fantasy and heterosexuality with homosexuality, while also featuring notorious automobile sequences. 1927, 35mm, 38 minutes.

A Song for Poplars (La Chanson des peupliers)

In this short film, superimposed with trees and drifting clouds, the song of the poplars is the wind. 1931, 35mm, 6 minutes.

The Storm Tamer (Le Tempestaire)

“A film that will do honor to French cinema.” —Opéra

The ocean is the star of Epstein’s most ambitious film about an old wizard who uses magic to stop the wind. Legend and truth combine in this piece of abstract cinema, which includes sound experiments that had a lasting influence on subsequent generations of avant-garde filmmakers. 1947, 35mm, 22 minutes.

Post-Screening Discussion

Following the screening, join Christophe Wall-Romana for a discussion about the film. Wall-Romana is associate professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota, where he is also affiliated with the new graduate major in Moving Image Studies. His research has focused on the textual intersections of French poetry and cinema, especially around the post–World War II narrative avant-garde in France. He is the author of Jean Epstein (Manchester, 2012), the first monograph in English on the filmmaker.