“CINE-MASTER CLASS” – 5.00 – 7.00/7.30 pm, at Aurofilm, Kalabhoomi (next to CRIPA)

If you like to discuss, share and learn more about films and Cinema, we invite you to our Cine-Master classes! Welcome to the 6th chapter with Prof. Sehdev Kumar on

Saturday 30 January, will present “HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR”

Directed by Alain Resnais, France, 1959, Duration 1:32’. With: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas, Pierre Barbaud

Overview: In the embrace of an unexpected and casual love, what does a forlorn heart wish to remember, or obliterate from memory, are at the heart of this 1959 film by one of the most celebrated French New Wave film directors, Alain Resnais.

Set in Hiroshima, in memory of the horrifying destruction wrought by the atom bomb in August 1945, quite unexpectedly the roving mind of the lovers and the hesitant images in the film both drift like a restless tongue trying to heal an aching tooth. 

In collaboration with distinguished literary figures, Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet, this film, in its style and its exploration of the nature of memory, became a certain special signature, at once subtle and unique, of all of Alain Resnais’ many other films that followed: L’Année dernière à Marienbad (1961), La Guerre est finie (1966), Mon oncle d’Amérique (1978), all exploring, in one seething image after another, the horror of forgetting and the excruciating longing for a memory beyond consolation. 

Perhaps in reversal of Descartes’, “I Think, therefore I am”, Resnais’ characters seem to suggest, “I Re-member, and hence I Become.” 

In presenting this film, Prof. Sehdev Kumar will briefly comment on the role of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in our collective civilizational trauma, and will explore the neurological basis of memory and suffering in the light of huge number of suicides being committed by American veterans returning from the war in Afghanistan. 

– Sehdev Kumar is a Professor Emeritus in Canada, and a long-time teacher of “International Films & The Human Condition” at the University of Toronto. 

– After the screening of “Hiroshima Mon Amour”, all are invited to participate in an open discussion about the film.

Film in its Original French version with Engl. Subtitles – Discussion in English. 

— We follow the Covid-19 SOP. For your information, the Aurofilm building is half open-air. Please  carry your torch light.  We follow the current SOP.

"May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born against the past that seeks to endure, so that the new things may manifest and we may be ready to receive them"
                                                                                                                                                                            The Mother
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Aurofilm - Kalabhoomi - Auroville 605 101 - TN - India
Tel. 91-0413-2622037 - on Auroville Website: auroville.org - art and culture