Maison du Bonheur + Veslemøy’s Song

Presentation and Q&A: Chiara Marañón, director of programming at MUBI.

"There is something revealing in the films by Sofia Bohdanowicz, an unusual conviction with which the characters inhabit their own universe, existences defined by searches of sense that inscribing in the quotidian, distances themselves from the usual.

Maison du Bonheur and Veslemøy’s Song propose an approach to the family bonds fascinating in their apparently simple construction but clingged to a renovating and propulsive faith. Faith in what we are and in what surrounds us. Little odes to the singularity, handmade textured, stealthily radicals in their way of understanding femininity and in the curiosity they harbour, calmed but tireless. The humanist gaze that the Canadian director exercises in the world and the sense of humour that goes through these pieces, with a disarming warmth, link Bohdanowicz with the master Agnès Varda in a moving way. Let’s think about this double program as a celebration of the eternal wisdom and empathy of the mother of the Modern Cinema, through the profound tracks that she left in each of her spectators and in the new filmmaker generations to which she paved the way". Chiara Marañón

VESLEMØY'S SONG, Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada, 2018, 8’ DCP, OV EN Sub ES

Audrey Benac, a young woman, delves into the archives of the New York Public Library in search of a rare recording produced in 1909 and titled Veslemøy’s Song. The film investigates the faded legacy of the once-celebrated Canadian violinist, Kathleen Parlow.

MAISON DU BONHEUR,Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada, 2017 , 62’ DCP, OV FR, Sub ES

In 30 carefully constructed segments, Maison du bonheur paints an endearing picture of the everyday life of 77-year-old Juliane Sellam, a long-time resident of Paris. Alone in her Montmartre apartment, Sellam enjoys the little things in life.