Fahrenheit 451

1966, Francois Truffaut, UK, 105 min.

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” —Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian masterpiece about a future in which books cannot be read. Truffaut’s first film in the English language, Fahrenheit 451 makes striking use of primary colors, homogenous architecture in a conformist society, and strangely prescient wall-mounted TV screens. Starring Julie Christie and Oskar Werner.

When author Ray Bradbury heard that the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray was screening Fahrenheit 451 in Calcutta for the first time, he wrote a letter of goodwill to the Indian master of film.

Bradbury had seen Ray’s The Apu Trilogy and lauded, “You have made me proud once more of the uses of cinema, for we are involved, those of us who love motion-picture making, in working with what I call The Empathy Machine.”

About Cabaret Cinema: Sci Fi Cine Club Kolkata

Director Satyajit Ray’s Sci-fi Cine Club in 1960’s Kolkata popularized the genre in Bengal and contributed to his legacy as one of the great directors of the 20th century. Representing a selection of the films as once curated by Ray, this Cabaret Cinema series brings back to the screen early sci-fi movies that sparked the imagination of writers, directors, and enthusiasts in the region and around the world—including A Lost Future artist Matti Braun.