Six women move through Paris over the course of one night. On the Metro and at bus stops, corner shops, bathrooms and bars, they speak of work, motherhood, money, race, sexual desire and uncertain futures. Among them, a filmmaker worries that the meaning of her film is escaping her, a single mother refuses the categories imposed upon her, a former sex worker looks back, and a poet lets go of trying for a child.
Inspired by Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette, Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote and the poetry of June Jordan, Beatrice Gibson turns the nocturnal journey into a feminist descent through the city’s unconscious. The Paris Metro connects a glowing world of shuttered shops, run-down hotels, aquariums and cabaret stages, as intimate conversations gradually give way to dream and performance.
Six years in the making, At Night was collectively written with a cast largely performing versions of themselves and drawing on real experience. Ben Rivers’ textured 16mm cinematography, Elvin Brandhi’s restless score and the voice of Alice Notley, recorded shortly before her death, shape a film that is both deeply personal and defiantly collective.
