Film Festival: Spies in the Cinema

La Filmothèque du Quartier Latin, June 1 - 14, 2022

 Secret agents, double agents, moles, men and women in the shadows... Since its appearance at the beginning of the 20th century, the figure of the spy has captured the imagination of the public and has became an essential prototype in cinema, brought to life by some of the greatest directors, from Josef von Sternberg, Samuel Fuller, Alfred Hitchcock, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Steven Spielberg, Éric Rochant, and Arnaud Desplechin. How can we explain the remarkable endurance of the espionage genre, which has also become quintessential to television series: Mission Impossible, The Prisoner, Le Bureau des légendes, Killing Eve, etc.? The multiple forms taken by spy fiction—and more broadly security fiction,—from comedy to science fiction, challenge the idea of a stable boundary between imagination and reality. From the Second World War to the Cold War, and to the “War on Terror,” the figure of the fictional spy has evolved in line with the developments in international relations and technology, revealing and informing geopolitical and societal evolution. Security fiction thus constitutes a precious resource for depicting and thinking about secret actions of the governments that are carried out in the name of citizens—and sometimes against them.

La Filmothèque du Quartier Latin, in collaboration with the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the European project DEMOSERIES, invites you to discover, or rediscover, these clandestine histories. The films presented as a part of the festival “Spies in the Cinema” reveal the extent to which the espionage genre has become part of contemporary public imagination and debate, and, in so doing, allow us to understand the participation of security fiction in the joint construction of ideas, affects, and policies.

On the festival’s program: conspiracies, disguises, moral conflicts, passions and betrayals, dark alleys and mysterious notes slipped into the yesterday’s newspaper.... Accompanied by regular introductory lectures and debates. Join us in spying on these classic spy characters from the shadows of the theatre. Just remember to turn off your cell phones, you never know who is spying on you...

For more information, visit: https://www.lafilmotheque.fr/evenements/les-espions-au-cinema/