Cesarée
Marguerite Duras, France, 1978, 35mm, 11m
French with English subtitles
Duras’s heartrending narration elegizes Queen Berenice, banished from Rome by Emperor Titus in the First Century. (In typical Duras fashion, the two are referred to only as “Elle” and “Lui.”) Footage consists of discarded shots from Le Navire Night, with the Seine and Tuileries Gardens “playing” the title locale, the speculative site of Berenice’s exile.

En rachâchant
Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, France, 1982, 16mm, 7m
French with English Subtitles
Adapted from Marguerite Duras’s 1971 text Ah! Ernesto by Straub and Huillet, this rigorous and comic story concerns a young boy (Olivier Straub) who vows to discontinue his education “because at school they teach me things I don't know!” Duras would later adapt Ah! Ernesto herself with 1985’s Les Enfants.

L’Homme atlantique
Marguerite Duras, France, 1981, 35mm, 42m
French with English subtitles
In this avant-garde short, Duras uses outtakes from Agatha et les lectures illimitées, removing Agatha and leaving only the voice and likeness of her brother (Yann Andréa). Duras scholar Leslie Hill contends that for the first time in her work, “the gap between image and sound is now aligned with the fissure of sexual difference itself.”

Nuit noire, Calcutta
Marin Karmitz, France, 1964, digital projection, 24m
French with English subtitles
Duras scripted this sketch of Jean (Maurice Garrel), a writer struggling to complete a Calcutta-based novel while battling alcoholism and creative impotence. Most of the text is spoken off-screen, evoking dislocation that’s echoed visually in the world beyond Jean’s window—could the woman outside be the character he’s unable to capture in words?