Article by Pierre Bordero. Evening of 21 October - His Girl Friday: the perfect start
At the Théâtre des Variétés, on Tuesday 21 October 2025 at 7pm, the curtain slowly opens on Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1939), in its original subtitled version: a classic American comedy brought back to the fore to inaugurate the new cycle of the Institut Audiovisuel de Monaco.
Enter the evening's guest, Marc Cerisuelo, professor of film history and aesthetics and author of Comédie(s) américaine(s) (Capricci, 2021), who accompanies the screening with a dense and brilliant presentation. He introduces the film to the vast universe of brilliant comedy, that 1930s Hollywood in which rhythm and language became art. Before and after the screening, Cerisuelo signs his books, in collaboration with the bookshop La Bookinerie in Munich.
Even before the film begins, the audience is greeted by a visual prelude, Roulez jeunesse (1975), a delightful fragment of Monegasque youth captured in their carefree cycling. This marriage of local heritage and amateur cinema perfectly sums up the mission of the Institut Audiovisuel: to preserve, transmit and revive the memory of cinema as a living experience.
An inner criticism (without revealing too much)
His Girl Friday is often celebrated for its speed of execution - sharp dialogue, tight pacing, breathless editing. Hawks, a true architect of filmic time, imposes an almost clockwork precision, in which the word pushes the characters to their limits. This comic energy verges on vertigo at times: we laugh, but behind the lightness lies a biting satire on journalism and its excesses.
From the very first scenes, the film builds a surprisingly modern verbal choreography: jokes cross each other, chase each other, overlap, oscillating between irony and depth. Beneath the apparent lightness typical of screwball comedy lies a more serious discourse: the power of words, the manipulation of feelings, games of domination.
And at the centre of it all, a woman: Rosalind Russell. The genius of Howard Hawks manifests itself here in a gesture as simple as it is daring - to insert a grain of sand into a male gear, a woman into a world of men. Faced with an iconic figure like Cary Grant, the film's balance arises precisely from this gap: between the aspirations of Russell's character and a disenchanted, manipulative and opportunistic male universe. It is in this space of tension that the 21 October screening takes on manifesto value: cinema is not just entertainment, but an exercise in precision, vivacity and truth.
The bet is won: the evening establishes a dialogue between past and present, between nostalgia and topicality, stimulating curiosity without ever closing the mystery.
A renewed ambition - Focus on the first cycle: October - December 2025
The Institut Audiovisuel de Monaco, perhaps little known outside the Principality, pursues a far-reaching mission with Tout l'art du cinéma: to bring epochs into dialogue, to bring film heritage to life, to build bridges between archives, contemporary creation and the public. Since its beginnings (once known as Les Mardis du Cinéma ), Vincent Vatrican, Jacques Kermabon and their teams passionately cultivate a desire to build programming that feeds on Monegasque memory and cultural collaborations, while maintaining a clear artistic will.
This 22ᵃ edition adopts a new formula, more fluid, progressive and open to the unexpected. Instead of revealing everything at the beginning, the Institut chooses to reveal the season quarter by quarter - “not to give everything at once”, as Vincent Vatrican likes to say - leaving room for adjustments, surprises or homages related to current cinema events.
The concept is simple: three strong moments (October-December, January-March, April-June), each with its own calendar. No longer a single dominant theme, but a common thread, an aesthetic line (in this case American comedy), with the freedom to insert works out of the cycle according to current events or artistic opportunities.
The inaugural cycle: a start under the sign of authenticity
The cycle opened on 3 October with Una giornata particolare by Ettore Scola, a masterpiece starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Presented in the true version desired by the director - with those sepia tones that render the melancholy and intimacy of the story -, the film had its premiere in Munich before its national release in France. An opening in the name of auteur sensitivity.
The programme continues with works from different cycles or labels: Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lili Marleen for the Cinéma d'aujourd'hui / Cinéma retrouvé section; Adam Elliot's moving Mémoires d'un escargot, a delicate animated film and “not just for children”, as Vatrican likes to remind us; finally L'Arbre de l'authenticité by photographer and director Sammy Baloji, which brings a powerful artistic vision to the screen, tackling contemporary issues such as climate change and colonial heritage for the Film d'Artiste label.
At the dawn of digital platforms and continuous streaming, where the gaze disperses in abundance and in the moment, Tout l'art du cinéma reaffirms the value of the collective ritual, of the film screened in the theatre, of the word shared after viewing. By choosing to “reveal without saying too much”, the Institut Audiovisuel de Monaco opposes a patient, artisanal, human approach to cinema to fast consumption. Here, every screening is an encounter, every film a rediscovery. With this 22ᵃ edition, Vincent Vatrican, Jacques Kermabon and their teams reaffirm a simple but essential conviction: cinema is not a flow, it is a living memory, an art of time rediscovered.
Full calendar, in chronological order of public screenings :
Friday 3 October 2025, 7 pm - Une Journée particulière (Ettore Scola, 1976) - Grimaldi Forum
Tuesday 7 October 2025, 7 p.m. - Les Plages d'Agnès (Agnès Varda, 2006) - Théâtre des Variétés
Tuesday 21 October 2025, 7 pm - La Dame du vendredi (Howard Hawks, 1939) - Théâtre des Variétés
Friday 24 October 2025, 6 pm - Archives en musique - Petite Salle (family special)
Tuesday 28 October 2025, 7 pm - Mémoires d'un escargot (Adam Elliot, 2024) - Théâtre des Variétés
Tuesday 4 November 2025, 7 pm - L'Arbre de l'authenticité (Sammy Baloji, 2025) - Théâtre des Variétés
Thursday 13 November 2025, 19.00 - La Photo retrouvée (Pierre Primetens, 2024) - Petite Salle
Tuesday 18 November 2025, 7 pm - All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024) - Théâtre des Variétés
Monday 24 November 2025, 8.30 pm - Des jazz au cinéma (Thierry Jousse) - Salle Garnier
Tuesday 2 December 2025, 7 pm - Lili Marleen (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980) - Théâtre des Variétés
Tuesday 16 December 2025, 7 pm - La Garçonnière (Billy Wilder, 1959) - Théâtre des Variétés
Sunday 21 December 2025, 11 a.m. - La Danseuse (Stéphanie Di Giusto, 2015) - Grimaldi Forum
You can see the complete programme on the official website : https://institut-audiovisuel.mc/
