France

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The 24 avant garde shorts of the 1920s and ’30s chosen for this Kino set from the collection of curator Raymond Rohauer span the gamut of movements and styles—dada, surrealism, city symphony, environmental terrarium, direct exposure. The diversity already makes the proposition of plowing through the pair of discs from start to finish not only daunting but perhaps ill-advised. Especially when lurking among the unassailable landmarks of silent avant garde cinema like Joris Ivens’s Regen (an evocative socio-environmental replication of the civic reaction to a rainy downpour on city streets) and Fernand Léger’s Ballet Méchanique (a rhythmic Parisian melange that’s kaleidoscopic in both its prismatic cinematography and its undulating circles of repetition) are at least two (possibly three) works that aim to take the piss out of the concept of non-narrative art cinema. The Hearts of Age, Orson Welles’s fraternal collaboration with William Vance (made when Welles was a mere 19 years of age), is a backyard farce that Welles later admitted to Peter Bogdanovich was made in benign mockery of the Buñuel/Dali collaborations that were inescapable in the day, though it scarcely owes any tangible debt to the style of Un Chien Andalou.Read More »

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The 24 avant garde shorts of the 1920s and ’30s chosen for this Kino set from the collection of curator Raymond Rohauer span the gamut of movements and styles—dada, surrealism, city symphony, environmental terrarium, direct exposure. The diversity already makes the proposition of plowing through the pair of discs from start to finish not only daunting but perhaps ill-advised. Especially when lurking among the unassailable landmarks of silent avant garde cinema like Joris Ivens’s Regen (an evocative socio-environmental replication of the civic reaction to a rainy downpour on city streets) and Fernand Léger’s Ballet Méchanique (a rhythmic Parisian melange that’s kaleidoscopic in both its prismatic cinematography and its undulating circles of repetition) are at least two (possibly three) works that aim to take the piss out of the concept of non-narrative art cinema. The Hearts of Age, Orson Welles’s fraternal collaboration with William Vance (made when Welles was a mere 19 years of age), is a backyard farce that Welles later admitted to Peter Bogdanovich was made in benign mockery of the Buñuel/Dali collaborations that were inescapable in the day, though it scarcely owes any tangible debt to the style of Un Chien Andalou.Read More »

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The movie begins with a startling, intimate sex scene. A hefty middle-aged man is making love with an attractive middle-aged woman. He is avidly concerned with bringing her to orgasm, each one worries that the other is worried that the other is taking too long—“I feel good. I’m good,” insists one of them— the sex ends in resignation. What’s startling about the scene is not its explicitness, which is not inordinate. It’s the way the characters are framed, in medium closeup, in compositions that emphasis the space between their faces as much if not more than their faces. (One is reminded of Elie Faure’s writing on Velasquez, quoted by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Pierrot Le Fou.”)Read More »

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Nicolas Mallet (Jean-Louis Trintignant, The Conformist), a naive bank clerk, meets Marie-Paule (Jane Birkin, Je Taime Moi Non Plus, Keep Your Right Up), a beautiful but lonely young girl, in a quiet corner of Paris. She smiles at him and he offers to buy her a drink. When she agrees, he assumes that his luck has finally changed. But when later on they rent a room in a cheap hotel, he discovers that she is a prostitute. Before they make love, he forces her to tell him that she came to the hotel because she truly wanted him.Read More »

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For one year, from 1944 to 1945, Georges Rouquier shared the life of a peasant family, his own, in the Farrebique farm in Goutrens, in the Rouergue region. He shows us life on a farm, marked by the rhythm of seasons, from harvesting in summer to the grandfather’s rituals of slicing the bread for dinner. The film also dwells on the hardships of life on a farm and the transformation brought on by the arrival of electricity, of modern times. Farrebique reveals the beauty of these people, their closeness to their beasts and to nature, facing an often harsh life. Read More »

In St Just-and-Vacquières, Jean-Michel Burel, a schoolmaster of a multilevel class, begins his last school year before retirement. The teacher teaches tolerance and wisdom in the same way as spelling and mathematics. He leads his program with determination. He strives to support students to give them confidence and elevate them higher. Through the eyes of a former student, now a director, there is a timeless school where rigor is combined with good humor, a school where freedom begins with respect for others. A school that belongs to everyone and to the universal domain of childhood.Read More »

Fièvre is an enigmatic woman who collects dead animals. She brings them to life through animated films. One day, a man comes to see her: his wife is dead.Read More »

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Paparazzi explores the relationship between Brigitte Bardot and groups of invasive photographers attempting to photograph her while she works on the set of Jean-Luc Godard’s film Le Mépris (Contempt). Through video footage of Bardot, interviews with the paparazzi, and still photos of Bardot from magazine covers and elsewhere, director Rozier investigates some of the ramifications of international movie stardom, specifically the loss of privacy to the paparazzi. The film explains the shooting of the film on the island of Capri, and the photographers’ valiant, even foolishly dangerous, attempts to get a photograph of Bardot.Read More »

An ex-magistrate (Michel Piccoli) intent on justice joins the police force, then sets up a prostitute (Romy Schneider) and her small-time criminal boyfriend (Bernard Fresson).Read More »