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Radu Jude is no stranger to thought-provoking films that shine a light on obscure corners of Romanian culture. This time, he’s partnered with philosopher Christian Ferencz-Flatz on a truly innovative documentary exploring a nation in transition.

Eight Postcards from Utopia gathers retro TV commercials spanning decades of change from state socialism to open markets. Through ads hawking everything from vodka to vacuums, the film depicts shifting values and ideologies that shaped everyday life.

With titles like “Masculine Feminine” and “The Anatomy of Consumption,” Eight Postcards promises deep dives into consumerism’s impact. You’ll find patriotic spots promoting privatization sitting alongside saucy soap pitches pandering purely to pleasure. Some ads are unintentionally hilarious in their amateurish ways, like one encouraging tourism to “Dracula Park.” But together they offer a unique window into a society remodeling itself after years under an iron fist.

How did the emphasis shift from communal living to personal affluence?...

Within a career that lasted over 50 years, French singer-songwriter, actress, author, fashion icon, and astrologist Françoise Hardy — who passed away Tuesday, June 11 after a long battle with cancer — produced 32 studio albums, performed in over 10 films and television specials, wrote six books, and influenced countless artists ranging from Carla Bruni to Charli Xcx. Her screen career includes roles in films like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculin Féminin” and John Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix.”

She was a renegade. A heartbreaker. Born at the height of World War II in Paris, her upbringing coincided with a great sociopolitical re-evaluation in France that fed her own anxieties and obsessions. Seeking artistic refuge outside of her home country, she found inspiration in American music that, by her teen years, was starting to reach her shores.

“This passion for singing became real madness when I discovered an English station called Radio Luxembourg,” Hardy said in a 2012 interview with Télérama.

Brigitte Bardot has been dealing with health issues.

According to The Daily Mail, emergency services rushed to the home of the iconic French actress on Wednesday after she began experiencing breathing difficulties.

Read More: Actor And Activist Brigitte Bardot Urges Longueuil Mayor To Stop Deer Cull

Her husband, Bernard d’Ormale, confirmed the news to French outlet Var-Matin, telling them, “It was around 9 a.m. when Brigitte had trouble breathing.”

The incident occurred at their home in Saint-Tropez, though d’Ormale said that the ambulances “got the wrong” address at first, before finally arriving.

“[Her breathing] was stronger than usual but she did not lose consciousness. Let’s call it a moment of respiratory distraction,” he said.

Read More: French Actress Brigitte Bardot Slams #MeToo Movement As ‘Hypocritical’

The emergency services put the 88-year-old actress on oxygen, and according to their husband, they “stayed to watch her” for a while afterward.

“Like all people of a certain age,...

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...

It was a leap of faith.

When Isabelle Huppert started working with Jean-Luc Godard on 1980’s “Every Man for Himself,” there wasn’t a script for her to consult.

“There were only fragments of scenes, poems, songs and paintings,” she remembers. “I simply knew my name in the film was Isabelle.

But Godard was a legend at that point, having helped pioneer the French “New Wave” movement with the likes of “Breathless” and “Contempt” and then undertaken an even more daring and experimental phase in films such as “Weekend” and “Masculin Féminin.” Something about their partnership worked. “Every Man for Himself,” was a rare commercial success for the auteur, and marked a milestone in Godard’s career as the the first movie he presented in competition at Cannes and the first which was nominated at the Cesar Awards (France’s highest film honors). Huppert would reunite with Godard for his follow up movie “Passion,...

Jean Luc-Godard, who died Tuesday at the age of 91, was widely known as the King of the French New Wave. Since coming onto the scene in the 1960s, his seminal films such as “Breathless,” “Masculin, Feminin” and “Pierrot Le Fou,” introduced avante-garde techniques that have been since been replicated by innumerable filmmakers in the following decades.

In addition to a scathing intellectualism and stubborn stance against “the establishment”, the Franco-Swiss director was best known for changing the rules of cinema — his use of long-takes, jump-cuts and actor asides are just a few of the innovative practices he employed in his films that are still used to this day.

Thankfully, Godard left behind dozens of unforgettable films, many of which have been restored on Criterion. Below, check out some of Godard’s best films to celebrate the late director:

‘Pierrot le fou’ Courtesy of Amazon

Godard perfects the Pop Art color...

TributeThe filmmaker, often credited with revolutionising cinema, passed away by assisted death in Switzerland on September 13.CrisJean-Luc Godard / Courtesy - IFFKNo one had expected 90-year-old Jean-Luc Godard to show up on stage in Thiruvananthapuram, when Kerala’s most cherished film festival – International Film Festival of Kerala – was belatedly held in February last year. Godard, a pioneer of the new wave French cinema in the 60s, was declared the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the fest, held two months too late because of Covid-19. But when the big screen at the Nishagandhi Auditorium lit up to show his face, a Cuban cigar in his hands, the crowd sat bewildered. They broke into laughter and applause at his first line: “Ok I will speak with the tongue of the dominators, I will speak in English.” Godard, a beloved of the festival crowd of Kerala, accepted the award, mocked the language...

Image Source: Elephante: Alex Lopes; Thuy: Sarah Ohta; Luna Li: Felice Trinidad; Background Image: Unsplash

In recent years, a handful of Asian American musicians have made a name for themselves in the American music scene. There's indie rock artist Mitski, Michelle Zauner of the genre-defying band Japanese Breakfast, and house DJ and producer Yaeji. The list grows a bit longer if we count Grammy-winning mainstream artists like H.E.R., Olivia Rodrigo, Bruno Mars, and Anderson .Paak, all of whom have some Asian heritage. However, they're the notable exceptions in an industry in which Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (Aapi) are still grossly underrepresented and underpromoted, despite the wealth of musical talent that exists within the community.

In contrast, many K-pop stars - the majority of whom hail from South Korea - are now more successful and famous in the US than most Aapi artists. This striking paradox speaks to...

With it being seven years since his last live-action film, 2014’s The Grand Budapast Hotel, Wes Anderson is hard at work. Following a Cannes premiere, The French Dispatch finally arrives in limited theaters on October 22 followed by a wide release the following week, and he’s already shooting his next film (recently revealed to have the title Asteroid City) outside of Madrid with Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Rupert Friend, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Hope Davis, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, Tony Revolori, and Matt Dillon.

As is the case with all of his work, Wes Anderson synthesizes cinema history in his own specific language and for The French Dispatch he has provided a list of influences. As revealed in a promotional book sent to The Flim Stage and styled after the film’s magazine, 32 films are listed that “provided inspiration to the filmmakers,...

Plus ‘Crestone,’ ‘F.T.A.,’ ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,’ ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High,’ ‘Merrily We Go to Hell,’ ‘Trances,’ ‘Masculin Feminin,’ ‘Smile,’ ‘The Hot Spot,’ ‘Tank,’ ‘Sweet Liberty,’ ‘All-American Murder,’ ‘The Cellar,’ ‘Winterbeast,’ ‘Horizons West,’ and ‘The Wages of Sin.’

Continue reading The Best Movies To Buy Or Stream This Week: ‘The Good, The Bad & The Ugly,’ ‘The Mitchells Vs. The Machines’ & More at The Playlist.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Marlon Brando and Willy Kurant on the set of The Night of the Following Day (1969). The great Belgian cinematographer Willy Kurant has died. During his illustrious career, Kurant worked on films including Agnès Varda's The Creatures, Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Feminin, and Orson Welles' The Immortal Story. David Cronenberg has confirmed the title of his next feature film, Crimes of the Future. Sharing the same title as his film from 1970, the film is set to star Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux, and Viggo Mortensen.Robert Haller, the Anthology Film Archives Director of Libraries, has also died. As Afa points out in its tribute to Haller, "with 35 years at Anthology all told, only Afa’s founder Jonas Mekas could claim seniority over Haller!⁠⁠" After more than 100 years, Technicolor Post has announced its integration into Streamland Media's postproduction services,...

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Keeping up with new Criterion releases can feel like a spectator sport for cinephiles checking the site each month. To make Blu-Ray shopping a little easier for your, IndieWire put together a roundup of new Criterion releases that you can pre-order now.

All of the films listed below are available on Amazon, which means that Prime members will get free two-day shipping. In addition to shipping perks, an Amazon Prime membership (which costs $12.99 a month) gives you streaming access to Amazon’s massive library of film and TV shows. So even if you binge all of your new Criterion Blu-Rays in a single weekend, you won’t be left without something to watch.

The end of the filmmaking road is drawing near for Jean-Luc Godard, the French New Wave icon behind “Breathless,” “Contempt,” “Pierrot le Fou,” “Masculin Féminin,” and more. During a recent 85-minute conversation with the virtual International Film Festival of Kerala (via The Film Stage), Godard confirms his plan to retire from directing after his next two projects. The filmmaker currently has two scripts in various stages of development, one he announced is being made with European public service channel Arte and the other which is titled “Funny Wars.”

“I’m finishing my movie life—yes, my moviemaker’s life—by doing two scripts,” the 90-year-old Godard added about his plan to retire in the near future. “After, I will say, ‘Goodbye, cinema.’”

Godard will forever be associated with the French New Wave, a movement he pioneered with 1960 directorial debut “Breathless.” At that point in his career, Godard had been making...

French-Mauritanian filmmaker Abid Mohamed Medoun Hondo (professionally known as Med Hondo), a founding father of African cinema, died Saturday morning in Paris. He was 82 years old.

Rest as you lived, Med Hondo, in Power. https://t.co/vglzeUn9yX

— Cameron Bailey (@cameron_tiff) March 2, 2019

An award-winning filmmaker who also gained attention in his later years dubbing African-American actors like Eddie Murphy and Morgan Freeman for their movies’ French releases, Hondo remains largely unknown beyond academic and cineaste circles. However, Hondo was a visionary whose work underlined the importance of the preservation of African history via the cinema.

Hondo’s films explored the nature of conflicts within the continent, and between the competing European powers, especially during colonialism. He provided the world with an alternative and necessary understanding of contemporary Africa. He was devoted to creating an African cinema that adopted an anti-imperialist approach to filmmaking, one that could counter Hollywood’s very limited African representation.

In the late 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard spun several films — “La Chinoise,” “One Plus One” — out of the perception that politics had begun to fuse with pop culture. His insight was startling, even if how it translated to the real world remained a touch ethereal. It was all about images (the mass-produced iconography of Mao or Che), and it was also about ideology. When Godard famously dubbed “Masculin Féminin” his portrait of “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” part of the cheekiness was his acknowledgment that Marxism on the world stage had become a brand.

In that light, a lot of Americans in the 1980s experienced the Sandinistas, the guerrilla freedom fighters of Nicaragua, as figures in a larger-than-life storybook. That was certainly true of the Republican right, led by President Ronald Reagan; to him, they were an evil cartoon Communist enemy that needed to be eradicated, like roaches. But it...

Since any New York City 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

A series on Shaw Brothers horror has begun, while the “Bloodthirsty Trilogy” has showings

Long praised as superior to its English-language counterpart, the Spanish Dracula screens with live musical accompaniment.

The 35mm run of Masculin Féminin continues.

Spectacle

The 12-hour “Shriek Show” commences and scars on Saturday.

Quad Cinema

Très spooky: “The Sinister Visions of Jean Rollin” gets underway.

As a filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard is a brilliant enigma whose work offers more questions than answers. “Redoubtable” solves that challenge with an outside source: Adapted from actress-turned-author Anne Wiazemsky’s 2015 memoir, “Un An Apres” (“One Year Later”), this surprisingly endearing tragicomedy recounts her short-lived marriage to Godard and the moment in which the feisty filmmaker soured into the angry, outspoken political radical that became his post-’60s persona.

Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”), the movie toys with Godard’s own early filmmaking style in a wry effort to salute his legacy and demystify its evolution. Light and inoffensive, it trades the intellectual rigor of Godard’s work for fluffy sentiments, but never gets crass. Above all else, it succeeds at transforming cinephile trivia into a genuine crowdpleaser.

A welcome rebound after Hazanvicius’ misbegotten remake “The Search,” the new movie is a return to the colorful period details...

Starting this week, the Film Society of Lincoln Center hosts a retrospective of the 57-year career of one of the most iconic figures of modern cinema: Jean-Pierre Léaud. The child who grew up and grew old before our eyes, Léaud will forever be associated with one film above all, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, made when he was only 14, and its character, Antoine Doinel, who he, in many ways, created. In a letter to his friend Helen Scott in 1962 Truffaut wrote, “I would prefer a film to change its meaning along the way rather than have an actor ill at ease. Jean-Pierre wasn’t the character I had intended for The 400 Blows.” When the Film Society first fêted Léaud, in 1994, in the series “Growing Up with Jean-Pierre Léaud: Nouvelle Vague’s Wild Child” (programmed by my future wife no less), the actor had only just turned 50. Léaud...

Jean-Luc Godard has directed more than 100 films, but for completists there’s been one title that’s unavailable … until it showed up on YouTube this week. “Une Femme Coquette,” a no-budget short made in 1955 when Godard was 24, was posted on February 15 by user David Heslin, and discovered by our friends over at The A.V. Club.

Read More: That Movie About Jean-Luc Godard’s Second Marriage is Misguided

The film, based on a Guy De Maupassant short story, was Godard’s first shot at a narrative. It’s often listed as lost by biographers, and the find is tremendously significant for French New Wave enthusiasts. There are also several easter eggs in the work for Godard fans: the director cameos two minutes in, the story is later re-adapted in Godard’s 1966 film “Masculin Féminin,” and the work itself is credited to his film-critic pseudonym, Hans Lucas.

Just five years after shooting “Une Femme Coquette,...

Above: Italian 2-foglio for Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1965).As the 54th New York Film Festival winds to a close this weekend I thought it would be instructive to look back at its counterpart of 50 years ago. Sadly, for the sake of symmetry, there are no filmmakers straddling both the 1966 and the 2016 editions, though Agnès Varda (88 years old), Jean-Luc Godard (85), Carlos Saura (84) and Jirí Menzel (78)—all of whom had films in the 1966 Nyff—are all still making films, and Milos Forman (84), Ivan Passer (83) and Peter Watkins (80) are all still with us. There are only two filmmakers in the current Nyff who could potentially have been in the 1966 edition and they are Ken Loach (80) and Paul Verhoeven (78). The current Nyff is remarkably youthful—half the filmmakers weren’t even born in 1966 and, with the exception of Loach and Verhoeven, the old guard is now represented by Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar,...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Watch a clip from Quentin Tarantino‘s commencement speech at AFI this year:

Catherine Deneuve will receive the 2016 Lumière Award and Alejandro Jodorowsky will get the Locarno Film Festival’s Leopard of Honor.

At BFI, Pedro Almodóvar on 13 great Spanish films that inspired him, and watch a video on his use of circles:

Blancanieves is one of the peaks in recent Spanish cinema, but had the bad luck to be released a year after The Artist (2011), a silent film that triumphed the world over. Pablo Berger had in fact decided years earlier to film his personal take on the Brothers Grimm fairytale as a black-and-white silent; the result is heartrendingly beautiful.

The new 2K digitization and restoration of Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Féminin (1966) that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival is exclusively playing on Mubi in most countries around the world May 22 - June 21, 2016.Over opening credit titles that proclaim the film to be a French production, the “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, is heard being whistled off-screen. Then, spelt out with grating gunshots, the film’s title: Ma – Scu – Lin FÉMININ: 15 Faits PRÉCIS.It’s Paris. 1965. Sex, violence, revolution—change is in the air. Two youths, one male and one female, meet in a small cafe and begin a love affair. Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a passionate idealist who is driven by poetry and literature and is becoming increasingly indignant with the commercialization (read: Americanization) of the world around him. Madeline (Chantal Goya) is a hard worker who has a stable job at a magazine and is pursuing her...

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...

The Festival de Cannes has announced the lineup for the official selection, including the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, as well as special screenings, for the 69th edition of the festival:COMPETITIONOpening Night: Café Society (Woody Allen) [Out of Competition]Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar)American Honey (Andrea Arnold)Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)La Fille Inconnue (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne)Juste La Fin du Monde (Xavier Dolan)Ma Loute (Bruno Dumont)Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)Rester Vertical (Alain Guiraudie)Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)Mal de Pierres (Nicole Garcia)I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)Ma' Rosa (Brillante Mendoza)Bacalaureat (Cristian Mungiu)Loving (Jeff Nichols)Agassi (Park Chan-Wook)The Last Face (Sean Penn)Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)Elle (Paul Verhoeven)The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding-Refn)The Salesman (Asgha Farhadi)Un Certain REGARDOpening Film: Clash (Mohamed Diab)Varoonegi (Behnam Behzadi)Apprentice (Boo Junfeng)Voir du Pays (Delphine Coulin & Muriel Coulin)La Danseuse (Stéphanie Di Giusto)La...

Section to include world premiere of Bertrand Tavernier doc; a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin and a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman.

Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).

The revered French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”

Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.

As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored prints of 20 international classics including rare gems...

Section to include a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin, the 70th anniversary of the Fipresci prize, a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman and the double Palme d’Or of 1966.

Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).

The legendary French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”

Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.

As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored...

The Cannes Film Festival has announced the lineup for this year's Cannes Classics program of restorations, revivals and documentaries about cinema. Flagged first is Bertrand Tavernier's Voyage à travers le cinéma français, a personal exploration of the history of French cinema. William Friedkin will be giving a masterclass and the fresh restorations include Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin féminin, Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks, Youssef Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte, Milos Forman's Valmont, Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires and Arturo Ripstein's Tiempo de morir. » - David Hudson...

The Cannes Film Festival has announced the lineup for this year's Cannes Classics program of restorations, revivals and documentaries about cinema. Flagged first is Bertrand Tavernier's Voyage à travers le cinéma français, a personal exploration of the history of French cinema. William Friedkin will be giving a masterclass and the fresh restorations include Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin féminin, Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks, Youssef Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte, Milos Forman's Valmont, Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires and Arturo Ripstein's Tiempo de morir. » - David Hudson...

Now that most of the Cannes Film Festival 2016 line-up has been settled when it comes to new premieres, their Cannes Classics sidebar of restored films is not only a treat for those attending, but a hint at what we can expect to arrive at repertory theaters and labels like Criterion in the coming years.

Today they’ve unveiled their line-up, which is toplined by Bertrand Tavernier‘s new 3-hour and 15-minute documentary about French cinema, Voyage à travers le cinéma français. They will also be screening William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer following his masterclass. Along with various documentaries, both classics in the genre and ones about films, they will also premiere new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Masculin féminin, two episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s The Decalogue, as well as films from Kenji Mizoguchi, Marlon Brando, Jacques Becker, Mario Bava, and more.

Check out the line-up below.

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

“See It Big! Jack Fisk” celebrates one of cinema’s greatest production designers. The first weekend brings four Malick features, Mulholland Dr., Carrie, and There Will Be Blood.

A collection of the Muppets‘ appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson will be presented this Sunday.

Metrograph

A retrospective of the...

Above: Italian poster for Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1967).Flaming car aside, the poster above, with its emphasis on a torrid embrace that seems right off the cover of a Harlequin romance, doesn’t really scream Jean-Luc Godard. When I came across two Italian posters for Weekend the other day (the other, seen at the end of this piece, more sexploitation than romance but equally inappropriate to the film) I started to look at other Italian posters for Godard’s films and I found them all strikingly different from their French counterparts.While the Nouvelle vague in France coincided with a new wave in poster design, based mostly around photomontage, Italian distributors either resisted moving away from the kind of overtly emotional, painterly style of poster illustration that had been their stock in trade, or deliberately subverted the iconoclastic new films coming out of France with images that were more comfortingly familiar or sensationally commercial.

Jean-Luc Godard in his youthful days. Jean-Luc Godard solution for the Greek debt crisis: 'Therefore' copyright payments A few years ago, Nouvelle Vague filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, while plugging his Film Socialisme, chipped in with a surefire solution for the seemingly endless – and bottomless – Greek debt crisis. In July 2011, Godard told The Guardian's Fiachra Gibbons: The Greeks gave us logic. We owe them for that. It was Aristotle who came up with the big 'therefore'. As in, 'You don't love me any more, therefore ...' Or, 'I found you in bed with another man, therefore ...' We use this word millions of times, to make our most important decisions. It's about time we started paying for it. If every time we use the word therefore, we have to pay 10 euros to Greece, the crisis will be over in one day, and the Greeks will not have to sell the Parthenon to the Germans.

Every Man for Himself

Written by Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Claude Carrière

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

France, 1980

Jean-Luc Godard’s 1980 feature, Sauve qui peut (la vie), or Every Man for Himself, was something of a return to form for the director (if one can really say Godard ever had a typical form to return to). It was, as he declared, and as is often quoted, his “second first film.” As far as his most recent releases were concerned, there was certainly a break from those heavily divisive, politicized, and formally experimental works of the 1970s. This film, comparatively speaking, is indeed more mainstream than that. In its general reliance on narrative, it goes back to Godard’s pre-’67 work, with a beginning, middle, and end (even if not always in that order, as he once commented). But it’s not quite accurate to say that Every Man for Himself is necessarily...

The Mexican Newer Wave

By Raymond Benson

At the turn of the Millennium, several film directors from Mexico were gaining attention and acclaim—guys like Alfonso Arau, Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro, and this year’s Oscar-winner as Best Director, Alfonso Cuarón (for Gravity). Cuarón’s career trajectory has been, for me, the most interesting of the bunch. He broke into the international scene with the 2001 coming-of-age drama, Y Tu Mamá También, and followed that with, of all things, the megahit Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which, I argue, is the best of all eight Harry Potter movies. The terrific dystopian thriller Children of Men followed that, and then came Gravity.

Other than the superb handling of each specific film’s material, there isn’t much similarity between these pictures, and yet it’s apparent that Cuarón brings an auteur sensibility to his work. This is most...

I don’t make films myself, but it seems obvious to me there are but two places to learn how to make movies: in the outside world constrained by so-called reality, and in the inside world of the cinema’s darkness, constrained by so-called illusion. Travelogue tales and quotidian reportage being of little interest here, a log for illusionary research and experience, I must duly deliver my film report on the films that came upon me in the darkness of the Melbourne International Film Festival, which ran from July 31 - August 17, and the lessons learned.

Awe Sum

Epic of Everest

So many academics and cinephiles alike seem consternated by Walter Benjamin's paen to the the aura of an original artwork, something squandered, lost, obfuscated, or obliterated in the mechanical reproduction of art in post cards, photographic duplicates, and, of course, cinema. But upon encountering at the festival a restoration...

Above: Pedro Costa's Horse Money

The Locarno Film Festival has announced their lineup for the 67th edition, taking place this August between the 6th and 16th. It speaks for itself, but, um, wow...

"Every film festival, be it small or large, claims to offer, if not an account of the state of things, then an updated map of the art form and the world it seeks to represent. This cartography should show both the major routes and the byways, along with essential places to visit and those that are more unusual. The Festival del film Locarno is no exception to the rule, and I think that looking through the program you will be able to distinguish the route map for this edition." — Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director

Above: Matías Piñeiro's The Princess of France

Concorso Internazionale (Official Competition)

A Blast (Syllas Tzoumerkas, Greece/Germany/Netherlands)

Alive (Jungbum Park, South Korea)

Horse Money (Pedro Costa,...

In my first year at the Festival de Cannes, I think I walked the length of the Boulevard de la Croisette approximately 36 times. At first swarming through this crowded main street is like being trapped in a street fair full of confused rubber-neckers, all wandering in different directions, straining to see something that hasn't quite materialized. Gosling? Glitz? Justin Bieber? Jean-Luc Godard?

On my first stroll down this main drag, I saw Hummer-inspired yachts, an older European couple with his-and-her beige linen pant suits and matching grey-blond severe bobs, and a group of loud American students slugging rosé from the bottle on a bench. The police and bouncers (more so than the festival staff) control the crowds with alarmingly random assertions of authority. "Ne fais pas le rois juste!" shouted one pissed off teen when an officer decides on a whim, seemingly, that only some people are allowed to cross the street.

To accompany the exhaustive retrospective of the films of Jean-Luc Godard (49 programs in 21 days) that started as part of the New York Film Festival and runs through the end of October, I had planned to select my ten all-time favorite posters for Godard’s films. But when I sat down to the task and laid out the ten I’d chosen in front of me, the result was a selection of posters so overly familiar as to be banal. It looked like the postcard rack of any film bookstore in Paris. Much as I had hoped to choose less obvious designs, when it came down to it the posters created for Godard’s films in the 60s are hands down among the greatest film posters ever made: Clément Hurel’s Breathless, Chica’s Une femme est une femme, Jacques Vaissier’s Vivre sa vie, Georges Kerfyser’s Band à part and Une femme mariée,...

"Dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality." For cinephiles, it's amusing to watch two very talented filmmakers geeking out while raiding the DVD/Br closets of the Criterion Collection. Inbetween the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals, directors Alfonso Cuarón (of Gravity) & Pawel Pawlikowski (of Ida) stopped by the Criterion offices in New York City and stole made off with a bunch of DVDs from their archives. A short video has hit the web showing the two discussing classics and picking out favorites, and now we can watch them geek out. Thanks to RopeofSilicon for the tip. Here's a list of all the Criterion films mentioned or shown in the video: Vivre Sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard/1962), Lola Montes (Max Ophuls/1955), The Complete Jean Vigo, To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch/1942), A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson/1956), Larisa Shepitko Series,...

The New York Film Festival will kick off a three-week Jean-Luc Godard retrospective on Oct 9.

Films will include Le Petit Soldat, Alphaville, Masculin Féminin and Film Socialisme.

Festival top brass will also host a 20th anniversary screening of Richard Linklater’s Dazed And Confused with director and cast in attendance.

The 51st New York Film Festival will run from Sept 27-Oct 13.

Back in November, after having written Movie Poster of the Week for almost three years, I decided to start a Tumblr as a place to display all those orphan posters I loved: the ones I couldn’t find all that much to say about, that didn’t fit any current trend or personal train of thought but which needed to be seen. It seemed natural to call it Movie Poster of the Day and so I decided I would try to post just one single poster a day, ideally something unfamiliar yet worthy of attention. In February, Flavorpill declared Movie Poster of the Day one of the “Essential Tumblrs for film fans” which persuaded me it was worth continuing and over the past eight months I have somehow managed to post something every single day. In the process I seem to have amassed over 15,000 followers on Tumblr.

I have a...

A Burning Hot Summer features another of Philippe Garrel's unforgettable dance sequences. (Who can forget "This Time Tomorrow" in Les amants réguliers?) Here the song is Dirty Pretty Things' "Truth Begins," the actors include Monica Bellucci and Louis Garrel and it is photographed in vibrant color by the great Willy Kurant (Masculin Féminin, Under the Sun of Satan, Pootie Tang).

Garrel's new film is being released in the U.S. from IFC Films this Friday exclusively at the IFC Center in Manhattan, and is available nationwide in the U.S. on demand via Sundance Selects, plus digital outlets iTunes, Amazon Streaming, SundanceNOW, Xbox and PS3....

The Montreal-based independent publisher caboose has been working for five years on a volume that'll finally be out in September, Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television by Jean-Luc Godard. "In 1978, just before returning to the international stage for the second phase of his career," Godard "improvised a series of 14 one-hour talks at Concordia University in Montreal as part of a projected video history of cinema. These talks, published in French in 1980 and long out of print, have never before been translated into English. For this edition, the faulty and incomplete French transcription has been entirely revised and corrected, working from the sole videotape copies of the lectures, housed in the Concordia University archives. For this project, Godard screened for a dozen or so students his own famous films of the 1960s — watching them himself for the first time since their production — alongside single reels of some of...

Hey Los Angeles… grab your popcorn, because Landmark Theatres has announced it’s Fall-Winter film calender for the Nuart Theatre. It highlights limited-run films to avid cinephiles in Los Angeles, offering an essential guide for audiences to discover exciting films that may never enjoy the publicity of nationwide exposure. Included in the mix of programming are documentaries, reissues, features from a variety of foreign countries and other edgy, alternative cinema.

Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles

Showtimes and information: (310)281-8223

http://www.LandmarkTheatres.com

Features Friday, October 14 . Thursday, October 20

The Man Nobody Knew: In Search Of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby

A son’s riveting look at a father whose life seemed straight out of a spy thriller, The Man Nobody Knew uncovers the secret world of legendary CIA spymaster William Colby, who rose through the ranks of “The Company” and soon was involved in covert operations in...

With French New Wave legend Jean Luc-Godard spending the latter part of his career making interesting curiosities like "Film Socialisme" that are pretty much only appreciated by his small, but diehard fanbase, it's easy to forget that one point, his name alone would have lineups forming around the block at arthouses nationwide. And coming right at the end of his 1960s run that included what arguably his best and most influential films including "2 or 3 Things I Know About Her," "Masculin Féminin," "Pierrot le fou," "Band of Outsiders," "Contempt," "Vivre Sa Vie," "A Woman Is a Woman" and of…...

Director: Richard Ayoade Writers: Richard Ayoade, Joe Dunthorne Starring: Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige, Paddy Considine, Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor, Lily McCann Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is the cinematic sibling of Harold Chasen and Max Fischer, the young male protagonists from Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude and Wes Anderson’s Rushmore respectively. A 15-year-old Welsh boy with a geeky penchant for reading the dictionary, Oliver dourly trudges around Swansea outfitted in a black duffel coat with leather briefcase in hand. Solipsistically fancying himself as a fully-formed gentleman with superior tastes and sensibilities, Oliver is the cinematic reincarnation of The Catcher in the Rye’s (Oliver’s favorite modern American novel) protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Oliver pines over a blissful obsession, despite her eczema, with an iconic first-love character, Jordana (Yasmin Paige), a classmate who bears a remarkable resemblance to Chantal Goya circa Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Féminin (one of many film's...

Reviewed by Jay Antani

(June 2011)

Directed/Written by: Jean-Luc Godard

Starring: Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Jean-Marc Stehlé, Patti Smith, Robert Maloubier, Alain Badiou, Nadège Beausson-Diagne and Élisabeth Vitali

Jean-Luc Godard’s “Film Socialisme” is likely to be an unbearable experience for anyone other than Godard himself and his most hardcore adherents. The veteran filmmaker has pieced together a prohibitively obscure free-association polemic on his pet theme of politics (the politics of nations, races, religion, relationships, communication, gender — essentially the entire fabric of postcolonial civilization) and how it’s processed through the meat grinder of postmodern pop culture.

The first half of “Film Socialisme” takes place on a Mediterranean cruise ship, the second in and around what is presumably a family-run gas station. The visual texture of the first half ranges from the clean, crisp high-def views of sea, sky, the ship’s decks and cabins to the degraded surveillance-camera images found,...

Reviewed by Jay Antani

(June 2011)

Directed/Written by: Jean-Luc Godard

Starring: Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Jean-Marc Stehlé, Patti Smith, Robert Maloubier, Alain Badiou, Nadège Beausson-Diagne and Élisabeth Vitali

Jean-Luc Godard’s “Film Socialisme” is likely to be an unbearable experience for anyone other than Godard himself and his most hardcore adherents. The veteran filmmaker has pieced together a prohibitively obscure free-association polemic on his pet theme of politics (the politics of nations, races, religion, relationships, communication, gender — essentially the entire fabric of postcolonial civilization) and how it’s processed through the meat grinder of postmodern pop culture.

The first half of “Film Socialisme” takes place on a Mediterranean cruise ship, the second in and around what is presumably a family-run gas station. The visual texture of the first half ranges from the clean, crisp high-def views of sea, sky, the ship’s decks and cabins to the degraded surveillance-camera images found,...

Blu-ray may give us unimaginable levels of sharpness in picture quality, but movies can suffer from too much information – like a magician who reveals his tricks

Right now, in my apartment, there are just over 900 DVDs, arranged alphabetically by title on a tall row of shelves in my living room. Not one of them is Blu-ray, nor are they likely to be.

Blu-ray was a necessary commercial development for a sell-through DVD market that was starting to plateau; it arrived, like the Millennium Falcon, in the proverbial nick of time. Yes, it cost more – demanding that the passionate cinephile shell out to upgrade his or her collection – but it also offered more: hitherto unimaginable levels of visual and audio excellence. I don't doubt that the format, with its superior resolution (1080p to 480p), its higher compression rates, looks better than conventional DVD technology: sharper, cleaner, more richly detailed.

This might,...

The Museum of Modern Art is presenting "Rialto Pictures: Reviving Classic Cinema," a 17-film series celebrating the 10th anniversary of the art house revival distributor. Films by Robert Bresson ("Mouchette"), Carol Reed ("The Third Man"), Luis Bunuel ("Diary of a Chambermaid"), Federico Fellini ("Nights of Cabiria"), Jean-Luc Godard ("Masculin feminine") and Jean-Pierre Melville ("Bob le Flambeur") will be screened. The selection chosen by MOMA Department of Film senior curator Laurence Kardish will be screened from July 25 to Aug. 10 in New York.