La Nuit Bengali

For Serge Daney, cinema gives desire to the world. For Nicolas Klotz, Daney’s return from a trip to India is an invitation to travel. Klotz goes to Bengal to create a portrait of Ravi Shankar. Meeting Satyajit Ray helps him make LA NUIT BENGALI, based on the book by historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade. Life is a disease, cinema too. Allan and Gayatri’s toxic love tells a tired story, the crisis of late adolescence and the Westernisation of the world. The studio’s compromise was to add dead weight (star Hugh Grant and producer Philippe Diaz), while shamans (novelist Jean-Claude Carrière, production designer Emmanuel Machuel, cinematographer Alexandre Trauner) ofer remedy. Cinephiles are drawn in by the fresh Indian air—see Renoir’s THE RIVER, Rossellini’s INDIA: MATRI BHUMI and Ray, who recommended actors Soumitra Chatterjee and Shabana Azmi to Klotz as well as his art director Ashoke Bose. The cinematic event is less the film than Calcutta itself, the foremost city of refuge before the Calais “Jungle.” The other event is Elisabeth Perceval (playing Norinne), to whom the film is dedicated. Throwing of the old world is an exorcism to celebrate cinema as a reunion of spell and ceremony. With PARIA, cinema will be found once again. (Saad Chakali & Alexia Roux)

In the presence of Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval.

Elisabeth Perceval, Nicolas Klotz: PARIA (2000), LA BLESSURE (2004), LA QUESTION HUMAINE (2007), LOW LIFE (2011), L’HÉROÏQUE LANDE (2017), FUGITIF OÙ COURS-TU ? (2018), SAXIFRAGES, QUATRE NUITS BLANCHES (2021)