Itinerary of Jean Bricard

The Enclosed Valley

My films are like that: in a room, but looking out onto an open sky. [...] I can’t really say it except to repeat that Bresson note, ‘that without a thing changing, everything is different.’ The film exists. The fiction is set up, and we believe in it. The justness of the agreement leads us to believe it, because everything plays equally at being a sign. That’s the arrangement of the elements. It’s an act of faith. La vallée close is just this: elements treated above all as if in a documentary that, without being changed, portray the story and reveal between them the elements of fiction. But above all seen as they are, insignificant. And then in the relations they set up, they can satisfy our desire for a story. -- Rousseau

Class Relations

A young man, recently arrived in New York from Europe, becomes swept up in a series of events that are beyond his knowledge or control.

Lothringen!

About the history of the French region of Lorraine, called Lothringen in German.

These Encounters of Theirs

These Encounters Of Theirs divides 10 non-professional actors into couples, then has them take turns in declaiming the Dialogues With Leuco, Cesare Pavese's abstract, philosophical work.

A Visit to the Louvre

A visit to the Louvre in Paris commentated by an actor reading Cézanne.

People of the Lake

More than a land, it is from the lake that this son comes. Raised by a father fisherman, he learned his noises and currents, maybe also its hardness at the same time as that of adults. Lake is also a border, but in the water his drawing is lost: in the fishery, "profession of free men", Savoyards and Vaudois find themselves in confreres, and if out loud we only talk about nets and fish, in silence we sometimes enter the Resistance. During the war, Switzerland was sent to refugees, without always understanding what is happening, or why they have this look. After the war, the son will contribute to another history: elected municipal, he participates in the emergence, in Lausanne or to Thonon, of a new left. According to the novel Gens du Lac de Janine Massard, published by Bernard Campiche

History Lessons

Set in contemporary Rome, the film shows through a series of encounters with “ancient” Romans, how the economic and political manipulation by ancient Roman society led to Caesar’s dictatorship. - British Film Institute

Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach

The life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach as presented by his wife, Anna.

Moses and Aaron

A familiar Biblical tale transformed into a cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. In expressive, melodic tones, the fraternal pair debate God’s true message and intent for His creations, a conflict that leads their followers towards chaos and sin. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force.

Il viandante

An alternate look at a part of Sicilia, perhaps left out for its more straightforward didactic quality. Interesting to again see the long gaps. Also note the extra use of close-up (for them) on the old woman.

Fortini/Cani

The film is a sort of presentation of Franco Fortini's book 'I Cani del Sinai'. Fortini, an Italian Jew, reads excerpts from the book about his alienation from Judaism and from the social relations around him, the rise of Fascism in Italy, the anti-Arab attitude of European culture. The images, mostly a series of Italian landscape shots, provide a backdrop that highlights the meaning of the text. - Fabrizio Sabidussi

France Against the Robots

"The word 'revolution' to us Frenchmen is not a vague term. We know that Revolution is a rupture, that Revolution is an Absolute. There is no such thing as a moderate revolution, there is no such thing as a planned revolution—as one speaks of a planned economy. The revolution we are announcing will overturn the entire existing order or it will not take place at all..."

From the Clouds to the Resistance

Two segments. The first one arranges six stories from Cesare Pavese’s «Dialoghi con Leucò», taken from classical mythology. The second segment is taken from Pavese’s novel «La luna e i falò»: after World War II the emigrant «The Bastard» comes back to his village in the Langhe (northern Italy) to find out that everyone he knew has died, and that the war has deeply changed relationships between people.

En rachâchant

The child Ernesto doesn't want to go to school any more because, as he says, all he is taught there is things he doesn't know.

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

L’Inconsolable

With L’inconsolable, Jean-Marie Straub continues the mise en scène of Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, initiated in 1978 with Dalla nube alla resistenza and followed up in 2006, 2007 and 2008 with Quei loro incontri, Artemis’s Knee and Le streghe – femmes entre elles. L’inconsolable is a reflection on the myth of Orpheus.

American Teen

A documentary on seniors at a high school in a small Indiana town and their various cliques.

Deliver Us from Evil

Documentary filmmaker Amy Berg investigates the life of 30-year pedophile Father Oliver O'Grady and exposes the corruption inside the Catholic Church that allowed him to abuse countless children. Victims' stories and a disturbing interview with O'Grady offer a view into the troubled mind of the spiritual leader who moved from parish to parish gaining trust ... all the while betraying so many.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

A documentary that resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971.