François Roland Truffaut was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. With a career of more than 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry.
French cinema consists of the film industry and its film productions, whether made within the nation of France or by French film production companies abroad. It is the oldest and largest precursor of national cinemas in Europe; with primary influence also on the creation of national cinemas in Asia.
Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert is a French actress. Known for her portrayals of cold, austere women devoid of morality, she is considered one of the greatest actresses of her generation. With 16 nominations and two wins, Huppert is the most nominated actress at the César Awards. She is also the recipient of several accolades, including five Lumières Awards, a BAFTA Award, three European Film Awards, two Berlin International Film Festival, three Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival honors, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award nomination. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her second on its list of the greatest actresses of the 21st century.
Breathless is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend Patricia. The film was Godard's first feature-length work and represented Belmondo's breakthrough as an actor.
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.
Robert Wilson is an American experimental theater stage director and playwright who has been described by The New York Times as "[America]'s – or even the world's – foremost vanguard 'theater artist.'" He has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, and sound and lighting designer.
Vivre sa vie is a 1962 French New Wave drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The film was released in the United States as My Life to Live and in the United Kingdom as It's My Life.
Pierrot le Fou is a 1965 French New Wave romantic crime drama road film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. The film is based on the 1962 novel Obsession by Lionel White. It was Godard's tenth feature film, released between Alphaville and Masculin, féminin. The plot follows Ferdinand, an unhappily married man, as he escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by OAS hitmen from Algeria.
Masculin Féminin is a 1966 French New Wave film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. An international co-production between France and Sweden, the film stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Marlène Jobert, Catherine-Isabelle Duport, and Michel Debord.
A tableau vivant, French for 'living picture', is a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be theatrically lit. It thus combines aspects of theatre and the visual arts.
Hanna Schygulla is a German actress and chanson singer associated with the theater and film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She first worked for Fassbinder in 1965 and became an active participant in the New German Cinema. Schygulla won the 1979 Berlin Silver Bear for Best Actress for Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, and the 1983 Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for the Marco Ferreri film The Story of Piera.
Raoul Coutard was a French cinematographer. He is best known for his connection with the French New Wave period and particularly for his work with director Jean-Luc Godard, which includes Breathless (1960), A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Vivre sa vie (1962), Bande à part (1964), Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, and Weekend (1967). Coutard also shot films for New Wave director François Truffaut—including Shoot the Piano Player (1960) and Jules and Jim (1962)—as well as Jacques Demy, a contemporary frequently associated with the movement.
La Cérémonie is a 1995 French-German psychological thriller film by Claude Chabrol, adapted from the 1977 novel A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell. The film echoes the case of Christine and Lea Papin, two French maids who brutally murdered their employer's wife and daughter in 1933, as well as the 1947 play they inspired, The Maids by Jean Genet.
Set Me Free is a 1999 Canadian coming-of-age drama film by Léa Pool and starring Karine Vanasse. It tells the story of Hanna, a girl struggling with her sexuality and the depression of both her parents as she goes through puberty in Quebec in 1963. The film heavily references the French new-wave film Vivre sa vie by Jean-Luc Godard.
King Lear is a 1987 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's play in the style of experimental French New Wave cinema. The script was primarily by Peter Sellars and Tom Luddy. It is not a typical cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare's eponymous tragedy, although some lines from the play are used in the film. Only three characters – Lear, Cordelia and Edgar – are common to both, and only Act I, scene 1 is given a conventional cinematic treatment in that two or three people actually engage in relatively meaningful dialogue.
The 34th Cannes Film Festival was held from 13 to 27 May 1981. The Palme d'Or went to the Człowiek z żelaza by Andrzej Wajda. The festival opened with Three Brothers by Francesco Rosi and closed with Honeysuckle Rose, directed by Jerry Schatzberg.
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting is a 1978 French surrealist experimental mystery film directed by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz and shot by cinematographer Sacha Vierny. The film was inspired by the themes of French writer Pierre Klossowski and makes references to many of Klossowski's works including The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, The Baphomet and “La Judith de Frédérique Tonnerre.” Ruiz was originally commissioned by a French TV network to make an arts documentary on Klossowski, but what emerged is this film, a parody of the art documentary. The film was featured in film festivals after its release such as the London Film Festival in 1979. Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting has been noted as one of Ruiz's masterpieces that challenges the boundaries of cinema and film theory.
The Neues Sehen, also known as New Vision or Neue Optik, was a movement, not specifically restricted to photography, which was developed in the 1920s. The movement was directly related to the principles of the Bauhaus. Neues Sehen considered photography to be an autonomous artistic practice with its own laws of composition and lighting, through which the lens of the camera becomes a second eye for looking at the world. This way of seeing was based on the use of unexpected framings, the search for contrast in form and light, the use of high and low camera angles, etc. The movement was contemporary with New Objectivity with which it shared a defence of photography as a specific medium of artistic expression, although Neues Sehen favoured experimentation and the use of technical means in photographic expression.
Goodbye to Language is a 2014 French-Swiss narrative essay film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Héloïse Godet, Kamel Abdeli, Richard Chevallier, Zoé Bruneau, Jessica Erickson and Christian Grégori and was shot by cinematographer Fabrice Aragno. It is Godard's 42nd feature film and 121st film or video project. In the French-speaking parts of Switzerland where it was shot, the word "adieu" can mean both goodbye and hello. The film depicts a couple having an affair. The woman's husband discovers the affair and the lover is killed. Two pairs of actors portray the couple and their actions repeat and mirror one another. Godard's own dog Roxy Miéville has a prominent role in the film and won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Like many of Godard's films, it includes numerous quotes and references to previous artistic, philosophical and scientific works, most prominently those of Jacques Ellul, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Mary Shelley.
Rosemary Julia Barrow was a Welsh art historian who specialised in classical themes in Victorian art and the painting of Lawrence Alma-Tadema in particular, whose reputation she attempted to restore.
