Poto and Cabengo, otherwise known as Virginia and Grace Kennedy.

Somebody please find me the documentary Poto and Cabengo, twins with idioglossia, directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin!  Or pay for me to go see it in Chicago at the Block Museum at 7 PM on November 17.

Revivals and Rediscoveries

In a new ongoing series, Block Cinema will screen rare and often hard-to-see American and international films—from revered classics to obscure curiosities—that deserve a second look. This Fall’s offerings include two landmark documentaries from the same year, 1980, which offer hilarious and fascinating portraits of odd pairs, including Poto and Cabengo, Jean-Pierre Gorin’s legendary study of 6 year old twins who become a media sensation after supposedly creating their own language, and Demon Lover Diary, Joel DeMott’s side-splitting, jaw-dropping portrait of Don and Jerry, two Midwestern factory workers who set out to fulfill their lifelong dream of making a low-budget horror film.

Wednesday, November 17, 7 pm
Poto and Cabengo
Co-Presented by White Light Cinema
(Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1980, US, HDCam video, 76 min.)
After his 1970s collaborative films with Jean-Luc Godard (Tout Va Bien, Letter to Jane), filmmaker and intellectual Jean-Pierre Gorin left France to teach at UC San Diego. Primarily a professor and writer, his filmmaking has been sparse, but his “Southern California Trilogy” documentaries have been recognized as classics in the genre. The first of those films, the remarkable Poto and Cabengo, interweaves the lives of two six year-old identical twin girls who seem to have developed their own private language, and Gorin’s own personal reflections on his adopted country. The result moves beyond the specific to illuminate just what it means to be human. New digital restoration from Janus Films.

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