The Films of May ’68

Synopsis:
French essay film focusing on global political turmoil in the 1960s and ’70s, particularly the rise of the New Left in France and the development of socialist movements in Latin America.Read More »

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This film was made in the 70’s, with Jean-Pierre Bouyxou. The superimpositions at the end are in some ways influenced by Etienne O’Leary’ stuff : Lethem didn’t saw the films, but Bouyxou was talking to him so much about these movies that if influenced him surely…

This is part of the “belgian underground” with Patrick Hella, Noel Godin, etc…Read More »

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There’s little doubt that, for the serious cinephile, the home video event of this fall will be the the release of Jacques Rivette’s magnum opus OUT 1 (1971) on blu-ray and DVD in three territories: Carlotta Films and Carlotta US will kick off on November 18 in France and the USA respectively, with Arrow Films in the UK following suit on November 30. All three dual-format editions will feature a brand-new Fiction Factory documentary: THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS: JACQUES RIVETTE’S »OUT 1« REVISITED, conceived and directed by Robert Fischer and Wilfried Reichart.Read More »

The film centers on a strike at a sausage factory which is witnessed by an American reporter and her French husband, who is a director of TV commercials. The film has a strong political message which outlines the logic of the class struggle in France in the wake of the May 1968 civil unrest. It also examines the social destruction caused by capitalism. The performers in Tout va bien employ the Brechtian technique of distancing themselves from the audience. By delivering an opaque performance, the actors draw the audience away from the film’s diegesis and towards broader inferences about the film’s meaning.Read More »

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“Lulu the Tool” is no more descriptive a title for Elio Petri’s Italian social drama that opened yesterday at the D. W. Griffith Cinema than “La Classe Operaia Va in Paradiso” (“The Working Class Goes to Heaven”), the title under which it shared (with “The Mattei Affair”) the grand prize of the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. But if neither tag is memorable, there is little doubt that the director-writer, whose convictions are Communist, has projected a cynical view of the worker’s lot that is both fascinating and sobering.

Mr. Petri, who scored with his 1970 dissection of police authority in “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” has again joined Ugo Pirro in writing the script. With Gian Maria Volonte, the top cop in “Investigation,” he points up the Kafkalike condition of “Lulu.”Read More »

“extremely profound & sophisticated anthology of the 60s events conducted by one of the most unique masters of cinema. All the events are well known to us, fundamentally studied & analyzed by each of us, so Marker has to be totally frank, & he is by that matter; he never imposes his points literally, never judges nor justifies, what he does is that he constructs the sequence of the events in such manner that the facts talk for themselves & there’s no place left for accusing Marker in subjectivity.Read More »

What can be verified about the film are two 16mm reels of equal duration composed of two parts: A colour component (which makes up the bulk of the film), illustrating a group of five “students from Vincennes and workers from the Renault plant at Flins”.[10] The group sit in a field outside a large tenement block on the outskirts of Paris and discuss politics, the objectives of the May revolt, and the potential steps involved in achieving revolution in France. The second component of the film is comprised of silent black and white ‘documentary’ footage from the events of May intercut with the colour ‘live’ action in the field. Each of the black and white sections illustrates the May events that the participants discuss, and acts as a complement to their conversation.Read More »