The Film series “Through the Looking Glass” is dedicated to connecting the written work of Lewis Carroll to films. Films by Federico Fellini, Michel Gondry and Raul Ruiz will all be shown this summer as part of the cycle in La casa encendida in Madrid, taking advantage of the vacation time to pull together high quality film programming.

The series is entitled “Through the Looking Glass” because it seeks to find traces of the legacy of writer Lewis Carroll in a number of films which like his works, lead us to a universe governed by laws that are anything but logical. These dazzling imaginary worlds are full of dreamlike and hallucinatory scenes. Their forms create new codes beyond the obvious reality, whose imaginary spaces have informed modern literature and the arts in general, as well as film.

Artists such as Jean Cocteau, Federico Fellini and Michel Gondry have explored through their films the possibilities and virtues of these dream-like images. Others, like Jacques Rivette, Peter Weir, Takeshi Miike and Raul Ruiz, have managed to transgress the boundaries of what is reasonable and credible. Filmmakers like Luis Buñuel and Louis Malle, have used these techniques of illusionism and surrealism to mock stupidity and human pride.

For the month of August three of these great artists will have their work presented as part of this cycle.

Michel Gondry´s amazing 2007 film “The Science of Sleep”, film starring Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Alain Chabatque will be presented on August 14th at 22:00.

The following week the focus will turn to one of the greats of Italian cinema, Federico Fellini with a film starring his beloved Giulietta Masina. Save the date for the 21st of August.

The last session of the series, August 28th, features the “The Comedy of Innocence,” directed by the exiled Chilean director Raul Ruiz who since discovering a home in Paris in the 70´s has become a fundamental reference for French art cinema. The film stars Isabelle Huppert, Jeanne Balibar, and Charles Berling and depicts a dream that film-loving visitors to apartments in Madrid can’t afford to miss!