The Real Presence

The Real Presence

1984 · 59 min · ★ 8.0 · Drama

Ruiz on the film: "I began La présence réelle (The Real Presence) first. I. N. A. had commissioned me to produce a personal vision of the Festival d'Avignon. This became a fiction about the theater because if I had filmed the actual performances at Avignon I would have had to respect their staging, I would not be able to change anything. As such, I wouldn't be doing anything more than a retransmission of Antenne 2 or FR3. And since a lot would have to be paid for rights to each play, it would end up costing as much as a fiction feature. So it is a story about the theater, a bit Rivette-ish. I shot all the exteriors in Avignon, the interiors in Paris a few days later and I finish the film next Tuesday."

Directed by Raúl Ruiz

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Racial, social and cultural aspects of La Paz (called Chuquiago by the Aymaras) seen through four stories.

Of Great Events and Ordinary People

Of Great Events and Ordinary People · 1980

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MovieDocumentary

In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ‘60s. Its political content is deliberately left negligible: it’s hard to tell at the end who did actually win the election, let alone why.

Manuel on the Island of Wonders

Manuel on the Island of Wonders · 1984

Manuel on the Island of Wonders

SeriesKidsSci-Fi & Fantasy

This three part French TV serial for children (alternate versions exist as a feature, Manoel’s Destinies, and a 4 part Portuguese TV serial, Adventure in Madeira) is the favourite of many devotees of Raúl Ruiz. This is because it ties the enchantment and mystery of Lewis Carroll, Carlo Collodi and the Brothers Grimm to the filmmaker’s experiments with narrative strategies and what he calls the pentaludic model of storytelling (where characters are thrown dice-like into combinations and situations governed by the play of Chance and Destiny).

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MovieComedyDrama

Michele is an MP for the Italian Communist Party who loses his memory in a car crash, though hardly anyone around him seems to notice. During a crucial water polo match on the eve of election day, he gradually begins to remember his past life, revealing a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors that of Italian communism itself.

The Insomniac on the Bridge

The Insomniac on the Bridge · 1985

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This quickly-filmed avant-garde farce by prolific director Raul Ruiz features an insomniac (Michel Lonsdale) whose main preoccupation is surreptitiously watching private matters -- he is a voyeur. He and an equally disreputable acquaintance rape a woman alongside the Seine, a crime made all the worse because she is pregnant. The rest of this slow-paced film deals with the consequences of that action.

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting · 1978

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MovieDramaMystery

Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.

The Divisions of Nature

The Divisions of Nature · 1978

The Divisions of Nature

MovieDocumentaryTV Movie

Ruiz on the film: "Les Divisions is a documentary about the Château de Chambord and the title comes from the Divisione of Johannes Scotus (Erigena), the ninth century Irish philosopher (who was a 'realist', although the film is more 'nominalist' in characterization of the castle which presents itself as a representation). I say that it is a representation, since it is neither practical for military purposes (too many doors), nor to live in (too many draughts), but only as pure representation. So for the commentary, I tried to imagine how a Renaissance philosopher would view it in a pastiche of a scholastic or gothic text, then a pastiche of Fichte's Vocation of Man and finally a pastiche of Baudrillard."

The Suspended Vocation

The Suspended Vocation · 1978

The Suspended Vocation

The film centers on a Dominican monk named Jérôme (played by one actor in colour and another actor in black-and-white) and his interactions with various higher-ups within the French Catholic Church. Ruiz's intention was to reflect the ideological arguments that plagued Latin American left-wing political parties.

Mysteries of Lisbon

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Three Lives and Only One Death

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MovieComedyCrime

Four intertwining stories of bizarre occurrences in Paris featuring a man who was stolen away by fairies, a professor who becomes a tramp, the lovers who inherit a chateau – and the last tale that connects all that has gone before.

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Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

The Film to Come

The Film to Come · 1997

The Film to Come

If any single piece can act as a key to Ruiz, it may be the 1997 short Le Film à Venir (The Film to Come). The titular film is a holy fragment of celluloid that can only be seen by a secret society known as the Philokinetes. They watch it on a loop, somnambulating through a life that is unreal by comparison. It is the belief of the Philokinetes that film has an existence “independent from humans. Cinema, they said, is the primeval soup of a new life form. There from were to emerge pure screening creatures. Which is to say, non-topical beings.” - n+1

Time Regained

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In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.

Chapter 66

Chapter 66 · 1994

A wild short made as part of a filmmaking workshop that Raúl Ruiz ran in Bogotá in October 1993.

The Castaways of Liguria

The Castaways of Liguria · 1985

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A fire started by Harry Thompson destroys the Liguria, a legendary ship of the 19th century, and its treasure of gold and diamonds sinks in the sea. Thompson manages to escape unaware that Albizetti sleeps in the same lifeboat he uses. They manage to arrive at a deserted island, which has also been reached on the opposite shore– by the other survivors of the shipwreck: three children, a woman and three men.

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