Gibson's 'At Night' Premieres at Locarno
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- Beatrice Gibson directed 'At Night,' her feature debut, which premiered on August 8 at Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present program, drawing from Alice Notley’s 'The Descent of Alette' and Kathy Acker’s 'Don Quixote.'
- Alice Notley’s poetry opens and structurally shapes 'At Night,' with her quote setting the tone and poetic voiceovers serving as sonic bridges between characters and spaces.
- Bea (played by Gibson) and Didi (Diocouda Diaoune) anchor the film, their strained relationship reflecting racial and class asymmetries that Gibson intentionally centers rather than回避.
- 'At Night' adopts a poetic, question-driven structure influenced by feminist consciousness-raising and Nell Dunn’s 'Talking to Women,' expanding from a personal voicemail into a collective autofiction.
- Ben Rivers shot the film on grainy analogue footage, creating a dreamlike texture where the whirring camera emphasizes presence and the passing of time in nocturnal Paris.
Why it matters: By embedding structural inequities and poetic experimentation at its core, 'At Night' challenges conventional narrative resolution in cinema—offering not answers but a sustained inquiry into how women navigate midlife, motherhood, and power. The choice to shoot on analogue reinforces this immediacy, making the film’s form and content inseparable in its political and aesthetic stakes.
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