alr

Alain Resnais Short Films

Screening on Film
  • All the Memory of the World (Toute la mémoire du monde)

    Directed by Alain Resnais.
    France, 1956, 16mm, black & white, 22 min.
    Print source: MAE

A lyrical documentary about the Bibliothèque Nationale made for the French Foreign Ministry, Memory reveals the behind-the-scenes activities of the library, following a book from its arrival in the vast institution to its placement on the shelf – a “prisoner” until it is checked out. Resnais investigates the idea of libraries as collective memory aids, a hedge against universal forgetting, with the books and librarians acting as agents in the “slow battle against death.”

  • Guernica

    Directed by Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens.
    France, 1950, 35mm, black & white, 12 min.
    French with English subtitles.
    Print source: MAE

Foreshadowing both Night and Fog and Hiroshima mon amour in its innovative form and unflinching content, Guernica uses Picasso’s famous painting as a point of entry to explore the destructive barbarity of war and the resilience of man, editing sections of the painting and other works by Picasso together with photographs of the destroyed city and newspaper headlines, all played over a lyrical narrative written by poet Paul Éluard. The rapid, disorienting editing, dissonant music track and fragmented imagery mirror the tenets of cubism while vividly evoking the physical and psychological toll of war. 

  • Statues Also Die (Les statues meurent aussi)

    Directed by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais.
    France, 1953, 35mm, black & white, 30 min.
    French with English subtitles.
    Print source: MAE

This collaboration between Resnais and Chris Marker begins as an examination of African statues that raises questions about their status and presentation in European museums and ultimately becomes an indictment of the history and effects of colonialism and racism. Because Resnais refused to sanction the censored version originally planned for release, the film has only recently become available.

  • Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard)

    Directed by Alain Resnais.
    France, 1955, 35mm, color and b&w, 31 min.
    French with English subtitles.
    Print source: MAE

A commission to mark the tenth anniversary of the liberation of the German concentration camps by the Allied forces, Resnais’ famous landmark documentary remains the most powerful condemnation of the Nazi camps to emerge from the postwar era. Combining color tracking shots of postwar Auschwitz with black and white archival photographs and footage of prisoners in the death camps, Resnais draws inexorable links between the past and the present while the film’s chillingly understated narrative – written by concentration camp survivor Jean Cayrol –asks searching questions about accountability and the suppression of truth.

Part of film series

Read more

Alain Resnais and the Enigmatic Art of Memory

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2024 McMillan-Stewart Fellow

Read more

The Practice (and Other Works) By Martín Rejtman

Read more

Chronicles of Changing Times. The Cinema of Edward Yang

Read more
Gene Hackman crouched beside a toilet with audio equipment

From the HFA Collection...

Read more

Being In a Place. Rediscovering Margaret Tait