Version restaurée/Restored Version

Godard’s first film of the new century, straddles formats (black and white 35mm and color DV) and challenges traditional film narratives. Edgar, an artist, unsure of the métier to present his new work, entitled Éloge de l’amour, learns of the suicide of a young woman he knew, and whose grandparents, former Resistance fighters, he interviewed a few years earlier for a project. While there, he intersects with Hollywood producers’ intent on buying their story, their history.

In The Eagle Has Two Heads, Edwige Feuillère, the grande dame of early French cinema, here reprises the stage role Cocteau had written for her. Against a backdrop of European royalty (the two-headed eagle long a symbol of empire), Jean Marias enters as an anarchist poet sent to assassinate the Queen. Cruel Tale, set during the Spanish Inquisition, is the only film directed by actor Gaston Modot, star of Buñuel’s L’Age d’or, a work of unbelievable atmosphere and crushing dread.

Filmed clandestinely in 1987, in exquisite 16mm, Zauberman’s extraordinary documentary exposes South Africa’s insidious apartheid policy of ‘race classification’ by the Population Registration Act, dividing the country into four groups and subgroups, subjugating the lives of all non-whites. 

Destroy, She Said, adapted from Duras’ own novel, is suffused with mystery much like her script for the revered Hiroshima, Mon Amour, but far more claustrophobic in look and setting. Duras directs with languorous pans, distinctive camera movement and composition of a true film artist.  Dark Night, Calcutta, a commissioned work by a pharmaceutical company advertising an alcoholism cure, was taken over by Karmitz, and transformed from a straightforward work when he thought to ask Duras to contribute the text for the film.

“What was May ‘68 to you?” The film with which Tanner is most inextricably linked seems more extraordinary with each passing year, as the idealism of May ‘68 and its hangover is enacted generationally by groups of friends, couples, activists and fellow travelers

Jean-Louis Trintignant is a hitman on assignment and soon on the run, bouncing around town from Beverly Hills to Venice to the strip, cops and mobsters on his tail. With a prime cast of Americans – Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret and Angie Dickinson – a score by Michel Legrand, and a screenplay unlikely credited to Ian McLellan Hunter and Jean-Claude Carrière.

A grand experiment: two films, about one relationship, told from the points of view of each partner, and viewable in either order, shot stunning widescreen in black and white. Jean-Marc and Françoise meet, fall in love, marry and separate. Director André Cayatte sought to create a film that presented each story so definitively, that it would be hard for the audience to imagine the other side.

Two films by director Idrissa Ouédraogo; a gripping feature noir revolving around the conflicts between city and rural life, as well as modernity and tradition in Burkina Faso preceded by a short in which Ouédraogo addresses the economic difficulties of making films in Africa as compared to other art forms.

Fernando Arrabal’s first film, Viva la Muerte is an avant-garde creation shot in Tunisia and gained fame in the US as a pioneering midnight movie. The film portrays a little boy’s experience growing up during the Spanish Civil War, blending reality and nightmarish images.

A truly unsettling French splatterfest just in time for Halloween! Discover director Alain Robak’s utterly outlandish horror film; the perfect introduction for the underseen filmmaker.

On the docks of a sleazy port, the captain of the broken down ‘La Rose de le mer’ puts together a crew of the dregs of the waterfront to make a run to Casablanca, plotting to sink the boat at sea for insurance.

Two extraordinary discoveries of regional American independent cinema by filmmaker Glen Pitre, who at age 25 was already referred to as ‘The father of Cajun cinema’ by American Film magazine. Made in Cajun French with mostly non-professional actors, both films dramatize major events in the Bayou.

In 1986, Mosco Boucault interviews members of resistance cells, who assassinated Nazis, but are now living subdued lives, primarily as tailors. Underneath this history, is the long-buried source of the deaths and betrayal of their comrades who wanted to suppress the identity of the heroes of the resistance, primarily Jews and immigrants, from Poland, Romania, Spain, Italy and Hungary.

The first French language film, Mouramani, directed by Mamadóu Touré in Guinea in 1953, is a landmark film. However, is the film still in existence? Thierno Souleymane Diallo is determined to find out, looking for anyone who has seen it, or knows where a print of it may be.

In this documentary, the first French-language film by American documentarian Frederick Wiseman, he is given unprecedented access to the company, shadowing three female actors, and the production of four classic French plays.

Laurent Achard’s debut film, Plus qu’hier, moins que demain, portrays a troubling family reunion and the impact of ambient violence on children. This rare screening introduces American audiences to an underrated figure in French cinema.

Carolers and tinsel; the perfect setting for Christmas Eve in a snowy mountain village. But when a body is discovered, dressed as Santa, the hysteria soon spreads and accusations fly.