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Undercurrents:
Neglected Works from the French New Wave
Short Films

Screening on Film
  • All Boys are Called Patrick (Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick)

    Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
    With Jean-Claude Brialy, Nicole Berger, Anne Collette.
    France, 1957, 16mm, black & white, 21 min.
    French with English subtitles.

One of Godard’s earliest films, this whimsical short follows two students, Véronique and Charlotte, who share a room together in Paris. They separately encounter a roguish young man named Patrick, who invites each of them on a date. Based on a scenario by Eric Rohmer, the film encapsulates the fickle folly of adolescent love in and around the chic Left Bank of Paris.

  • Antoine et Colette

    Directed by François Truffaut.
    With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie-France Pisier, François Darbon.
    France, 1962, 35mm, color, 29 min.
    French with English subtitles.

Made for the omnibus film Love at Twenty (with episodes by directors Andrzej Wajda, Sintaro Ishihara, Marcel Ophuls, and Renzo Rossellini), this short work was Truffaut’s first attempt to re-use the character of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) he created for his earlier, semi-autobiographical film The Four Hundred Blows. Now age seventeen, Antoine works in a record factory. At a music concert he meets Colette, a girl his own age, falls in love with her, and decides to move into a hotel opposite her home in hopes of winning her heart. This rueful little film, told with all Truffaut’s usual insight into the quirks of human behavior, captures the hesitancies and uncertainties of young love.

  • La nouvelle vague par elle-meme (The New Wave by the New Wave)

    Directed by Robert Valey.
    France, 1964, digital video, black & white, 55 min.
    French with English subtitles.

After the success of their first films, Agnès Varda, Jacques Rozier, Jacques Demy, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Georges Franju, Jean Rouch, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut give us their view of the cinema and the birth of the New Wave. With excerpts from their films and conversations with Henri Langlois as counterpoint, the film documents the enthusiasm of the first films, the triumpth of Cannes in 1959, the failures, and above all the spirit of adventure and breking with the past that were at the heart of the movement. The film's climax includes priceless footage of Godard on the set of Band of Outsiders.

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Neglected Works from the French New Wave

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