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As 2022 came to a close, we asked seven writers and filmmakers to reflect on Jean-Luc Godard's memory. Starting from a single aspect of his filmmaking—a particular film, image, sound cue, or affecting experience with his work—their responses evoke the breadth of his revolutionary legacy. We're thankful they found the words.The pieces below are written by Ephraim Asili, Richard Brody, A.S. Hamrah, Rachel Kushner, Miguel Marías, Andréa Picard, and Lucía Salas.In Memoriam JLGWhen I was in high school in the 1980s, I drove 50 miles with some friends to see Breathless at a student screening in a big auditorium at UConn. How did we know this screening was happening? How did we know how to get there? How did we even know anything was happening anywhere, ever? We saw listings in newspapers and paid attention to flyers. We had maps in our cars. But above all, it...

French New Wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard’s lasting legacy on cinema was embodied by the thousands of tributes to the late “Breathless” director.

Godard died at age 91 of assisted suicide in Switzerland, where the elective injection is legal. “He was not sick, he was simply exhausted,” a Godard family member told press outlets. The director’s longtime legal advisor Patrick Jeannere confirmed to The New York Times that Godard suffered from “multiple disabling pathologies.”

“He could not live like you and me, so he decided with a great lucidity, as he had all his life, to say, ‘Now, it’s enough,’” Jeanneret said.

Fellow directors, film critics, and actors paid tribute to the late “Band of Outsiders” icon.

French President Emmanuel Macron honored Godard in a social media statement, writing, “It was like an appearance in French cinema. Then he became a master. Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers,...

Jean-Luc Godard, a leading figure of the French New Wave, has died. He was 91.

Best known for his radical and politically driven work, Godard was among the most acclaimed directors of his generation with classic films such as Breathless (À bout de souffle), which catapulted him onto the world scene in 1960.

Jean-Luc Godard Dies: Pioneering French Director Was 91

President Emmanuel Macron of France paid tribute to the director with a statement on Twitter, calling him the “iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers.”

Jean-Luc Godard Tributes Pour In From The World Of Cinema And Beyond: “National Treasure”

Born in Paris in 1930, Godard grew up and attended school in Nyon, Switzerland. After moving back to Paris after finishing school in 1949, Godard found a home amongst the burgeoning group of young film critics in the city’s ciné clubs.

Godard is best known for his seminal work of the 1960s, including Le mépris (Contempt), starring Brigitte Bardot,...

If the reverberations of Jean-Luc Godard’s life should ring well after we’re all gone, his passing could be nothing but seismic. As we revisit favorites, discover masterpieces, and discuss and debate in equal measure, filmmakers are taking time to pay Godard tribute—today feeling like the first step of what might become a new, postmortem chapter in cinema.

As is customary in such times, various filmmakers spoke to The Guardian about Godard. Rather than lift their entire feature, we’ll share some favorites and leave the rest—including Luca Guadagnino, Kelly Reichardt, and Mike Leigh—to the link. We’ve also added comments Leos Carax gave to Libération, dutifully translated by @pontdevarsovia.

Martin Scorsese:

From Breathless on, Godard redefined the very idea of what a movie was and where it could go. No one was as daring as Godard. You’d watch Vivre Sa Vie or Contempt...

Jean-Luc Godard spent his career reshaping the everyday language of cinema. From Oscar darlings to the latest entry into the MCU, it’s hard to find a film or television series untouched by the influence and innovations of Godard, who died this week at the age of 91. Just consider the narrative and technical choices he made in his very first film, “Breathless”: Jump cuts, natural lighting, long takes, freeze frames, on-location shooting. All unorthodox at the time, yet now the type of thing you could clock across any given night of programming on HBO or FX.

In 2022, who can’t recognize the jittery look of a handheld camera? Who would be alarmed to see an onscreen character directly addressing the camera? Who’s never seen a movie directed by either Quentin Tarantino or Spike Lee? Whether or not Godard was actually the first person to pay homage to an...

The greatest filmmaker in the world has died. And that’s a title Jean-Luc Godard has held for a very long time. His influence on cinematic form and language of the past 60 years has been foundational, but Godard’s best movies are not museum pieces to be studied: They are vibrant, energetic, sexy, full of color and smoke and crepuscular shadows that envelop you. They are alive. And they will continue to be though their maker is not.

The Swiss-born filmmaker stripped cinema down to its essence — all you need to tell a story on film is “a girl and a gun” he famously said — with a run-and-gun guerrilla style that eventually flowered into a finely wrought formalism. Besotted with movies, particularly Hollywood genre efforts (even if he hated U.S. politics), he didn’t just know movies either: painting appears all throughout “Pierrot le fou,” written text in “Vivre Sa Vie,...

Pioneering French movie director Jean-Luc Godard and prolific television and film actor Jack Ging have died. Godard passed away at age 91. The French newspaper Liberation first reported the news of his death. Born on December 3, 1930, in Paris, France, Godard became a leading figure of the French New Wave movement, directing classic films such as Breathless (À bout de souffle), Le Petit Soldat, Vivre sa vie, Bande à part, Pierrot le Fou, Alphaville, and First Name: Carmen. His radical and politically motivated work is regarded as some of the most influential cinema in history. His final film was 2018’s The Image Book, which was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. As reported by Deadline, Ging, who was best known for playing General Harlan “Bull” Fulbright on NBC’s adventure series The A-Team, passed away on September 9 at his home in La Quinta, California. He...

A pioneering, revolutionary titan of the cinematic form, Jean-Luc Godard has passed away at the age of 91, as reported by French newspaper Liberation. The paper also reported he died by assisted suicide in Switzerland, where it is authorized and supervised. “He was not sick, he was simply exhausted,” noted a relative of the family. “So he had made the decision to end it. It was his decision and it was important for him that it be known.”

Born on December 3, 1930, Godard would go on to become a film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma before changing the very language of the cinematic medium with his French New Wave contributions, including Breathless, Vivre Sa Vie, Contempt, Band of Outsiders, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, and many more. Going through an evolution virtually every decade, the director recently delivered the most radical usage of 3D in a film yet with Goodbye to Language in 2014 and his last feature,...

Jean-Luc Godard, the revered filmmaker regarded as a giant of the French New Wave movement, has died at the age of 91.

He was known for directing a run of radical, medium-changing films throughout the 1960s, including Breathless and Alphaville.

News of Godard’s death was reported by the French newspaper Liberation.

Along with contemporaries such as Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut, the Paris-born Godard was a central figure in the Nouvelle Vague, an experimental film movement that emerged in France in the late 1950s.

Several of his films are frequently cited among the best movies ever made.

Godard’s first feature was Breathless, released in 1960, an experimental tribute to American film noir. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a hoodlum named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend, the film caused a stir with its unusual visual style and editing techniques, immediately announcing Godard as one of cinema’s great innovators.

Jean-Luc Godard, a leading figure of the French New Wave, has died. He was 91. The French newspaper Liberation first reported the news which was confirmed to Deadline by a source close to the filmmaker.

Best known for his radical and politically driven work, Godard was among the most acclaimed directors of his generation with classic films such as Breathless (À bout de souffle), which catapulted him onto the world scene in 1960. The film was from a treatment by his contemporary and former friend François Truffaut and followed the story of a young American woman in Paris, played by Hollywood star Jean Seberg, and her doomed affair with a young rebel on the run, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Hollywood & Media Deaths 2022: A Photo Gallery

President Emmanuel Macron of France paid tribute to the director with a statement on Twitter, calling him the “iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers.”

Born in Paris...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Fever (Maya Da-Rin)

The Fever, director-cum-visual artist Da-Rin’s first full-length feature project, puts a human face to a statistic that hardly captures the genocide Brazil is suffering. This is not just a wonderfully crafted, superb exercise in filmmaking, a multilayered tale that seesaws between social realism and magic. It is a call to action, an unassuming manifesto hashed in the present tense but reverberating as a plea from a world already past us, a memoir of sorts. – Leonardo G. (full review)

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

French New Wave

Dive into one of the most fertile eras of moving pictures with a new massive 45-film series on The Criterion Channel dedicated to the French New Wave. Highlights include Le...

After a hiatus where New York’s theaters closed during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings are taking place.

Paris Theater

To mark their return, a frighteningly stacked weekend: A Room with a View and Grey Gardens on Friday; Children of Paradise, Louis Malle, and Vivre Sa Vie on Saturday; then Amelie and Ed Lachman’s print of Carol on Sunday.

Roxy Cinema

Screen Slate celebrates their 10th anniversary with prints of Friday the 13th, Jackass, 24 Hour Party People and more.

Anthology Film Archives

A weekend of experimental shorts is complemented by Kenneth Anger and a Baille/Belson program.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Age of Innocence and Ran show in “See It Big,” while 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut have showings.

While Netflix is far from being a haven for admirers of classic cinema, they thankfully are backing strong repertory programming in New York City. After acquiring The Paris Theater, located on 58th Street in Manhattan, and briefly reopening with some runs of Netflix features and other specialty programming, they are now officially opening their doors again on August 6 with a more substantial slate of classic cinema.

Featuring two programs, one curated by Radha Blank and another by the theater’s programmer David Schwartz, the reopening lineup features work by John Cassavetes, Kathleen Collins, Luis Buñuel, Mira Nair, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Ingmar Bergman, Terence Davies, and much more––with many on film prints.

One can also enter to win a pass for Schwartz’s series “The Paris is For Lovers,” with a newly-unveiled scavenger hunt tied to Ira Deutchman’s new documentary Searching for Mr. Rugoff, which opens on August 13 and is part of the lineup.

The Paris Theater, a beloved arthouse cinema in New York City, is reopening its doors next month.

To celebrate its return on Aug. 6, filmmaker Radha Blank is curating a slate of repertory titles to screen alongside her directorial debut “The Forty-Year-Old Version.” Her movie, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, is playing through Aug. 12.

The Paris opened in 1948 and is the only single-screen movie theater in Manhattan. Netflix acquired the 545-seat venue in 2019 and, prior to Covid-19, held premieres, special events and screenings of its films in the storied institution, which is just south of Central Park.

“I made ‘Forty-Year-Old Version’ in 35mm Black & White in the spirit of the many great films that informed my love of cinema,” says Blank. “I’m excited to show the film in 35mm as intended and alongside potent films by fearless filmmakers who inspired my development as a storyteller and expanded my vision...

The Paris Theater, an NYC cinematic landmark rescued by Netflix in 2019, will officially reopen August 6 with the streamer’s The Forty-Year-Old Version by Radha Blank and a week of repertory films programmed by the director.

The only single-screen movie theater in Manhattan and the borough’s largest, with 545 seats, has hosted limited theatrical engagements since March that included Netflix’ 17 Oscar-nominated films, retrospectives of Charlie Kaufman and Orson Wells, zombie movie classics and a Bob Dylan film series.

The Paris closed in August of 2019 after its lease with City Cinemas expired. That November, Netflix entered an extended lease agreement, said to be for ten years with owner the Solow Family, to keep the theater open and use it for events, screenings and theatrical releases of its films. The first was Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. The theater was shuttered by Covid-19 last spring.

(In May of 2020, Netflix acquired another storied theaters,...

The 13th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE, sponsored by the Jane M. & Bruce P. Robert Charitable Foundation, and produced by Cinema St. Louis (Csl) — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s extraordinary cinematic legacy, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

The Robert Classic French Film Festival is the first Csl in-person event since the Covid-19 pandemic. The host venues — Washington University on Aug. 13-15 and Webster University on Aug. 20-22 and 27-29 — have not yet determined whether capacity limits or masks will be required. Details will be announced on the Csl website when available.

The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features a quintet of such works: Melvin Van Peebles’ “The Story of a Three-Day Pass,” Diane Kurys’ “Entre Nous,” Joseph Losey’s “Mr. Klein,” Jacques Deray’s “La piscine,” and the extended director’s cut of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Betty Blue.

Above: English-language festival poster for There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse. Design by Marcelo Granero.So another nine months have gone by since I last did one of these round-ups. As I’ve been doing for many years, I have tallied up the most popular posters featured on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram (previously Tumblr). The biggest surprise, not least to its designer, was the popularity of a festival poster for an experimental Argentinian film There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse which has racked up some 2,335 likes to date and was the third most popular design I posted in the whole of 2020 (after the two Parasite posters that topped my last round-up). When I say it’s surprising it’s because film recognition tends to play a big part in the popularity of posts,...

IFFKLifetime Achievement Award for this edition will be presented to renowned French-Swiss filmmaker and critic Jean-Luc Godard.Tnm StaffCourtesy - Philippe R Doumic / Wiki Commons / Cc by Sa 4Online registration for the 25th edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk) will begin on Saturday, January 30. All Covid-19 protocols will be followed at the festival venues. The Iffk, organised by the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, will begin in Thiruvananthapuram on February 10 and end on February 14, following which it will be held in Kochi (February 17 to 21), Thalassery (February 23 to 27) and Palakkad (March 1 to 5). The online registrations will begin at 10 am on Saturday. Delegate fees for the general category is Rs 750 while for the students, it is Rs 400. Delegates should register at the venue closest to their hometown. Godard gets Lifetime Achievement Award The Lifetime Achievement Award for this edition will be presented to renowned French-Swiss filmmaker and critic Jean-Luc Godard.

If the saving of human lives somehow isn’t enough to incentivize people yet to stay home to reduce the spread of coronavirus, this might help: by not doing so you are potentially causing the July release of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch to be delayed. Thus far, Searchlight is still banking on a July 24 theatrical debut of his star-studded, France-set ensemble feature and the promotion is continuing.

After learning production designer Adam Stockhausen created a whopping 125 sets for the film, cinematographer Robert Yeoman has now revealed the five French classics that Anderson had his cast and crew view to prepare for the shoot, which might help give a hint of the film’s tone.

Speaking with Indiewire, Yeoman says these films “gave us all the feeling of the French movies of the period, both thematically and stylistically.” Check them out below, including a snippet of Anderson discussing one of his all-time favorites.

Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” is four months away from opening in theaters, but moviegoers can start preparing now by viewing the five French movies the director had his cast and crew watch before the start of production. Robert Yeoman, Anderson’s longtime cinematographer who has shot all of his live-action directorial efforts, shared in a statement that Anderson’s prep work for “The French Dispatch” included putting together “an extensive library of DVDs, books, and magazine articles” for the cast and crew to check out in order to help them “assimilate” into the film’s period setting. “The French Dispatch” cast includes Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, and Bill Murray.

Yeoman said Anderson’s film list featured Jean-Luc Godard’s 1962 drama “My Life to Live,” Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 suspense movie “Diabolique,” Clouzot’s 1947 procedural “Quay of the Goldsmiths,” Max Ophüls’ anthology film “Le Plaisir,...

Cinema St. Louis presents the 12th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival which takes place April 10th – 26th 2020. The location this year are both Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E Lockwood Ave) and Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium, Forsyth & Skinker boulevards.

The 12th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE and produced by Cinema St. Louis — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. This year’s featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the 1980s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features a quartet of such works: Diane Kurys’ “Entre Nous,” Joseph Losey’s “Mr. Klein,” Jacqueline Audry’s “Olivia,” and the extended director’s cut of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Betty Blue.”

The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard

The Criterion Channel has recently put the spotlight on a pair of French New Wave icons: Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard–and it’s not just their iconic collaborations, but also films they made separately. The two separate series include A Woman Is a Woman, Vivre sa vie, Le petit soldat, Band of Outsiders, Alphaville, Pierrot le fou, Made in U.S.A, The Nun, Breatheless, Contempt, Film socialisme, Goodbye to Language, The Image Book, and more.

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Bombshell (Jay Roach)

Although Bombshell is rather straightforward, it accomplishes its goal of telling this story with sufficient nuance,...

French New Wave star Anna Karina, who served as a muse for Jean-Luc Godard and appeared in eight of his films, has died. She was 79.

France’s culture minister, Franck Reister, announced her death in a tweet, as did her agent, Laurent Balandras, who attributed the cause as cancer.

“Her gaze was the gaze of the New Wave. It will remain so forever,” wrote Reister. “She magnetized the entire world. Today, French cinema is an orphan. It loses one of its legends.”

Karina’s best known roles include “The Little Soldier,” “Vivre sa vie,” “Band of Outsiders,” “Pierrot le Fou,” and “Alphaville,” all throughout the 1960s. She starred in “A Woman Is a Woman,” as well, in a performance that earned her the silver bear award for best actress at the Berlin Film Festival in 1961.

Karina also worked with other directors of the New Wave, including Agnes Varda, Jacques Rivette,...

Anna Karina, the French New Wave icon, has died at age 79, leaving behind an indelible body of cinema’s most charming and even radical work — including director Jean-Luc Godard’s “A Woman Is a Woman,” “Pierrot Le Fou,” “Alphaville,” “Vivre Sa Vie,” “Band of Outsiders,” “Le Petit Soldat,” and more.

Karina, who was born in Denmark and became a symbol of cinematic counterculture, died on Saturday in Paris. Reportedly, she died of cancer, according to her agent, Laurent Balandras. Karina’s last film was 2008’s “Victoria,” which she also wrote and directed. This was her second and final feature behind the camera following 1973’s “Living Together.”

Karina’s loss leaves a huge hole in the filmgoing community, and many have taken to Twitter to make tribute to the actress; see below. IndieWire spoke with Anna Karina in 2016 about her many storied collaborations with Jean-Luc Godard.

Rest In Peace, the truly iconic Anna Karina,...

Anna Karina, the dark-haired and mysterious actress who became a symbol of France’s Nouvelle Vague thanks to her frequent appearances in Jean Luc Godard’s films, has died. She passed on Saturday in Paris from cancer at age 79, according to French officials and her agent.

The Danish-born actress was also a singer and author during her long career in the arts. Her1960s hits included Sous le Soleil Exactement and Roller Girl,” written by Serge Gainsbourg. Her four novels included Golden City.

Karina made her first film with Godard in Le Petit Soldat, a story of terrorism during the French-Algerian War. But because of censorship, the film was not released for three years. At that point, Karina had won the 1961 Best Actress Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for Godard’s Une Femme Est Une Femme.

Her other Godard films of the 1960s included Vivre Sa Vie, Bande à Part,...

Anna Karina, the French New Wave starlet who rose to international acclaim in films directed by her then-husband Jean-Luc Godard, has died. She was 79.

Karina died Saturday at 2:38 p.m. in Paris of cancer, her agent, Laurent Balandras, told The Hollywood Reporter. Her husband, Dennis Berry, was by her side.

She and Godard were married from 1961 to 1964, and she served as his muse in such memorable works as A Woman Is a Woman (1961) — for which she received a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival — Vivre sa vie (1962), Band of Outsiders (1964),...

Anna Karina, the French New Wave starlet who rose to international acclaim in films directed by her then-husband Jean-Luc Godard, has died. She was 79.

Karina died Saturday at 2:38 p.m. in Paris of cancer, her agent, Laurent Balandras, told The Hollywood Reporter. Her husband, Dennis Berry, was by her side.

She and Godard were married from 1961 to 1964, and she served as his muse in such memorable works as A Woman Is a Woman (1961) — for which she received a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival — Vivre sa vie (1962), Band of Outsiders (1964),...

David Crow Nov 5, 2019

Martin Scorsese has a major point about the decline of the industry that many fans of Marvel Studios are missing.

Last month legendary director Martin Scorsese made something of a stir by revealing he does not like watching Marvel movies—and he does not consider them to be cinema. While it is a bit amusing that thousands of people on social media were shocked that a man who grew up in the 1940 and ‘50s doesn’t like watching Iron Man movies, the pop culture upheaval that followed led to much of what Scorsese said being taken out of context. Hence the filmmaker elaborating on his points in The New York Times this week.

Taking to The Times’ op-ed board, Scorsese unpacked his rationale for generally not enjoying superhero movies while being as complementary as possible to the craft that goes into making them.

“Many franchise films are...

With a new restoration of Béla Tarr’s 1994 opus Sátántangó now playing in theaters, today we’re taking a look back at the Hungarian maestro’s favorite films. It may not be quite as immersive as attending his recent film school in Sarajevo, but watching these ten films may give one greater insight into his vision of the world.

As voted on in the latest Sight & Sound poll, selections include Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (a film that’s about double the length of Sátántangó), fellow Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó’s break-out drama The Round-Up, and more.

We recently spoke with Tarr at Berlinale, where he gave some lively advice about filmmaking and the state of the industry, “Go and shoot something with your phone and find your own way and that’s all. Who cares? Fuck off this shitty film industry.

And Your Bird Can SingNorth America’s premier program of contemporary Japanese cinema returns this week as the Japan Society’s thirteenth annual Japan Cuts series comes to New York City. This year’s program includes 26 feature films, almost entirely by young filmmakers and/or directors largely unfamiliar in the West. I caught about a third of the series this year: dramas about alienated urban youth And Your Bird Can Sing, Blue Hour, and Demolition Girl; Francophile comedy Jeux de plage; a pair of social problem films in the throwback comedy The Kamagasaki Caudron War and the tastefully bland The Journalist; an unclassifiable avant-garde musical relic of the 1980s, Legend of the Stardust Brothers; and a pair of films by this year’s Cut Above award winner Shinya Tsukamoto, Killing and Bullet Ballet. The urban youth film is always reliable festival territory, and some of the best films to come...

Mubi's retrospective, Juliette Binoche: The Woman with a Thousand Faces, is showing July 14 – September 23, 2019 in the United Kingdom.Les amants du Pont NeufA newly reformed Michèle, played by Juliette Binoche, meets her estranged lover (Denis Lavant) on the Pont Neuf, where years ago the two lived as vagabonds, drinking bum wine into the night, falling asleep nestled into the curves of the bridge’s arced barriers. Once a raggedy drifter, with mangy hair and gooey, dull eyes falling gradually into disrepair, her vision is restored in their conclusive reunion, and we observe a more familiar Binoche donning a clean, boyish bob. Once again, she is the woman of our dreams, a mercurial presence whose eyes—wide-set and a conjuring warm brown—give her tender alabaster beauty a poignant intelligence. She launches into a dirty joke about a group of men discussing how often they have sex. The happiest...

Jean-Luc Godard, the subject of a film showcase at this year’s Lumière Film Festival in Lyon that includes his latest film, “The Image Work,” remains a hot commodity for Paris-based sales group Wide.

The company, which is attending the fest’s International Classic Film Market with a strong heritage film lineup, recently signed a number of new deals for Godard’s 1962 drama “Vivre sa vie” in major markets in Asia. Wide sold the newly restored 4K version of “Vivre sa vie,” which stars Anna Karina, to Japan’s Zazie Film and Alto Media in South Korea as well as to the China Film Archive.

“We see that the Asian market is really looking into the classics,” said Maxime Montagne, Wide’s head of business affairs and acquisitions, noting that China in particular is looking to put together a catalog of important classics.

The China Film Archive also picked up...

Jean-Luc Godard has been one of the most celebrated filmmakers for nearly 60 years, and he’s not slowing down anytime soon. At the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, the 87-year-old filmmaker will premiere “The Image Book” in Official Competition. However, while Godard’s stature hasn’t changed, the French New Wave legend is far away from the kind of films he made during the first decade of his career, when his whimsical and daring formalism transformed him into an internationally renowned artist. His transition into an angrier recluse, more inclined toward experimental projects with abstract political views, forms the centerpiece of “Godard Mon Amour” (previous titled “Redoubtable”), director Michel Hazanavicius’ playful dramatization of a young Godard (Louis Garrel) and his relationship with muse Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin). Wiazemsky, who passed away last year, wrote a memoir that forms the basis of the movie — but “Godard Mon Amour” is mostly a referendum on...

Jeanne Balibar and Mathieu Amalric remember ‪André S Labarthe‬ through his Cinéastes De Notre Temps documentaries including John Cassavetes with Gena Rowlands, John Ford, Nanni Moretti, Shirley Clarke, David Cronenberg, and the one he did on the set of Barbara Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Mathieu Amalric e-mailed me on March 5, 2018 with the news that André S Labarthe, producer and director of Cinéastes De Notre Temps, had died that morning in Paris. Mathieu and I made plans to meet in New York the morning after his presentation of Barbara with Jeanne Balibar. Mathieu Amalric, l'art et la matière was the last profile Labarthe did for the documentary series.

André S Labarthe played Paul to Anna Karina's Nana in Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie (My Life To Live)

During our conversation on Barbara, which was the opening night selection for uniFrance and the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema,...

The release of Charlize Theron spy movie Atomic Blonde is the first test of whether we are heading into a new era of kick-ass equality

If Jean-Luc Godard really meant it when he said “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”, how come he never made a movie with just a girl and a gun? Vivre Sa Vie might just about scrape through, but Godard basically took it as read that there would be a guy in the mix.

Hollywood, on the other hand, has started to take Godard’s maxim literally. We have had countless “girl and gun” movies recently, and virtually none have stuck. It’s as though the studios looked at Bourne, Bond, John Wick and all the other franchised-up action heroes and all had the same bright idea: “Make the hero a woman!” Often that becomes a woman wearing next to nothing,...

Every so often, usually while walking around Toronto on a busy day, I'll be struck by the vividness and accuracy of Agnès Varda's singular portrayal of a day in the life (barely two hours, really, making it even more remarkable) spent in the various layers and spaces of the urban environment. I speak, of course, of Cléo from 5 to 7, Varda's 1962 classic and the first film of hers I fell in love with. In those instances, I'll find myself returning to the moments I've cherry-picked as my favorites over the years, skipping across the linear sequence of events that follow the titular singer (Corinne Marchand) across Paris as she waits for the results from a medical examination within the film's designated timeframe (minus half an hour, as the film famously ends at the ninety minute mark). More than for any other film, engaging in these mental replays feels very much like replaying the events of a day I had once experienced myself long ago—albeit one that I’ve been able to revisit and come to know nearly by heart, complete with all of my favorite moments and details waiting in their proper places, so often have I gone back to that June 21st in Paris, 1961.Varda has even made it relatively easy for anyone who wishes to explore and investigate to their heart's content the events of that fateful first day of summer from so long ago now, not only by making such a crisp cinematic itinerary of the various locations visited in the film itself, but also by helpfully providing a map in her book Varda par Agnès complete with a color-coded legend indicating the locations of key scenes from the film, practically inviting the reader to recreate Cléo’s journey for themselves on the streets of present-day Paris. At once attentive and relaxed in its tour of the city (mainly focused in the Left Bank), Cléo is ably conducted in a number of different registers: as an uncommonly lovely essay-poem on the ebb and flow of urban life, an at-times somber meditation on the precarious balance between life and death, and a revealing and honest study of female identity and the ways it is scrutinized and distorted in the public’s relentless gaze. In a feat of remarkable economy and resourcefulness, the film was shot in chronological order across a five-week period, beginning on the date of the story’s events, synchronized as closely as possible to the times in the day Cléo experiences them, in keeping with narrative fidelity and proper quality of light for each scene. Neatly arranged into thirteen chapters, each with its duration clearly stated so we can easily keep track in real time, Cléo’s lucid odyssey through the various public and private spaces that make up her day is observational cinema at its most fertile, free, and magically attuned to its subjects, partly the result of Varda and her team’s carefully planned and executed shoot, partly that of simply being in the right places at the right times.Together, the films of the French New Wave make up one of the most valuable and immersive audiovisual documents of a specific time and place in history—namely France in the late 1950s and early 1960s—that we have. This is especially true of the Paris-situated films, which create the alluring image of an interconnected network of overlapping stories concentrated in a single city. The sharing of certain actors, cinematographers, writers, composers, and other key artists and technicians across different films by different directors especially helped make the impression of one Paris holding an eclectic anthology of New Wave tales. This perception was further reinforced by the cheeky self-referential winks and nods that so many of the New Wave directors—Jean-Luc Godard in particular—lovingly included in their films as gestures of solidarity and support with their nouvelle vague comrades. This is why the eponymous hero of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur, noted by many as a crucial New Wave precursor, gets name-checked by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s Breathless, why Truffaut muses Marie Dubois and Jeanne Moreau both pop up in A Woman Is a Woman, with Moreau getting asked by Belmondo how Jules and Jim is coming along, and why Anna Karina’s Nana glimpses a giant poster for the same Truffaut film as she is being driven to her fate in the final moments of Vivre sa vie.Varda got in on the fun herself in Cléo from 5 to 7 not only by casting Michel Legrand, who provided the film with its robust score, as Cléo’s musical partner Bob (a part that gives the legendary composer a substantial amount of screen time and amply shows off his incandescent charm), but also by extending the invitation to Godard, Karina, Sami Frey, Eddie Constantine, Jean-Claude Brialy, producer Georges de Beauregard, and Alan Scott, who had appeared in Jacques Demy’s Lola. They all show up in Les fiancés du pont Macdonald, the silent comedy short-within-the-film that serves triple duty as a welcome diversion for our stressed heroine, a loving cinephilic tribute to the legacy of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, and an irresistible, bite-sized New Wave party. And yet I find Cléo to be perhaps the most enchanting of all the New Wave films not for the aesthetic commonalities and cleverly devised linkages that bind it to The 400 Blows, Breathless, Paris Belongs to Us, and its other cinematic brethren, but rather for the tapestry of curious details that root it in its specific time and place and entice on the power of their inherent uniqueness and beauty. “Here,” Varda seems to say as she follows Cléo across the city, “let’s have a look at these interesting people and places on this first day of summer here in Paris, and see what we can see after watching them for a while.” The film’s opening scene continues to extend this invitation as it draws us in closer. It shows us, through the sepia-hued Eastmancolor that deviates from the rest of the film’s silvery monochrome and the “God’s eye” overhead shots (long before Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson adopted the technique as their own), the cryptic spectacle of Tarot cards being shuffled, placed down, and turned over to reveal the story of Cléo’s potential fate before we’ve even gotten a chance to properly meet Cléo herself. The slightly macabre illustrations to which Varda and cinematographer Jean Rabier dedicate their tight close-ups and the elderly card reader’s accompanying explanations of their meanings lend an air of prophecy to the events to come while also fueling Cléo’s anxiety surrounding her fate (when pressed for a clearer forecast of the future through a palm reading, the reader’s evasive response is less than inspiring). This introduction effectively locks us into Cléo’s perspective, preparing us for the next hour and a half that we will spend quietly observing as, following her distraught exit from the reader’s apartment, she grapples with her fears and insecurities, contemplates and revises her appearance and the identity behind it (tellingly, we discover late in the film that Cléo's real name is Florence), and comes to terms with the ultimately fragile nature of her own mortality. In our allotted chunk of time with her, we see the pouty girl-child subtly shift and adjust her attitude, inching a little closer towards a place of earned maturity, grace, and acceptance regarding her fate, wherever it may take her.Along the way, the film seems to expand to take in as much of the people and places around Cléo as it can. Scene by scene, her Paris makes itself felt and known through key peripheral details: a pair of lovers having an argument in a café near where Cléo sits, listening in; the procession of uniformed officers on horseback heard clip-clopping through the street on the soundtrack and seen reflected in the array of mirrors placed throughout a hat shop; a spider web of shattered mirror and a cloth pressed against a bloody wound, indicating some incident that occurred just before Cléo happened along the scene of the confused aftermath. Other stimuli fill a dazzling program of serendipitous entertainments for us to take in one by one: whirlwind rides in two taxis and a bus, an intimate musical rehearsal in Cléo’s chic, kitten-filled apartment (with Legrand, no less, clearly having a great time, his nimble fingers releasing ecstatic bursts of notes and melodies from Cléo’s piano as if they were exotic birds), the aforementioned silent short, a sculpting studio (the space alive with the indescribably pleasant sound of chisels being tapped at different tempos through soft stone), a frog swallower, a burly street performer who wiggles an iron spike through his arm, and the soothing sights and sounds of the Parc de Montsouris, among a hundred other subtle and overt pleasures scattered throughout this gently orchestrated city symphony, a heap of specificities found and sorted into a chorus of universal experience.Very much in her own way, across a body of work informed by a boundless spirit of generosity, Agnès Varda has gone about carefully collecting and preserving a marvelously varied assortment of subjects throughout her busy life, shedding fresh light on some of the most unlikely (and overlooked) people and places in the world. She refers to her self-made approach to filmmaking as ciné-criture (her own version of Alexandre Astruc's caméra-stylo), which, as we’ve come to know it through Varda’s intensely personal works, is a little like cinema, a little like writing, and uses aspects of both media to make a compassionate, genuine, and wholly original film language. Just as Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller), the dreamy young man whom Cléo encounters in the Parc de Montsouris, translates the world around them into a stream of fanciful observations and flowery speech, so too does Varda, in allegiance with poetry, ditch any semblance of objectivity, going instead for presenting the world simply as she sees it, investing it with her own unmistakable blend of charm, warmth, eloquence, and empathy, all somehow executed with nary a shred of ego or preachiness.“All these stories we simply can’t understand!” randomly exclaims a café patron to her young companion at one point late in Cléo’s journey, perhaps suddenly becoming aware, as we gradually have, of the unfathomable multitude of trajectories that trace themselves across every city every day in a dense tangle of narrative strands. In picking up Cléo’s and diligently following it with her camera for an hour and a half, Varda draws our attention to all those other strands that make up the lives of other people, leading off into their own directions, fated to become entangled with others still. Wisely, deftly, one discovered strand at a time, she helps us better appreciate, again and again, the humble miracle of so many lives coursing and thriving alongside each other, each one special and strange, each rooted in its own distinct flavor of being-ness. Cléo from 5 to 7 in turn roots us in another person’s life for its short time span and ends up giving us a whole universe, casually overflowing with meaning, life, lives, and the myriad details that shape and define them. No, we can’t understand all the stories we come across in a day. But then again, sometimes we don’t really need to understand so much as simply see. See, and accept, and appreciate what is...and then move along to whatever’s next.

Aaron and Mark Hurne get together to talk about August 2017 Announcements, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ozu’s Good Morning, Michael Haneke, Jean Luc Godard, Jacques Demy, and plenty of other topics.

Episode Notes

7:00 – August 2017 Announcements

33:30 – Good Morning & I Was Born, But

40:25 – Michael Haneke

43:30 – Alex Ross Perry

47:40 – Criterion Daily

51:30 – Short Takes (Lola, Vivre sa Vie)

1:00:00 – FilmStruck

Episode Links Making a Cover: Criterion’s Breaking Point Criterion Close-Up 19: A Conversation with Alex Cox Criterion – The Breaking Point Criterion – Meantime Criterion – Hopscotch Criterion – La Poison Criterion – Sid & Nancy FilmStruck – Coming Soon Movies Leaving FilmStruck Episode Credits Aaron West: Twitter | Website | Letterboxd Mark Hurne: Twitter | Letterboxd Criterion Now: Twitter | Facebook Group Criterion Cast: Facebook | Twitter

Music for the show is from Fatboy Roberts’ Geek Remixed project.

He’s been working as a director for over a decade, but 2016 heralds the international break-out for Pablo Larraín. Not only did the Chilean filmmaker’s subversive drama The Club finally get a U.S. release earlier this year — the Berlinale premiere of which led to talking with jury member Darren Aronofsky, who would present him with what would be his Hollywood debut, Jackie — he also has two more features arriving in December. Along with the aforementioned Natalie Portman-led drama coming this week, he also has Chile’s Oscar entry, the formally thrilling Neruda starring Gael García Bernal, hitting theaters two weeks later.

It’s ideal time, then, to take a look at the films that have most influenced him. Culling from his submission of his top 10 films for the latest BFI Sight & Sound poll, his selections are a Film School 101 of formally distinctive landmarks. Featuring classics from Kubrick,...

Former army documentary cameraman worked on Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless [pictured].

Legendary French cinematographer Raoul Coutard who worked with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Pierre Schoendorffer, Jacques Demy and Costa-Gavras has died aged 92.

Coutard worked on more than 80 features in a career spanning from 1958 to 2001 but is best known for his work with New Wave pioneers Godard and Truffaut.

He got his big break working with Jean-Luc Godard on 1960 classic Breathless, which was credited with reinventing cinema at the time for its stripped-down, fast-paced aesthetic.

Godard — who wanted to shoot the film as much as possible with a handheld camera and natural lighting — had partly hired Coutard for his background as a documentary cameraman for the French army.

Coutard spent five years working with the army’s press service, mainly in French Indochina (today Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) in the late 1940s and early 50s.

Prior to that, he worked in a Paris photography lab, having dropped...

Raoul Coutard, a prominent figure in French cinema, has died after suffering from a long illness. He was 92.

The cinematographer passed away on Tuesday night, near Bayonne, France. The news was confirmed by the French newspaper Le Figaro who was notified by his family. The specific cause of death is yet unknown.

Coutard was born on September 16, 1924 in Paris. He is most associated with the New Wave period and shooting most of Jean-Luc Godard’s early films (“Breathless,” “Contempt,” “My Life to Live”) along with his collaborations with Francois Truffaut (“Shoot the Piano Player,” “Jules and Jim”). He also was the director of photography on Costa Gavras’ “Z.”

His career lasted nearly half a century and included over 80 features. He made his directorial debut in 1970 with the film “Haoa Binh,” which was nominated for...

Agnes Nixon, the daytime TV titan behind "All My Children," died early Wednesday morning. Agnes created "All My Children" ... as well as "One Life to Live." She also worked on "Another World" and "Guiding Light." Agnes' son tells TMZ, his mother died at her home in Pennsylvania from complications of Parkinson's and pneumonia. He says she had been writing her memoir, "My Life to Live," and just completed it last weekend. Agnes' soaps ... 'Children' and...

Agnes Nixon, creator of long-running soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live, died Wednesday morning. She was 93.

Nixon’s daytime-television writing/producing credits include stints at As the World Turns, Search for Tomorrow, Another World and Guiding Light. The first soap she created, ABC’s One Life to Live, premiered in 1968. Two years later, her All My Children also bowed on ABC. Both AMC and Oltl would run until 2011 on ABC (and then for a brief time after online).

Nixon also co-created Loving and was involved in that series’ spinoff, The City. She was a multiple Daytime...

All of my fantasies about meeting and talking to Anna Karina have been set in France, at her home, under constant worry of arrest, having just knocked on her door without an invitation. I ask her questions and she answers them all with tears in her eyes: "What was it like to act for Jean-Luc Godard, the man you loved, even when you were fighting like cats and dogs, even when he broke your heart? And how, in God's good name, did you manage to create performances that never age, that show no sign of origin, no influence, that absolutely confound me in the best possible way? How did you do it?” These fantasies found nourishment in the assumption that the icon of the French New Wave was fairly reclusive, not wanting to be bothered, certainly not wanting to talk anymore about those films, that time, that man. So imagine...

Since any New York cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of the Moving Image

Before his masterful Sunset Song begins its U.S. run, Terence Davies will be given a complete retrospective at MoMI. His self-titled trilogy screens on Saturday and Sunday; the latter day also brings Distant Voices, Still Lives and, with a post-screening Q & A to boot, The Long Day Closes.

Metrograph

“Welcome...

I know just how hagiographic it sounds when I say, and nevertheless say with full sincerity, that being in Anna Karina’s presence is sort of a shocking thing. The French New Wave’s feminine icon — perhaps the screen icon of ‘60s cinema, period, at least if her recent immortalization in innumerable GIFs could count for anything — has often seemed inscrutable: as quick-witted as she is goofy, as likely to indulge in cartoonish physical gestures as she is to display her preternatural beauty, and always hiding something behind the eyes. With that perception established, you might understand why, as she walked down the steps of BAMcinématek’s theater 3 for a Q & A following Jean-Luc Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman, the seemingly innocuous figure almost immediately elicited this thought from myself and, I’d imagine, several others: “Holy shit — that’s Anna Karina.”

That feeling will soon dissipate — not...

Having charmed London in January, Anna Karina is in New York. On Tuesday, she was at Bam discussing her work with Jean-Luc Godard in A Woman Is a Woman (1961). Tonight, she's at the Museum of the Moving Image to talk about Pierrot le Fou (1965) and, on Friday, she'll be at Film Forum to talk about Band of Outsiders (1964) as a new restoration begins its weeklong run. The Film Forum series Anna & Jean-Luc features all three films as well as the other four the actress and the director made together, Vivre sa vie (1962), Alphaville (1965), Le Petit Soldat (1960) and Made in U.S.A. (1966). We're rounding up writing on the events. » - David Hudson...

Having charmed London in January, Anna Karina is in New York. On Tuesday, she was at Bam discussing her work with Jean-Luc Godard in A Woman Is a Woman (1961). Tonight, she's at the Museum of the Moving Image to talk about Pierrot le Fou (1965) and, on Friday, she'll be at Film Forum to talk about Band of Outsiders (1964) as a new restoration begins its weeklong run. The Film Forum series Anna & Jean-Luc features all three films as well as the other four the actress and the director made together, Vivre sa vie (1962), Alphaville (1965), Le Petit Soldat (1960) and Made in U.S.A. (1966). We're rounding up writing on the events. » - David Hudson...

Since any New York cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

The most exciting theater to hit New York in years opens today. They’ll begin with The Purple Rose of Cairo and Taxi Driver on Friday. Saturday and Sunday unbelievably packed, the schedule including The Spirit of the Beehive, Vivre Sa Vie, The Long Day Closes, Femme Fatale, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, and Noah Baumbach‘s...

The Metrograph will open in New York on March 4 with the series Surrender to the Screen: Watching the Moviegoing Experience featuring Terence Davies's The Long Day Closes (1992), Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa Vie (1962) and much more before presenting its Jean Eustache retrospective, three films by Frederick Wiseman, Johnnie To's Office and on and on. More goings on: Babak Anvari's Under the Shadow will open and Kirsten Johnson's Cameraperson will close the 45th edition of New Directors/New Films. Ebertfest will screen Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981), Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul (1925) featuring Paul Robeson's onscreen debut, Paul Cox's new Force of Destiny, Mark Polish and Michael Polish's Northfork (2003) and Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) with Orson Welles. And more. » - David Hudson...

The Metrograph will open in New York on March 4 with the series Surrender to the Screen: Watching the Moviegoing Experience featuring Terence Davies's The Long Day Closes (1992), Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa Vie (1962) and much more before presenting its Jean Eustache retrospective, three films by Frederick Wiseman, Johnnie To's Office and on and on. More goings on: Babak Anvari's Under the Shadow will open and Kirsten Johnson's Cameraperson will close the 45th edition of New Directors/New Films. Ebertfest will screen Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981), Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul (1925) featuring Paul Robeson's onscreen debut, Paul Cox's new Force of Destiny, Mark Polish and Michael Polish's Northfork (2003) and Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) with Orson Welles. And more. » - David Hudson...