France 1999 | Director: Claire Denis | Drama | 92 Minutes | 35mm | OmU

Monday, 16. December 2024, 7 pm

Blue Salon, Room 012, HfG Karlsruhe

Free admission, donation requested

Claire Denis's BEAU TRAVAIL follows the retired Foreign Legionnaire Galoup as he strictly commands his unit in Djibouti, East Africa. When the charismatic soldier Sentain joins the team, Galoup is consumed by destructive jealousy. The film’s precise military choreographies and the rugged beauty of the desert landscapes, combined with long, meditative takes, create a reflection on the fragility of masculinity. Agnès Godard’s subtle use of color and lighting captures the physical presence and intensity of the soldiers, while tenderly reflecting on the psychology of isolation and the tension between self-fulfillment and military discipline within a rigid system.

Denis employs a minimalist color palette of soft blues, turquoise, and grays, blending seascapes and desert views. This creates a surface of calm, clarity, and coolness beneath which tension begin to arise. The blue hues enhance the film’s soberingly meditative mood, while effectively highlighting the characters' self-alienation and estrangement from themselves.

Supporting film: Arabesque for Kenneth Anger

Director: Marie Menken

USA 1961 | 5 Minutes | 16mm | Original

The Kino im Blauen Salon, the student cinema of the Hochschule für Gestaltung, has been run by students since 2017 and has been a registered association since the beginning of 2024: https://kinoimblauensalon.de/de/news.

More about the film series in winter semester 2024/25:

Welcome to our new series CINEMA OF COLORS, in which we are dedicating ten films to the fascinating phenomenon of color in cinema: how does it come about, how does it work, what does it tell...? After all, apart from time, there is probably nothing more essential than light and color, which feed our lives and our projectors. While black and white dominated early cinema for decades, the introduction of Technicolor in the 1930s ushered in a new era for our viewing habits: Color sticks deep in our memory as an emotion. Who could forget the girl's coat in SCHINDLER'S LIST? Why can you immediately recognize a Wes Anderson film by its look, and what color is the MATRIX again?

Our program spans the entire winter semester like a rainbow and shows that the Blauer Salon is not resting on its monochrome reputation. Come along and immerse yourself in a colorful palette of classics and rarities from the international cinema landscape: 10 films of various genres from 10 different production countries and 10 decades will chase the grey season away from your eyes and hearts!

10.01.25 Giorgio Moroder’s Metropolis (1984)

15.01.25 All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)

17.01.25 Double-Feature: Le monde du silence + The Life Aquatic

20.01.25 Lady Snowblood (1973)

25.01.25 Aktwechsel - 35mm Workshop

03.02.25 Fallen Angels (1995)

14.02.25 Jazz im Blauen Salon

17.02.25 Faust (1960)

22.02.25 Aktwechsel - 35mm Workshop

03.03.25 The Love Witch (2016)