Jean-Pierre Gorin

Last updated

Jean-Pierre Gorin
Born (1943-04-17) 17 April 1943 (age 79)
Paris, France
Citizenship French
OccupationDirector, producer
Years active1968–present
Notable work Tout Va Bien , Poto and Cabengo

Jean-Pierre Gorin (born 17 April 1943) is a French filmmaker and professor, best known for his work with Nouvelle Vague luminary Jean-Luc Godard, during what is often referred to as Godard's "radical" period.

Contents

Jean-Pierre Gorin was a student of Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. He was a radical leftist well before meeting Godard in 1966. Godard relied on some of his discussions with Gorin while writing the script of 1967's La Chinoise . Gorin played a role in making Le Gai Savoir , which was released in 1969. In 1968, Gorin and Godard founded the collective Dziga Vertov Group and together produced a series of overtly political films including Vent d'est (1970), Tout va bien (1972), and Letter to Jane (1972).

Gorin left France in the mid-1970s to accept a teaching position at the University of California, San Diego at the urging of the film-critic and painter Manny Farber. Gorin remained on the Visual Arts faculty thereafter, teaching film history and film criticism. He continued to make films—most notably a "Southern California tetralogy" of essay films: Poto and Cabengo (1978), Routine Pleasures (1986), My Crasy Life (1991), and Letter to Peter (1992). Gorin describes his concept of Poto and Cabengo in 1988:

The film is about an unstructured discourse—the language of the twins—surrounded by structured discourses—the discourse of the family, the discourse of the media, the discourse of therapy, the discourse of documentary filmmaking.... [The twins' language] erupts as a subversive act which has not been authorized by any social or ideological establishment. In a sense its special threat is that its "unauthorized" nature relativizes the arbitrary nature of those institutionalized discourses. The singsong of the twins reveals the shaky grounds of institutional power. It relativizes discursive authority from the family to the scientific community in their competitive and ineffectual attempts to "define" the twins who spontaneously flit about the screen exceeding any definition. [1]

Selected filmography

  1. 1972 Tout Va Bien
  2. 1972 Letter to Jane: An Investigation About a Still
  3. 1976 Here and Elsewhere
  4. 1980 Poto and Cabengo
  5. 1986 Routine Pleasures
  6. 1992 My Crasy Life
  7. 1992 Letter to Peter

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François Truffaut</span> French film director (1932–1984)

François Roland Truffaut was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more than 25 years, he remains an icon of the French film industry, having worked on over 25 films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Luc Godard</span> French-Swiss film director (1930–2022)

Jean-Luc Godard was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the 1960s French New Wave film movement and was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. According to AllMovie, his work "revolutionized the motion picture form" through its experimentation with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Rivette</span> French film director, screenwriter and film critic

Jacques Rivette was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. He made twenty-nine films, including L'amour fou (1969), Out 1 (1971), Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), and La Belle Noiseuse (1991). His work is noted for its improvisation, loose narratives, and lengthy running times.

Poto and Cabengo are American identical twins who used an invented language until the age of about eight. Poto and Cabengo is also the name of a documentary film about the girls made by Jean-Pierre Gorin and released in 1980.

<i>Tout Va Bien</i> 1972 French-Italian film

Tout va bien is a 1972 French-Italian political drama film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin and starring Jane Fonda and Yves Montand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raoul Coutard</span> French cinematographer (1924–2016)

Raoul Coutard was a French cinematographer. He is best known for his connection with the Nouvelle Vague period and particularly for his work with director Jean-Luc Godard. Coutard also shot films for New Wave director François Truffaut as well as Jacques Demy, a contemporary frequently associated with the movement.

Letter to Jane is a 1972 French postscript film to Tout Va Bien directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin and made under the auspices of the Dziga Vertov Group. Narrated in a back-and-forth style by both Godard and Gorin, the film serves as a 52-minute cinematic essay that deconstructs a single news photograph of Jane Fonda in Vietnam. This was Godard and Gorin's final collaboration.

The Dziga Vertov Group was formed around 1969 by politically active filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Their films are defined primarily for Brechtian forms, Marxist ideology, and a lack of personal authorship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Schoendoerffer</span> French film director (1928–2012)

Pierre Schoendoerffer was a French film director, a screenwriter, a writer, a war reporter, a war cameraman, a renowned First Indochina War veteran, a cinema academician. He was president of the Académie des Beaux-Arts for 2001 and for 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Lhomme</span>

Pierre Lhomme was a French cinematographer and filmmaker.

Paul Misraki French composer

Paul Misraki was a French composer of popular music and film scores. Over the course of over 60 years, Misraki wrote the music to 130 films, scoring works by directors like Jean Renoir, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Becker, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Orson Welles, Luis Buñuel and Roger Vadim.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Pierre Mocky</span> French film director

Jean-Pierre Mocky, pseudonym of Jean-Paul Adam Mokiejewski, was a French film director, actor, screenwriter and producer.

Here and Elsewhere is a 1976 documentary film by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville. It is a film essay, narrated by Godard and Miéville, on the limitations and artificiality of cinema in attempting to portray reality. It is additionally a critique of the Dziga Vertov Group, the partnership of Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin who together made a number of political, pro-Marxist films between 1968 and 1972.

<i>Histoire(s) du cinéma</i> 1998 film by Jean-Luc Godard

Histoire(s) du cinéma is an 8-part video project begun by Jean-Luc Godard in the late 1980s and completed in 1998. The longest, at 266 minutes, and one of the most complex of Godard's films, Histoire(s) du cinéma is an examination of the history of the concept of cinema and how it relates to the 20th century; in this sense, it can also be considered a critique of the 20th century and how it perceives itself. The project is widely considered Godard's magnum opus.

Tout Va Bien may refer to:

Film Comment Selects is an annual program hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and curated by the editors and writers of Film Comment magazine. It aims to provide a cutting-edge lineup of eclectic and international films, many of which have appeared on the international film festival circuit and been championed in the magazine but have yet to gain distribution. The program first appeared as a one-off event in March 2000, organized by editor Richard T. Jameson and showcasing the most significant films and filmmakers of the past decade. Gavin Smith and Kent Jones added three New York premieres to the roster, and based on its success, it was revived in 2002, remaining an annual event at the Film Society of Lincoln Center ever since. In recent years, the program has extended its focus on little-seen international discoveries to also include avant-garde selections, retrospectives of overlooked or underrated artists, previews of films that are soon to be released, and conversations with directors and actors.

<i>All Together</i> (2011 film) 2011 film

All Together is a 2011 French-German comedy film written and directed by Stéphane Robelin, and starring Jane Fonda and Geraldine Chaplin as participants of an alternate living experiment, that is observed by a graduate student played by Daniel Brühl. The film marks Fonda's first French-speaking role since starring in Jean-Luc Godard's film Tout Va Bien (1972).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1980 Toronto International Film Festival</span>

The 5th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 4 and September 13, 1980. That year the festival hold a retrospective in honor of Jean-Luc Godard, who himself attended the retrospective which was organized by festival programmer Peter Harcourt. A large crowd gathered outside University theatre to catch a glimpse of Bette Midler at the premiere of her film Divine Madness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antoine Bonfanti</span>

Antoine Bonfanti was a French sound engineer and a professor at cinema schools and institutes in France and other countries. He taught regularly at INSAS in Brussels and EICTV in Cuba, and occasionally at Fémis and ENSLL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre-André Boutang</span>

Pierre-André Boutang was a French documentary filmmaker, producer and director. He was one of the leaders of the Franco-German channel Arte as well as of La Sept previously.

References

  1. Tillman, Lynne. "Interview with Jean-Pierre Gorin" BOMB Magazine , Spring 1988. Retrieved 17 May 2013.