Harpur Cinema Presents: A Night of Knowing Nothing

Payal Kapadia, India and France, 2021 96 min

Friday, March 25 and Sunday, March 27: Lecture Hall 6, 7:30 PM. Doors open at 7:00 pm. $4   single    Admission.

Face masks are required of all attendees, regardless of vaccination status, in accordance with  University public health policies. All University public health policies will be enforced.

One of the year’s most electrify­ing debuts—and winner of the best documentary award at Cannes—Payal Kapadia’s hybrid feature A Night of Knowing Nothing is a fever dream of im­possible love tied to a broader reflection on contemporary India. Structured around letters from an unseen protagonist, L, directed to her estranged lover, K, Kapadia’s film is at once grand and contained, weaving fragments of a romance and moments of domestic life with handheld documentary foot­age captured around the country over several years. In this fervent cinétract on love and revolt, which doubles as a love letter to cinema itself, essayistic and epistolary forms suffuse the burnished, chiaroscuro images with both yearning and introspection. Utilizing a variety of formats and formal ap­proaches in service of an entrancing, cohesive whole, the film offers a rich and sensual interplay between sound and image that heightens its atmospheric textures. The dialectic of presence and absence fuels the paradoxical conundrum of capturing the flow of history, while the fitting leitmotif of dancing courses through the film with unbridled energy. A film of unexpected urgency, A Night of Knowing Nothing an­nounces the arrival of an audacious cinematic talent.