Jean Genet
Writer, journalist, explorer, filmmaker, communist militant, freedom fighter. Truths and lies. A plot twist. Politician. General De Gaulle's shadow. Overwhelmed by the weight of power. The numerous exploits of André Malraux (1901-1976).
A documentary about the French writer Jean Genet and his relations with the Palestinian revolution. One day after the September 1982 massacre at the refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut, Genet visits the camp. Suffering from throat cancer and having written nothing in years, Genet begins to write on the threshold of his death about this disturbing new experience. It leads to his last book, entitled “Un captif amoureux” in which Genet reflects on the Palestinian revolution, its defeat, and the loss of one’s homeland. In this film a young French woman of Algerian origin who is reading the book returns to the landscapes of the Palestinian resistance and the refugee camps full of exiles, in search of Genet.
Three intercut stories about outsiders, sex and violence. In "Hero," Richie, at age 7, kills his father and flies away. After the event, a documentary in cheesy lurid colors asks what Richie was like and what led up to the shooting. In the black and white "Horror," a scientist isolates the elixir of human sexuality, drinks it, and becomes a festering, contagious murderer; a female colleague who loves him tries to help, to her peril. In "Homo," a prisoner in Fontenal prison is drawn to an inmate whom he knew some years before, at Baton juvenile institute, and whose humiliations he witnessed. This story is told in dim light, except for the bright flashbacks.
A downbeat story of life inside a women's prison. There is more crime inside than out. When the inmates see that a woman is soon to be admitted for killing a young boy, they begin to plan her murder.
A wrong turn on a jazz singer's road trip results in her car breaking down near an isolated lodge run by a faded starlet and a cocksure, volatile country singer.
In the aftermath of the arrest of Angela Davis, Jean Genet reads a text denouncing racist US policy, supporting the Black Panthers party and Angela Davis for a television show that will be completely censored.
A sexually repressed school teacher releases her pent up passions in a series of shocking crimes.
Based on a play by Jean Genet, a small-time thief battles with his gay cellmate over a third illiterate, muscular convict.
Shelley Winters is the madame of a house where customers play out their erotic fantasies, oblivious to a revolution which is sweeping the country. When her old friend, the chief of police (Peter Falk), asks her to impersonate the missing queen in order to reassure the people and halt the revolution, she offers instead three of her customers to play the general, bishop and chief justice, all of whom have died in the revolution.
Two prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls, and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of communication.
