Niki de Saint Phalle's A DREAM LONGER THAN THE NIGHT— 4K Restoration!

7th House is thrilled to present brilliant, fantastical feminist artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s long unseen feature film A DREAM LONGER THAN THE NIGHT (Un rêve plus long que la nuit, 1976) on the big screen for its first, non-festival Los Angeles screening! While her paintings and sculpture has long been celebrated, de Saint Phalle’s cinematic oeuvre – every bit as playful, potent, and wholly individual – has been all but buried and nigh impossible to see. No longer! Finally, A DREAM…has fantastically re-emerged with a new, beautiful 4k restoration. Her second film, and first as sole director, it is a phantasmagoric adult fairy tale that must be seen to be believed and, upon rediscovery, places her as one of the 70s most unique avant garde filmmakers.

A hand-drawn Tarot deck opens the door: the cards shift, the dream begins — de Saint Phalle conjures a kingdom where childhood dissolves into adulthood and desire reveals itself as both wondrous and terrifying. Her daughter, Laura Duke Condominas, plays the young princess Camélia, a girl who is fed up with her girlhood and longs to be a woman. She wanders through forests alive with dragons, witches, metallic lizard-men, and, once her wish of instant womanhood is granted by a mysterious witch, persistent lovers who promise more than they can give.

Every element bears the artist’s unmistakable touch—bird wings, dragons made from toy guns, shimmering hand-painted title cards, impish animated interludes, and Saint Phalle’s iconic, colorful sculptures. Synths and drums pulse through a surreal pageant of sensual, surreal spectacle: giant phalli exploding in glitter and feathers and diamond-clad women writhe in choreographed ecstasy. The encounters become stranger and more dangerous, with leather clad fascists running rampant, until a mistress offers Camélia a path out, beckoning her to a life of courtesanship. Yet the princess resists, searching not for sex but for love, even as patriarchs and kings attempt to claim her.

De Saint Phalle transforms the lifelong entanglements of rage, sexuality, trauma, and joy that colored her art into a dream-logic fairy tale that is both personal and political. The finale erupts in a carnivalesque battle of cannons and sparklers, an inversion of toxic masculine violence into joyous feminine creation.

Newly restored in 4K from the original 16mm negatives, meticulously recreating de Saint Phalle’s original version as it was released in 1976, this overlooked, long underseen surrealist cinema revelation emerges as a dazzling, audacious jewel of feminist avant-garde cinema that is not to be missed in this rare theatrical screening.

Dir. Niki de Saint Phalle, 1976, 82 min, France, In French and German with English subtitles, Unrated (Adult Audiences Only), Color, Digital.

Thanks to Jacob Perlin and Andrew Adair at The Film Desk.

Ticket price: $12 (In Person Event Only)

Please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

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