PERMEABLE BOUNDARIES: THE FILMS OF URSULA MEIER
& LENSED BY Agnès Godard
at METROGRAPH
permeable boundaries: the films of ursula meier opens march 24
With her first theatrically released feature, the 2008 Isabelle Huppert vehicle Home, French Swiss director and screenwriter Ursula Meier established herself as a filmmaker with a singular ability to describe complicated family dynamics and the delicate relationship between environment and psychology. A rural utopia threatened by a new highway in Home; a housing project in a luxe ski resort in Sister; a family home surrounded by a do-not-cross boundary in The Line—Meier explores the strange energy and dramatic potential of liminal settings in her boundary-obsessed films, which can’t be fenced in by simple description.
lensed by agnès godard opens april 1
It’s impossible to imagine the films of Ursula Meier, subject of her own Metrograph retrospective, without the contribution of cinematographer Agnès Godard—but you could say this about just about any film that Godard ever worked on. Very arguably the pre-eminent French DP of her generation and a crucial player in developing the tactile, intimate style of longtime confederate Claire Denis, Godard has played a crucial part in producing a startling number of the most indelible images produced in cinema since 1991, when she had her first feature credit on Agnès Varda’s Jacquot de Nantes. Presented alongside the Meier series, take this opportunity to take a closer look at the products of an infallible eye.