Louis and Languages • History of the Present + Q&A

Louis and Languages – With an atmosphere reminiscent of the haunted melancholia of James Leyland Kerby’s Caretaker project, Froment’s gently psychedeli​c work is an uncanny fantasia exploring the linguistic construction of identity, inspired by Louis Wolfson’s Le Schizo et Les Langues. Through curious interpolations of sound, text and image he traces idiosyncratic practices of translation as they develop in the mind of Louis, a young man treated for schizophrenia.

History of the Present – An experimental feminist opera-film about class and conflict, History of the Present has been made collaboratively by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, featuring new compositions by Annea Lockwood, libretto by Maria Fusco and improvisational vocal work by Héloïse Werner. This intersectional, intergenerational feminist work layers sociological, cultural, and political themes from the recent history of Northern Ireland, foregrounding working-class women’s voices to ask: who has the right to speak, and in what way?

Louis and Languages | Dir. Aurélien Froment | United Kingdom | 2023 | 22m | French, English, Spanish, Yiddish with English subtitles

History of the Present | Dirs. Margaret Salmon, Maria Fusco | United Kingdom | 2023 | 46m | English