José Maria is a seventeen-year-old high school student, one of the most talented students in his class. One day, his mother meets the director of the institution, who tells her that José Maria lacks manhood. But instead of defending him, the latter describes him as “very wise and sensitive”, then goes so far as to mention the possibility of an exception. When the news reaches his father, who is determined to make a man out of his son, the situation takes a different turn: José Maria realizes that he wants to become a woman.
The fruit of the collaboration of the Barcelona director Vincente Aranda and the famous actress Victoria Abril, with whom he will shoot a dozen films, “Cambio de sexo” is an avant-garde film, the production of which was long censored by the political regime. of Franco. Made in 1977, before disappearing from the darkroom for no less than forty years, this film, bold in terms of its social and political themes, is accompanied by a refined aesthetic, typical of Spanish cinema of the years 1970. eroticism, Vincente Aranda was a transgressive filmmaker, moving away from clichés and sensationalism, to show the pain experienced by those who are excluded from society.
The film will be unveiled in a single screening this Sunday, February 5 at 6pm in the original version with subtitles, as part of the Retrovision cycle. After the screening, Nicolas Potin will lead the conference entitled “Metamorphoses, mixing genres in cinema”. Through film extracts, he will return to the singular games of the gaze and the “female-masculine” plural roles, between transformation, transition and transgression.
Supa Sauce du Casino will follow the screening on the first floor of the cinema.