Assemblée générale

More and More

Nowadays, supermarkets are being built where cinemas and churches used to be. Logical evolution as consumerism is the religion of the 20th century: supermarkets are the cathedrals of the future.

Les Minutes d'un faiseur de film

A short personal filmed journal about the director's nervousness in presenting a script and awaiting the decision about whether it can be made.

Origins of a Meal

Bananas, eggs, and tuna: three basic foodstuffs with three wildly different points of origin. Moullet begins with these on his plate but constructs his film by working backwards and finding the sources for these items and how they reach our plates. As Moullet’s investigation deepens, however, the film moves beyond the confines of a simple exploration of food origins into more political and social realms, not only relating to food but also to the medium of film.

Barres

The 1984 short Barres celebrates the ingenious ways one can get onto the Paris Metro without paying.

The Phantom of Longstaff

A short film based on Henry James' short story "Longstaff's Marriage".

The Smugglers

Two young women leave claustrophobic city life behind and move to a small border town. There they meet a border guard, involved in smuggling to and from the country. Both women fall for him, resulting in jealousy.

Nathalie Granger

With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman's day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.

Less and Less

Less and Less, Luc Moullet’s 40th film, concerns development and expansion, from 1968 to 2010, of the devices based on computers, automats, interactive terminals and others that can be found everywhere.

The Pig

In the French countryside it's the day for peasants to kill a big fat pig. The slaughter goes on for a great part of the day as they work to store 140kg worth of meat.

The Zsigmondy System

Two young girls find out, in the hard way, that climb mountains isn't all that fun that people often say it is.

La leçon de guitare

A man with nothing to do all day decides to take guitar lessons. He falls for his music teacher’s flatmate who flirts with him slightly and even has the same name as the Serge Gainsbourg chanson he’s struggling to learn “Laetitia”. Not so much a passionate love story as a finely woven, laconic film about what it’s like to be just that little bit in love.

Anatomy of a Relationship

A woman's feminist awakening drives an intellectual couple to a relationship crisis.

Up and Down

A bicycle race is held every year in a pass of the Alps called Parpaillon. With the energy of a skillful cyclist perhaps as a great tribute to François, the mailman played by Tati in The Big Day, Moullet makes a comedy by pedaling at a pace that allows him to reinvent the possibilities of film gags.

Under the Stars

The first emotions in love with a young man of seventeen: Thomas who understands that his life belongs to him at last. Four young women contribute to his sentimental education.

Shipwrecked on Route D17

During the Gulf War, the paths of several groups of characters cross in France’s most desert-like region. The cast is as follows: An astrophysician who works alone with Geraldine in an observatory high in the mountains. He’d like to seduce Geraldine, but she seems to prefer the shepherd who’s been relegated to a shabby hut nearby. A group of filmmakers stuck in the middle of the countryside after their crew went on strike because lunch never turned up. A squadron of stupid soldiers who consider even the most minor incident to be proof of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of France. A maniacal geologist, oblivious of everything, who continues to search for the traces of a tectonic Big Bang in the most inaccessible places.

Zones césariennes

Zones césariennes (which covers the year 2002) is one of Gérard Courant's Filmed Notebooks shot on film. These episodes now coexist with their counterparts filmed on videotape. They are two films with parallel lives but opposing destinies, colliding and eyeing each other warily. They represent two approaches, two styles, two different ways of understanding cinema. Two methods for unfolding time, grasping memory, and exploring the world.