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Jean-Pierre Gorin, Poto and Cabengo, 1980 (still); image: courtesy Janus Films

Film

Poto and Cabengo

Thursday, Feb 16, 2017

8:15 p.m.

Poto and Cabengo… refers to the unusual names that two little girls, the Kennedy twins, call one another. They had confounded their family by conversing with one another in their own language… Gorin’s explorations of the twins’ behavior and their family are the central dramas of this extraordinary documentary film. The mysteriousness of childhood and the innocence of the girls, who are shyly wondering why they are suddenly the focal points of outsiders’ attentions, become part of an ethnographic detective story. It leads the spectator into that imaginative world behind our world, which children see only for a time and only some grownups remember, but in silence.” — Albert Johnson, San Francisco International Film Festival

“It is about an unstructured discourse (‘the language of the twins’) surrounded by structured discourses (the discourse of the family, the discourse of the media, the discourse of therapy, the discourse of documentary filmmaking). At the end I was left with a sense that we do not speak, but that we are spoken through.”— Jean-Pierre Gorin on Poto and Cabengo


Film Details

Country: USA/Germany
Languages: French, English, German
Year: 1980
Running time: 73 min
Format: Digital presentation

Director: Jean-Pierre Gorin

Producers: Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, Jean-Pierre Gorin

Cinematographer: Les Blank
Editor: Greg Durbin
Print Source: Janus Films


Films and schedules may be subject to change.

Modern Cinema’s Founding Supporters are Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein. Generous support is provided by Nion T. McEvoy and the Susan Wildberg Morgenstein Fund. Additional support is provided by Becky Draper.