The Treasury of Human Inheritance (A. K. Mitchell, 2024)

Treasury of Human Inheritance, a series published from 1909 to 1958, represents an important milestone in the history of genetics.  This project—co-published as Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs, which, even more confusingly, also served as Treasury's parent publication for a time—was overseen by Karl Pearson, a leading biostatistician and eugenicist.  Treasury of Human Inheritance sought to compile and analyse family pedigrees in order to illustrate the inheritance of physical and mental diseases in humans; the initiative sprang from of a need for hard empirical evidence to support studies in heredity.

During the first half of the twentieth century, access to such information was very limited, and Pearson's object was to standardise the data collected.  Treasury's evolution into an independent series reflected the growing emphasis on, and appetite for, genetic research.  However, Treasury—as the title of its sometime sister journal makes clear—is also bound to the murky field of eugenics, a sub-Darwinian belief system that aims to improve the human gene pool via selective breeding.  Nowadays, eugenics is rightly debunked, but the import attached to Treasury is a reminder that this outré theory was once considered a credible one.

For all its experimental form, Alexis Kyle Mitchell's film The Treasury of Human Inheritance—note the subtle use of the definite article, which is very handy when it comes to differentiating the movie from its near-namesake periodical—is an intensely personal work centring on myotonic dystrophy (DM), a hereditary muscle-wasting genetic disorder whose potency increases as it is passed on.  Via a dissonant combination of home movies, Zoom calls, and footage of derelict buildings, Canadian artist Mitchell poignantly depicts the ravages of this disease, which has affected three generations of the filmmaker's family.

The film is propelled along by a throbbing synth soundtrack which, as per Mitchell's stated intention, approximates particular patterns of genetic conditions.  This approach to sound design adds a haptic, visceral element to the work that complements the tactile 16mm cinematography; as much as Mitchell's film provides real insight into life with DM, it is also an experience, and a highly sensorial one at that.  The Treasury of Human Inheritance is a peculiar nexus of art and science, one which confronts the stark realities of disease, death and dying—not as alien concepts, but rather as integral aspects of the human condition.

Darren Arnold

Image: BFI

My Stolen Planet (Farahnaz Sharifi, 2024)

The Iranian revolution of 1979 led to the overthrow of the Shah's monarchy and the return from exile of Ruhollah Khomeini.  The insurrection marked a significant watershed for Iran, one which saw the start of both the Islamic Republic and Khomeini's decade-long stint as premier.  As the 1980s dawned, Iran's efforts to install a new political system based on Islamic principles caused fractious relations with other countries, particularly the US, with the Iran hostage crisis—a standoff that actually began before the official commencement of Khomeini's tenure—resulting in real diplomatic strain between the two nations.

The shadow of the revolution palpably hangs over essay film My Stolen Planet, which tracks the life of its Iranian maker, Farahnaz Sharifi, who was born in 1979.  The accident of Sharifi's birth year is largely what drives My Stolen Planet, as she recounts how her experience of pre-revolution Iran is limited to secondhand stories and distressed film reels (more on those later).  Through candid footage, we witness the duality of daily life in Tehran, where private freedom is juxtaposed with public oppression.  Part diary, part political commentary, My Stolen Planet is very much about memory, both individual and collective.

Sharifi's tale is one of curiosity and discovery as she navigates the intricacies of her identity in a society where questions are, in the main, neither welcomed nor valued.  She obsessively collects strangers' 8mm home movies—featuring birthday parties and so on—in the process assembling a collage of yesteryear that conveys an image of a quite different Iran.  Poignant excerpts from these films form the emotional core of My Stolen Planet, and the end credits include an appeal to help identify those featured; Sharifi laments how so many treasured recordings ended up discarded by owners fearful of the post-revolution government.

Yet it is these old films that allow the director to form a connection to the past, and she uses them to fill in the blanks of her own life, finding a commonality between herself and these ghosts.  My Stolen Planet may be steeped in a Resnaisian obsession with the Before Times, but it still has room for more recent events—such as Sharifi's mother's fight against Alzheimer's disease, and the civil unrest that followed the 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini, both of which, in very different ways, underline the great importance of remembering.  Amini's death inspired the title track of Waddinxveen band Within Temptation's Bleed Out, a song which, like Sharifi's film, is a quite unique meditation on identity, freedom and memory.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime (1/9/26–6/10/26)

This autumn BFI celebrates Claude Chabrol’s cool, precise, entertaining and deliciously wicked thrillers with a BFI Southbank season, Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime, running from 1 September–6 October, including the BFI Distribution rerelease of La Femme infidèle (1969) in the UK and Ireland on 11 September. The first of Chabrol’s great run of bourgeois psychological thrillers, La Femme infidèle is one of three of the director’s films that BFI Distribution has acquired: Le Boucher (1970) and Les Biches (1968) will also be available. A curated Chabrol BFI Player online collection will also be available for audiences UK-wide.

A number of films in the season are screening on 35mm. Often cited as the first French New Wave film, Chabrol’s first feature Le Beau Serge (1958) announced its director's preoccupation with the darker side of human nature. Shot on location in his mother’s hometown, the film uncovers violence and despair in the ordinary everydayness of provincial life. The Hatter’s Ghost (1982, pictured below), Chabrol’s underrated and often overlooked adaptation of Georges Simenon’s novel, stars French screen legends Michel Serrault and Charles Aznavour as two men playing a murderous game of cat and mouse.

The Cry of the Owl (1987) is a thrilling adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, where the boundaries between victim and perpetrator blur when the object of a man’s voyeuristic gaze looks back. Chabrol is arguably at his most Hitchcockian here in this homage to Rear Window. The Bridesmaid (2004) stars Benoît Magimel as a shy, somewhat passive young man who meets a woman at his sister’s wedding, falling hopelessly into an all-consuming affair. La Rupture (1970) finds Chabrol working in a more overtly melodramatic mode—and all the more disturbing and unhinged for it—in a film about the institutions that fail women.

Other titles in the season include À double tour (1959), a lurid and transgressive adaptation of Stanley Ellin’s novel starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, which prefigures the look and feel of later Hitchcockian thrillers. The Third Lover (1962) is a precise study in voyeurism and manipulation that anticipates the claustrophobic domestic dramas that would define Chabrol’s greatest period to come. Les Biches (1968), a gender-swapping riff on The Talented Mr Ripley, is a polarising work, with a story that mines the seduction of privilege and marks the beginning of Chabrol’s creative and personal partnership with Stéphane Audran.

Source/images: BFI