Anouk Aimée

In his landmark 1948 essay Birth of a New Avant-Garde, filmmaker Alexandre Astruc advanced the notion of le caméra-stylo (camera pen) which imagined the cinema eventually breaking free of the concrete demands of narrative, where images become a means of writing just as flexible and subtle as written language. Greatly influenced by Astruc’s theory, it was only a few years later that in 1954 Francois Truffaut spoke of the director as an auteur, the cinematic equivalent of a novelist, cap able of expressing themselves through recurring thematic elements, distinctive ways of building characters, and, above all, through the deployment and movement of actors and objects within the time and space of the shot.Read More »

Synopsis:
A film crew is shooting an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Venice. Bettina Verdi, the leading actress, visits a glass factory in Murano with her guide Raffaele. One of the glassblowers, Angelo, is mesmerized by Bettina, so much so that he joins the cast as Romeo’s double just so that he can see her again. On the film set, Angelo meets Georgia, who is Juliet’s double. Georgia lives in a Venetian palace with her father Ettore and brother Amedeo. Both are hiding from justice after the fall of Fascism. Raffaele is in love with Georgia and does what he can to help her family. But when he realises that Georgia loves Angelo, Raffaele is outraged and decides to have his revenge. He will choose his moment carefully…Read More »

Synopsis
Agnès Varda travels around the world to meet friends, artists, and filmmakers for an expansive view of the global contemporary art scene.Read More »

Quote:
Mathias is a Belgian linguist, living with French theatre producer Anne. After a quarrel about moral questions, they take a train to attend a congress. While Mathias sleeps, Anne disappears. The train stops in the middle of the country and Mathias gets off the train with an older man, Hernhutter, and a young one, Val. The train moves off without them being able to catch it up. They will find a village, but cannot get any help because they do not understand a word of what the inhabitants say…Read More »

IMDB wrote:
In Alexandria, in 1938, Darley, a young British schoolmaster and poet, makes friends through Pursewarden, the British consular officer, with Justine, the beautiful and mysterious wife of a Coptic banker. He observes the affairs of her heart and incidentally discovers that she is involved in a plot against the British, meant to arm the Jewish underground in Palestine.Read More »

Twenty years after WWII an Italian general (Marcello Mastroianni) and a military chaplain (Michel Piccoli) embark on a mission through the heart of Albania searching for the remains of Italian soldiers who once fought on the side of the Fascists. Based on Albanian author Ismail Kadare’s famous 1963 novel of the same name. Also starring Anouk Aimée.Read More »

Quote:
Myriam, a survivor of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, is a filmmaker and journalist who has spent many years living abroad. She takes part in a memorial event at the town hall in Paris commemorating the liberation of the camp, where she wins a flight to Cracow. At first she refuses to accept the prize, then decides to go.Read More »

Quote:

8 1/2 weaves fluidly through the visually intoxicating landscape of Federico Fellini’s subconscious, seemingly to seek inspiration and validation for his life and work. In an opening scene that symbolizes much of Fellini’s films, a suffocating man, trapped inside his car, inexplicably begins to float into the skies, only to be abruptly tugged back to the ground. But it is also an indelible image that shatters any preconceived illusion of “typical” elements in a Fellini film. The film, 8 1/2, literally marks Fellini’s work on 8 1/2 feature films (the “1/2” derived from collaborative direction films), and proves to be a transitional film in his artistic career.Read More »

AMG: The story of how a friendship between two of Europe’s most important filmmakers turned into a rivalry is recounted in this documentary. François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard first met in 1949; in many ways they were very different people — Godard came from a wealthy and supportive family, while Truffaut had troubles with both school and the law during a hardscrabble youth — but they were both passionate devotees of the cinema, and became star writers at the pioneering film journal Cahiers du Cinéma. Ten years later, Truffaut and Godard were the most visible figures in the New Wave of French cinema, having enjoyed international success with The 400 Blows and Breathless. Read More »