Metro Pictures Online Film Festival

Camille Henrot. Le songe de Poliphile. (The Strife of Love in a Dream), 2011. Watch Online now through Sunday, April 5 at Midnight

Le songe de Poliphile (The Strife of Love in a Dream) (film still), 2011. Video with color and sound, 11 minutes 37 second.

Metro Pictures will present a different film or series of shorts each weekend that can be streamed online from Friday at 5pm until Sunday at midnight.

Camille Henrot’s early work Le songe de Poliphile (The Strife of Love in a Dream) (2011) is the first film in the series. Commissioned by the Centre Pompidou in 2009, it predates her critically acclaimed piece Grosse Fatigue (2013). Though not widely-exhibited, it was included in The Restless Earth – the first comprehensive American exhibition of Henrot’s work, which took place at the New Museum in 2014.

Watch it here.

The narrative of the film is composed in a braided structure interweaving scenes filmed in India, including the pilgrimage of Shiva-worshippers to the Annamalaiyar Temple in Tamil Nadu, the production of anti-anxiety medication in Ankleshwar, and the extraction of snake venom – all of which are linked to human strategies of defense against fear. In the film, as in numerous other popular myths, fear is incarnated by an animal. The image of the snake, an ambivalent symbol in many cultures (both lethal and protective), is used as a recurring symbol of the most archetypal fears and their ability to be transformed in order to take part in the process of creation. The snake appears furtively through various works of art, as an obsessional, baroque, and versatile icon.

Forthcoming Screenings:

April 10-12: B. Wurtz – 1979-80 Films
April 17-19: Paulina Olowska – Univermag GUM: Episode Parade, Winter, GUM, Airport (2018)
April 24-26: Isaac Julien – Baltimore (2003)
May 1-3: Catherine Sullivan – The Chittendens (2005)
May 8-10: Oliver Laric – Untitled (2014-15) & Betweenness (2018-19)
May 15-17: John Miller – Mannequin Trilogy (2016-19)
May 22-24: David Maljkovi? – Scene for a New Heritage Trilogy (2004-06)
May 29-31: Cindy Sherman – 1975-76 Films
June 5-7: Judith Hopf – Recent Short Films (2013-18)
June 12-14 : Robert Longo – Icarus Rising (2019)