ICA is closed from the 30 May – 3 June inclusive.
I am for a poor cinema: Le Camion cost 300,000 francs. Describing the end of the world with a billion francs doesn’t interest me because I don’t want the billions to see themselves in the film.
If the script of Le Camion had been made into a conventional narrative film, it would have depicted a woman hitchhiker waiting by the side of a country road, before being picked up by a lorry. The majority of the film would have been taken up by conversations between the pair. The viewer would have noticed “a discrepancy in their pairing—perhaps arbitrary, due to a difference in age and the fact that we can’t easily ascertain what social ‘class’ the woman belongs to, nor uncover any sort of explanation for her presence there.”
Instead, the only bodies that appear on-screen are those of the filmmaker and her long-time friend and collaborator, Gérard Depardieu (whom, for Duras, possessed “a Shakespearean physique but could just as well be a lorry driver”). At a table in Duras’s Neauphle-le-Château home, they read the script of this unrealised film, unrehearsed. Occasionally, we are shown images of a lorry, at a distance, as it travels along a country road. In its repetitions and withholdings, Le Camion – and even the large, hulking truck – exudes a strange eroticism.
Introduced by Martin Crowley, Professor of Modern French Thought and Culture at University of Cambridge and author of Duras, Writing, and the Ethical: Making the Broken Whole.
Screening on 35mm.
If the script of Le Camion had been made into a conventional narrative film, it would have depicted a woman hitchhiker waiting by the side of a country road, before being picked up by a lorry. The majority of the film would have been taken up by conversations between the pair. The viewer would have noticed “a discrepancy in their pairing—perhaps arbitrary, due to a difference in age and the fact that we can’t easily ascertain what social ‘class’ the woman belongs to, nor uncover any sort of explanation for her presence there.”
Instead, the only bodies that appear on-screen are those of the filmmaker and her long-time friend and collaborator, Gérard Depardieu (whom, for Duras, possessed “a Shakespearean physique but could just as well be a lorry driver”). At a table in Duras’s Neauphle-le-Château home, they read the script of this unrealised film, unrehearsed. Occasionally, we are shown images of a lorry, at a distance, as it travels along a country road. In its repetitions and withholdings, Le Camion – and even the large, hulking truck – exudes a strange eroticism.
Introduced by Martin Crowley, Professor of Modern French Thought and Culture at University of Cambridge and author of Duras, Writing, and the Ethical: Making the Broken Whole.
Screening on 35mm.
07:00 pm
Tue, 13 Aug 2024
Cinema 1
06:30 pm
Tue, 27 Aug 2024
Cinema 1
Ticket information
- All tickets that do not require ID (full price, disabled, income support) can be printed at home or stored in email
- For aged-based concession tickets (under 25, student and pensioner) please bring relevant ID to collect at the front desk before the event.
Access information
Cinema 1
- Both our Cinemas have step free access from The Mall and are accessible by ramp
- We have 1 wheelchair allocated space with a seat for a companion
- All seats are hard back, have a crushed velvet feel and they do not recline
- These are our seat size dimensions: W 42 x D 45 x H 52
- Arm rest either side of the seat dimensions: L 27 x W 7 x H 20
for the following requirements:
- We have unassigned seating. If you require a specific seat, please reserve this in advance
- Free for visitors where ticket prices are a barrier, please email
All films are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with a 10 min. curated selection of trailers.
Red Members gain unlimited access to all exhibitions, films, talks, performances and Cinema 3.
Join today for £20/month.
no. 236848.