The Mask
Johan van der Keuken, 1989, 53 min, 16mm

The Mask is a film about the legacies of revolutionary ideals and a portrait of solitude and societal false selves, moving centrifugally around the life of Philippe, a homeless 23-year-old man in Paris, during the festivities thrown for the bicentenary of the French Revolution over the month of June 1989. Through exchanges with the young man, and observation of the structures around him, the film captures the ambiguities of the real image, that “leads us astray, away from the marks and markers of the documentary,” as van der Keuken wrote of the film in 1995.

Presented in collaboration with Sabzian in the context of their 10th anniversary

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Showing as part of Open City Documentary Festival