French

A writer at the height of his fame: Daniel Boltanski, known to the world as bestselling author Serge Novak, lives in Switzerland with his wife Nicoletta. Her son Fabrizio is getting married on the isle of Capri. On the way there, on the hydrofoil, Daniel meets an extraordinarily beautiful woman, Mila, and they spend the night together. Daniel wakes up in the morning after a wild night of sex to discover there’s no trace of her. He’s late for church; everyone’s waiting for him. As the radiant bride enters, Daniel realizes she’s the woman he’s just spent the night with. But they secretly keep up their affair, abandoning themselves to their passion. It’s the start of a relentless mechanism where Daniel is the target of a devious blackmailer…Read More »

Synopsis:
An unknown future. WWIII extends. Jean-Marie Despres, a prestigious surgeon, broken by life and his divorce supervises a field hospital, a few kilometers from the front. He meets the young and beautiful nurse Harmony. She is an idealist, she gives him hope.Read More »

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A failed musician wanders in Paris, with a crossword puzzle as only guide. An initiatory journey between Good and Evil.Read More »

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“Les œuvres de Lena Vandrey qui se trouvent au Musée d’Art Brut de Lausanne, acquises par Dubuffet, sont des effigies de femmes, des sortes de déesses, d’amazones, des personnages totémiques d’une grande force d’expression. Elles sont faites de matières très brutes. Ce n’est pas de la peinture illusionniste. Il y a une tension dramatique qui détruit le système de représentation pour créer un contact beaucoup plus charnel avec l’objet” (Michel Thévoz).Read More »

Premiere: Filmfestival Venice 1988
Awards: Golden Lion (Filmfestival Venice), Félix (European Filmaward of the European Film Academy)

Joris Ivens’ last film, made with Marceline Loridan, is a testamentary view on his own life and the changes in the world. After Pour le Mistral this film is his second attempt to film the invisible: the wind. On location in China they try to capture the wind as a natural phenomenon, and as metaphor for the constant changes in Culture and Society. In 1988 the film premiered at the film festival of Venice, where Joris Ivens received the Golden Lion for his complete oeuvre.Read More »

Synopsis:
A French little town, at the end of the twenties. Julien Davenne is a journalist whose wife Julie died a decade ago. He gathered in the green room all Julie’s objects. When a fire destroys the room, he renovates a little chapel and devotes it to Julie and his other dead persons.Read More »

AMG: The story of how a friendship between two of Europe’s most important filmmakers turned into a rivalry is recounted in this documentary. François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard first met in 1949; in many ways they were very different people — Godard came from a wealthy and supportive family, while Truffaut had troubles with both school and the law during a hardscrabble youth — but they were both passionate devotees of the cinema, and became star writers at the pioneering film journal Cahiers du Cinéma. Ten years later, Truffaut and Godard were the most visible figures in the New Wave of French cinema, having enjoyed international success with The 400 Blows and Breathless. Read More »

Quote:
Lisa Heredia, la veuve et la monteuse de Jean-Claude Brisseau, nous a confié ces films. Ce sont ses tout premiers essais, qu’il a montrés quelques années plus tard à Eric Rohmer, qui en fut enthousiasmé et qu’il l’a introduit auprès [de la maison de production] des Films du Losange. Comme il est pour l’instant peu probable que la société nous permette de reprogrammer la rétrospective qui aurait dû lui être consacrée, nous avons jugé de notre devoir de montrer ces films sur notre plate-forme pour compléter la connaissance qui est due à tout grand cinéaste. (Frédéric Bonnaud, Le Monde)Read More »

Afrique 50, France’s first anticolonialist film, was banned by the censorship board, yet has recently been awarded a prize by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. On its completion, this biting pamphlet against French colonialism in black Africa earned its author thirteen indictments and a year’s prison sentence. In the post-war period of European reconstruction, France wanted to show her colonies in the best possible light and promoted the image of the Republic leading her child-like pupils with a maternal hand to the light of reason and progress. Not everybody, however, subscribed to this vision.Read More »