This evening at 7 p.m., the inaugural conference of the exhibition Top Secret. Cinema and espionage, presented by the Cinémathèque française at CaixaForum.
From Mata Hari to Malotru, via James Bond and Edward Snowden, children and adults will be able to immerse themselves in the secret world of spies. The exhibition explores the relationship between cinema and espionage and between the props and the real technology used.
Following a chronological-thematic path, Top Secret. Cinema and Espionage establishes as a starting point a play of similarities between the figures of the film director and the spy. Because filmmakers deploy techniques to record or, at the same time, falsify the world, we can say that they are also spies. The latter never cease to hide, to disguise themselves, to change their identity like an extraordinarily talented actor. Throughout the years, cinema has been used as an instrument of propaganda, and the techniques of cinematic capture have been at the heart of espionage practices.
In addition, the exhibition focuses on the concept of the double agent and on women in particular. Some star actresses took advantage of their fame to help the intelligence services, for example Hedy Lamarr. This exhibition allows us to re-evaluate their importance in history and to demonstrate the political and feminist empowerment of female spies, far from reducing the role of female double agents to that of hypersexualised seductresses in the context of “sexpionage”. In total, nearly 300 objects from the collections of La Cinémathèque française and other museums or private collections will be on display: electronic devices, artefacts, archival documents, art installations, film fragments… You can book a place at the inaugural conference by clicking here.
