This event has passed.

Film Jean Cocteau: The Orphic Trilogy

  • Bloodofapoet_event_full
Jean Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy — Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1949), and The Testament of Orpheus (1959) — spans several cycles of Parisian bohemianism, but the films' dense webs of allusion and symbolism all point back to the singular filmmaker. Blood of a Poet was the artist's first foray into the surrealist potentials of cinema — keep a sharp eye out for a cameo by Lee Miller, the influential photographer whose work is being featured in an adjoining SFMOMA exhibition. Cocteau only continued the trilogy after making several other films, but the openly bisexual director's technique remained wonderfully anachronistic for both Orpheus and The Testament of Orpheus.

– Max Goldberg