France

Summary
Garage attendant Louis Stainval is a shy daydreamer with no money. One day, he wins a large sum of money via the national lottery and decides to spice up his life. He prevents a failed artist named Raoul Grandvivier from killing himself and takes him home. Here, Louis meets Raoul’s beautiful daughter Lucie and immediately falls in love. So that he can go on seeing Lucie, Louis pays frequent calls on Raoul, ostensibly to buy his paintings. The paintings are so bad that Louis just throws them into the river Seine. Because he has found someone to buy his work, Raoul begins to believe that he is a serious painter. This misunderstanding will cause a great deal of trouble…Read More »

1776. Along with Lithuania and Prussia, Poland has succumbed to the might of the Russian Empire, but a determined resistance movement is working to bring an end to the country’s annexation. A young woman named Sonia is the figurehead of the Polish resistance fighters, but the Empress Catherine II has no fear of her, as she knows that Sonia is of Russian blood – a fact that she asks the Baron de Kempelen to make known to her political enemies. But Kempelen’s allegiances are ambiguous and he appears more preoccupied with the elaborate life-size automata he is working on than the political situation.Read More »

Quote:
Luc goes off on his bicycle to forget his problems. A suit of accidents make him spend the night in a little town of Picardie. He meets Sylvain, who tries to help him, for the best and the worst.Read More »

In 6 Bagatelles (6 Bagatelas), Pedro Costa takes unused scenes from his 2001 documentary on Staub and Huillet, Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Oû gît votre sourire enfoui?) and edits them into a new context.Read More »

Quote:
Lionel Soukaz (1953, Paris, France) at age 20 started making underground short films in Super 8, dealing with homosexuality in line with the Parisian FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’Action Revolutionnaire; Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action), pornography (Ixe) and social criticism (I Live in a Bush World). He worked as an organizer of many gay film festivals such as the Film Festival of La Rochelle in 1977, and the Fortnight of Homosexual Cinema in 1978 in Paris. This last one was interrupted by the Ministry of Culture when Soukaz was arrested. He made Race D’ep, un siècle d’images de l’homosexualité with Guy Hocquenghem in 1979. Since then, he has pursuited a discreet career as a video filmmaker.Read More »

This film by Guy E. Debord is based on his 1967 book of the same title both of which convey ideas about the consumer capitalism’s mode of production and the effects on everyday life. Though both sources use a different means of communication they both powerfully convey the ideas of the situationists. I wont rant on about the ideas contain within this film which are quite profound and have influenced heavily on the Anti-Capitalist movement and post-structuralism through thinkers like Jean Baudrillard. The structure of the film itself is a series of shots from Hollywood films to soviet “collective hero” film experiments to soft-core porn(nothing past topless) to archival footage of historical events(e.g. May 68 revolt in France) and representations of everyday life. Read More »

Synopsis by Clarke Fountain
Coup Pour Coup is a film about a worker’s strike at a textile plant, and is written and enacted by the actual striking workers. This film was a collaborative and collective effort. Videotapes of upcoming scenes were discussed by the workers, and camera angles as well as dramatic refinements were agreed on before any film was exposed. Given that the film presents the worker’s point of view and is a largely amateur effort, reviewers found it surprisingly effective as a dramatic piece. One interesting feature of the film, and of the strike itself, is that it was organized and led by women. While there had been male union leaders, they were bypassed or ousted for their lack of leadership, understanding, or negotiating skills.Read More »

A few days of a dandyish French intellectual in his late 20s named Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who’s living with and supported by his lover, Marie (Bernadette Lafont); she’s in her mid-30s and runs a small boutique. In the first scene he borrows a neighbor’s car and tracks down a former girlfriend, Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten), who’s just started a new semester at the Sorbonne, and tries to persuade her to marry him, only to discover that she’s just agreed to marry someone else. (We and Alexandre briefly glimpse Gilberte with her husband, played by Eustache, toward the end of the film, in the liquor section of a department store.) After hanging out with an equally idle friend (Jacques Renard) at the Deux Magots cafe, Alexandre follows a young woman after she leaves a nearby table, asks for her phone number, and scores; the remainder of the film is devoted to his courting of her.Read More »

Quote:
Mostly talking heads interviewed about the state violence they witnessed or endured during the month of May and June 68 in Paris. Nurses, students in medicine or else, passers-by, journalists, a psychiatrist, etc…Read More »