JEAN COCTEAU BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FUNDRAISER! ft. TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS

Sacred Monster, Surrealist Study Group, & 7th House present a very special birthday celebration for the avant-garde the master!

Date and time Saturday, July 5 · 6 - 11pm PDT

Location Philosophical Research Society
3910 Los Feliz Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90027

Tickets: $28.52
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jean-cocteau-birthday-celebration-fundraiser-ft-testament-of-orpheus-tickets-1400384731429

About this event:

Celebrate the avant garde icon's 136th birthday and help us raise funds for a new, improved projector!

“I am beyond excited to celebrate Jean Cocteau’s birthday in the manner he would have loved most: a raging party! PRS has been so good to me and to Cocteau’s work, this venue is one of my favorites in Los Angeles, and if Cocteau had had the opportunity, I am sure he would have loved being amongst this community of curious, intelligent, and gorgeous Angelenos.” - Chloë Cassens

On July 5th, The Philosophical Research Society’s Surrealist Study Group, 7th House Screenings, and Chloë Cassens’ SACRED MONSTER are proud to present a 136th birthday party for avant-garde icon Jean Cocteau! This very special celebration is a fundraiser for PRS, brimming with birthday festivities, a screening of Cocteau’s 1960 surrealist masterpiece THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS, a discussion between Cassens and Surrealist Study Groups’ dama, the launch of SACRED MONSTER Volume 1, and is a fundraiser for a new, improved projector PRS's auditorium!

One of the most important and multifaceted artists of the 20th Century, Jean Cocteau’s legacy in art and culture is unparalleled, influencing everything from filmmaking and music to modern symbolism and queer representation. As the representative of the Severin Wunderman Collection, which is the largest collection in the world of works by Cocteau, Chloë Cassens founded SACRED MONSTER to engage the public with interdisciplinary projects that illuminate Cocteau’s place in the canon of avant-garde and queer art as well as his continued influence on contemporary culture at-large from celebrity personas to reality television.

For his 136th birthday, Cassens will host a party at the Philosophical Research Society followed by a screening of Testament of Orpheus (1960), the last film in Cocteau’s groundbreaking Orphic Trilog which brings full circle the journey he began in THE BLOOD OF A POET. In the film, Cocteau stars as a poet wandering surreal wastelands and encountering a cast of characters—including the likes of Pablo Picasso, Jean-Pierre Leáud, Jean Marais and Yul Brynner—who usher in cycles of death and resurrection. The film serves as a metafilmic reflection with Cocteau inserting himself into the story, blurring the lines between creator and creation and influencing later movements of “total art” and cross-disciplinary experimentations. Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament de Orphée) brings full circle the journey Cocteau began in The Blood of a Poet, an exploration of the torturous relationship between the artist and his creations.

Cassens will also launch the release of SACRED MONSTER Volume 1, a new zine gathering several of her essays on Jean Cocteau, Vanderpump Rules and its Surrealist roots, Kanye West, the erotic prose poem which shocked 1920s Paris, and more.

Join us for this unforgettable evening of surrealist celebration, in support of The Philosophical Research Society!

Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament de Orphée)
Dir. Jean Cocteau, France, 1960, 80 mins, B&W, French w/ English Subtitles, Digital.

ABOUT CHLOË CASSENS
Chloë Cassens is the representative of the Severin Wunderman Collection, the largest in the world of works by iconoclastic French artist Jean Cocteau. It makes up the entirety of the contents of the Musée Jean Cocteau-collection Severin Wunderman in Menton, France. She is a longtime scholar of Cocteau with a unique perspective, as she is Wunderman’s granddaughter. Based in Los Angeles, she was raised between LA, Switzerland and France before receiving her BA in Comparative Literature from Barnard College. She is the author of SACRED MONSTER, a biweekly essay project dedicated to celebrating Cocteau and the Collection. As the Collection’s representative, she works to educate others about Wunderman’s legacy and popularize Cocteau’s work around the globe.

Chloë Cassens on Instagram
Chloë Cassens website

ABOUT SEVERIN WUNDERMAN
Severin Wunderman (1938-2008) was the Chairman of Corum Timepieces. A survivor of the Holocaust, his extraordinary trajectory saw him go from a child hidden from Nazis to striking gold as the Founder of Gucci Timepieces. Born in Belgium, he later became an American citizen who lived in La-colle-sur-loup, France; Laguna Beach, CA; and London, England. He dedicated his life to philanthropy, and anonymously gave his fortune away to those who needed it most. Married seven times, the love of his life was his art collection. He amassed the world’s largest collection of works by Jean Cocteau, starting from when he was nineteen years old until his death. On December 31, 2004, he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by President Jacques Chirac. A titan of the watch industry, he was known as “The Time Lord”. The Musée Jean Cocteau-collection Severin Wunderman opened in 2011, and contains over 1200 pieces donated by Wunderman to Menton, France. He is survived by four children and six grandchildren.

ABOUT dama
Amanda Maciel Antunes (aka dama) is a Brazilian artist based in Los Angeles. Her auto-didactic and transdisciplinary practice merges language and durational performance to create site-specific works. She works in collaboration with public libraries, nature and communal spaces, reflecting on the selective nature of memory, inherent language and anthropological references written by women as points of departure.

Sites of practice have included a former WWII military shelter in East LA, Sæborg historical theatre in a northern fjord, Iceland, The Crowley Theatre in Marfa, TX; a Dessana Tribe territory in Rio Negro, Brazil; the Los Angeles National Forest; and the High Desert of California. She has exhibited her work in the USA, Brazil and Iceland. Recent select exhibitions and solo performances at Galeria Vermelho, Galeria Chão, Wignall Museum, Track16 Gallery, Irrational Exhibits, 18th Street Arts Center, Oregon Contemporary, Brand Art Library, Irvine Fine Arts Center, Philosophical Research Society. Her first book titled Second Birth was published in the Spring of 2023 by HEXENTEXTE. dama is a librarian at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles where she also curates and hosts a monthly Surrealist Study Group focusing on women authors and artists in conversation.
Sacred Monster website