In relation to the closing of Ken Okiishi and Nick Mauss’ A Fair to Meddling Story, Künstlerhaus presents the film adaptation of Georges Perec’s novel Un homme qui dort (The Man Who Sleeps). The film was awarded with the Prix Jean Vigo in 1974 and follows the diaristic documentation of a young man’s (Jacques Spiesser) life, who rebels against triviality and devotes himself to the asthetic studies of objects and situations. The film will be screened in English, with the translation of the protagonist’s interior monologue spoken by Shelley Duvall.

“The recent release of Un homme qui dort on DVD is the biggest film event since the complete print of La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc was found in a closet in a Norwegian mental institution. The English-language dubbing of Perec and Queysanne’s masterpiece was only printed once and screened a handful of times, even though it features a flabbergasting voice-over by Shelley Duvall. Three years later, the relatively unknown Duvall would win best actress at Cannes for her portrayal of Millie Lammoreaux, the emotionally hermetic character in Robert Altman’s epically weird Three Women. The voice of Millie that says with famous disaffection, “I guess she’s never lived in a decorated place before,” speaks Perec’s stark experiment in psychological exhaustion with the same softened Texas accent: a fabulously odd chimera.” (Ken Okiishi, Nick Mauss)