In parallel to developing his own career as a film director, Autant-Lara was one of the most important of L’Herbier’s early collaborators. He contributed visionary costume design and art direction to several of L’Herbier’s films, most notably L’Inhumaine and Don Juan et Faust. In this illustrated lecture Sarah Leahy will situate the career of this director, following developments from his creative relationship with L’Herbier. The lecture will include a rare screening of Autant-Lara’s first experimental film Fait-divers (1924), starring the exceptional Antonin Artaud, just before he joined the Parisian surrealist group.
Sarah Leahy is a senior lecturer in French and Film at Newcastle University, the author of Casque d'or (I.B. Tauris, 2007) and the co-editor of Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives 1985–2010 (2010).