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Writer, director and occasional actor Philippe Garrel shot his first full-length movie, Marie pour mémoire, when he was only 19. That was amid the turmoil of May 1968, and since then he has made a new feature every few years, becoming a regular fixture in festivals and arthouses, especially in his native France.

Working with unknown or established actors, including Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Pierre Léaud, his intimate tales of emotional unrest — often the same story told again and again, during different epochs, in color or black-and-white — have turned him into a dependable auteur but also an acquired taste. If you don’t like French movies about love, sex, family, adultery and anguish, then you probably won’t like Garrel.

His work has always had an autobiographical bent to it, and one of his best films, 1970’s La Cicatrice Intérieure, starred his girlfriend at the time, Nico of The Velvet Underground. But his latest feature,...

Mubi will be showing the retrospective Philippe Garrel: Fight for Eternity from May 1 - July 5, 2017 in most countries around the world.Les enfants désaccordésQuestion: I must ask you here about one concept you discuss in your book, one that also might be thought of, next to the structural work, as another way to break from the story in the film. The concept is muzan, and I find it quite difficult to think of a proper translation of it into English. How do you employ this concept into your films, and does it, in fact, have anything to do with the way you wish to break away from the story?

Yoshishige Yoshida: I understand the word in itself, as you would understand the literal meaning of the kanji: something which expresses the impossibility of attaining stability or change for the better. Yes, I believe this is the meaning of the concept that I use.

Jean Seberg in Les hautes solitudes. Courtesy of The Film Desk.It is a raw experience. No title, no credits of any sort. No soundtrack—although I defy anyone to watch it in absolute silence and not “hear” something, at some point, in their head. Just a series of “moving images” (for once the currently fashionable artworld term is correct), portraits in black-and-white, mostly trained on faces, or the upper parts of several bodies. There is no make-up, only minimal lighting and staging, and no post-production effects or clean-up whatsoever. The on-screen participants include Nico, Tina Aumont, Laurent Terzieff. And, most extensively, Jean Seberg—which may come as a shock to viewers not entirely au fait with the biography of the film’s director, Philippe Garrel. “Garrel’s camera sees Seberg honestly,” wrote David Ehrenstein in his book Film: The Front Line 1984, “as if discovering her for the first time,...

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

Spend “A Weekend with Amy Heckerling” when Johnny Dangerously and Fast Times at Ridgemont High screen this Saturday, while Look Who’s Talking and Clueless show on Sunday. All are on 35mm.

For “Welcome to Metrograph: A-z,” see a print of Philippe Garrel‘s The Inner Scar on Friday and Sunday; André de Toth‘s...