In her new film Pellea[s], Josephine Meckseper adapts Maurice Maeterlinck’s otherworldly play Pelléas et Mélisande for our current sociopolitical landscape, weaving together fictional scenarios and dramatic footage captured from the last Presidential inauguration, as well as from the landmark women’s march that followed. Conflating contemporary political realities with a timeless love story, the city of Washington D.C. and its architecture become a context and site of departure, giving voice to debates around notions of gender found in the original play. By underscoring the film with Arnold Schoenberg’s modernist version of Pelléas et Mélisande, Meckseper draws a direct correlation to the way early Modernism and the avant-garde developed into a form of political and aesthetic resistance to neo-classism and capitalism. A conversation with Meckseper follows.

Tuesday, January 29, 6:30pm. Free. To RSVP, please click here.