Georges Bataille
Writing
Biography
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille was a French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, philosophy, anthropology, economics, sociology and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. In the 1920, Bataille began frequenting the circles of Surrealists, he discovered he had an ideological dispute with the views of the influential Andre Breton, and he began calling himself “an enemy from within the movement”. During this period, Georges began taking psychoanalytical treatments which were successful and enabled him to write. He edited and formulated several works on sociology, literature and religion. He did various excursions on Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. In 1935, Bataille was among the co-founders of an anti-Fascist group, Contre Attaque. In 1939, Bataille also co-founded along with Michel Lieris and Roger Callois, the College de Sociologie. He also held a fellowship at the School of Advanced Hispanic Studies in Madrid. Bataille published his first novel on sexual excess, ‘Histoire de l’oeil’ (The Story of the Eye) in 1928, under the pseudonym of Lord Auch.
Known For
After his father's death, a young man is introduced to a world of hedonism and depravity by his amoral mother.
Ma mère
The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.
A Day in the Country
While at a bullfight Simona begins flashing back to a torrid sexual relationship she had with George. Her relationship with George was one of open sexual discoveries which eventually led to revenge and murder.
Simona
Based on the 1928 novella written by Georges Bataille, the film takes place in a seemingly abandoned house where a group of people engage in bizarre wordless acts. Just as the book does, the film spans several vignettes.
Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye
Made in collaboration with Keith Sanborn, The Deadman is based on a story by Bataille, charting "the adventures of a near-naked heroine who sets in motion a scabrous free-form orgy before returning to the house to die — a combination of elegance, raunchy defilement and barbaric splendor." — Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader.
The Deadman
A traveller investigates the life and work of Georges Bataille. Through a staging of the writer's obsessive motives, the film succeeds in grasping the elusive: the sensitive nucleus of radical thought. The film contains the interviews with Pierre Klossowski and Jacques Pimpanneau.
Georges Bataille - À perte de vue
A work of spiritual pornophany whose viewing provokes a retinal trance.
Dirty
Our male narrator, Georges, reminisces about his first sexual encounters with the enchanting Simone. As the encounters become increasingly transgressive, the two characters struggle for power and dominance. The tables are turned; the story is then retold from Simone's very different POV to a horrific climax. 'Story of the Eye' is a scathing critique of the tendency, in both Hollywood and literature, to trivialize female sexuality and power. Simone and Georges battle over the metaphorical 'eye' but the real tension exists in the struggle over who gets to tell the story and ultimately, which story gets told. The hyper-reality of opera as a musical/theatrical device further exaggerates this dichotomy.
Story of the Eye
Jean-Luc Godard, and Anne-Marie Miéville Four Short Films
Four Short Films
A small homage to the French author Georges Bataille, created by the director for a class project.
Bataille in Three Different Lens
In The Wars photographer Oscar van Alphen combines an adapted version of Georges Bataille's text 'Madame Edwarda' with images drawn from his archive. 'Madame Edwarda' is a story with no beginning nor an end. A male first-person narrator and a prostitute encounter in Paris by night. It's a story about lust, power, anxiety, desire, and humiliation. Van Alphen uses Bataille's text as a metaphor for the perversity of social structures, for the uncontrollability of political and economic power, and the effects of these on human dignity. He juxtaposes pictures from the decaying and almost deserted industrial regions in Northern France and of the 1968 student rebellion in Paris, with the pornographic text from the first years of World War II.
The Wars
Ivan Cardoso short film adapted from a Georges Bataille story.
A História do Olho
Whipped by the death of her lover, a woman journey through a night of excess.