Prix Jean Vigo February 10–December 30, 2006

To celebrate the 2005 centenary of the French filmmaker Jean Vigo, each month the Department of Film and Media presents a selection of both rare and celebrated French films by directors who have received the prestigious Prix Jean Vigo, established in 1951 and awarded annually to filmmakers whose work indicates an innovative spirit and promise of future achievement. Past recipients include Olivier Assayas, Claude Chabrol, Arnaud Desplechin, Jean-Luc Godard, Maurice Pialat, and Ousmane Sembène. Rarely screened works by these revered directors are shown, along with films by underappreciated filmmakers. Rounding out the program are undisputed masterpieces of the French canon too enticing to be ignored. All films are in French, with English subtitles.

View the complete screening schedule in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

Organized by Véronique Godard, Prix Jean Vigo Committee; and Jytte Jensen, Curator, and Leigh Goldstein, Executive Assistant, Department of Film. Grateful thanks for the advice of the current Prix Jean Vigo Committee and its President, Luce Vigo, and for the generous collaboration of the Consulate General of France, New York; the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York; and Jean Pierre Stora; and for their invaluable support of our subtitling efforts, Titra-Film and Alex Kuczynski.

Past screenings in this exhibition

De l’histoire ancienne (Resisting Remembrance). 2000. France. Directed by Orso Miret. Screenplay by Roger Bohbot, Agnès de Sacy. With Yann Goven, Oliver Gourmet. After the abrupt death of their father, three siblings struggle with grief and revelations that emerge about his participation in the French Resistance. With rich performances and a dense script, Miret’s first feature offers a nuanced image of a family and a country both confronting an ambiguous legacy. Courtesy Films Distribution. 120 min.

Thursday, November 2, 6:00; Saturday, November 18, 2:00. T2

Un Homme qui dort (A Man in a Dream). 1974. France. Directed by Georges Perec, Bernard Queysanne. Screenplay by Perec. With Jacques Spiesser. Narrated by Shelley Duvall. A philosophy student ignores his alarm one morning and continues down the path of disengagement that then opens before him. English-language version. Courtesy Dovidis. 82 min.
La Passion selon Florimond. 1969. France. Directed by Laurent Gomes. With the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop, an octogenarian demonstrates his roller skating prowess and joie
de vivre. 7 min.

Thursday, November 9, 8:00 (introduced by Bernard Queysanne). T1; Saturday, November 11, 2:00. T2

Ce vieux rêve qui bouge (That Old Dream That Moves). 2001. France. Written and directed by Alain Guiraudie. With Pierre-Louis Calixte, Jean-Marie Combelles. An engaging portrait of male camaraderie and communication in a community of rural factory workers, with surprising moments of intense and quiet eroticism. 50 min.
L’Arpenteur. 2001. France. Written and directed by Sarah Petit, Michel Klein. A twenty-year-old Frenchman of Armenian descent travels through the land that his family called home. Courtesy Sesame Films. 45 min.

Friday, November 17, 8:30; Saturday, November 18, 4:30. T2

Remparts d’argile (Ramparts of Clay). 1970. France/Algeria. Directed by Jean-Louis Bertucelli. Screenplay by Jean Duvignaud. With Leila Schenna. A young Tunisian woman wordlessly revolts against her community. Working from Duvignaud’s book about the backbreaking labor and daily habits of a Tunisian salt-mining community, Bertucelli filmed on location in Tehouda, a village in southern Algeria. 87 min.
Enfants des courants d’air. 1959. France. Directed by Edouard Luntz. The lonely life of a boy living on the degraded outskirts of Paris. 24 min.

Thursday, December 7, 6:30. T1; Saturday, December 9, 2:00. T2

Dis-moi que je rêve (Mooncalf). 1998. France. Written and directed by Claude Mouriéras. With Frederic Pierrot, Vincent Deneriaz. Divided over whether their mentally handicapped son should be institutionalized, a middle-aged couple and their younger children begin family therapy. Mouriéras sets his drama in the isolated surroundings of a farm embedded in the French Alps. Courtesy Pathé. 96 min.

Thursday, December 14, 8:00. T1; Saturday, December 16, 2:00. T2

Maine-Océan (Maine-Ocean Express). 1986. France. Directed by Jacques Rozier. Screenplay by Rozier, Lydia Feld. With Bernard Menez, Luis Rego. Opening with a race through a train station, Rozier’s exuberant comedy runs at a breakneck pace. A violently expressive sailor, two by-the-book train conductors, a Brazilian model, and her American impresario fuel an escalating confusion of languages and social classes that climaxes on an island off Brittany’s coast. 132 min.

Thursday, December 28, 6:30. T1; Saturday, December 30, 2:00. T2

La Vie des morts. 1991. France. Written and directed by Arnaud Desplechin. With Marianne Denicourt, Emannuelle Devos. A family congregates in an old country house to
learn the outcome of a cousin’s suicide attempt. Desplechin’s first feature captures the peculiar sense of exasperation-tinged comfort that only family can provide. Courtesy Why Not Productions. 52 min.
Tous à la manif. 1994. France. Written and directed by Laurent Cantet. With John Bertin, Michel Brun. High school students annex a café as headquarters for a demonstration. 27 min.

Friday, December 29, 6:30. T1; Saturday, December 30, 5:00. T2

Past screenings in this exhibition

N’oublie pas que tu vas mourir (Don’t Forget You’re Going to Die). 1995. France. Directed by Xavier Beauvois. Screenplay by Beauvois, Emmanuel Salinger. With Beauvois, Roschdy Zem, Chiara Mastroianni. With assurance and flair, Beauvois tackles Love, Mortality, Despair, and other capitalized notions that are often poked at but rarely speared. Beginning with its carpe diem title, the film is a nervy portrait of a callow student who starts to devour life after he’s told his own will soon be over. Courtesy Why Not Productions. 121 min.
Friday, February 10, 7:00. T1; Monday, February 13, 8:30. T2

L’Enfant secret (The Secret Child). 1982. France. Directed by Philippe Garrel. Screenplay by Garrel, Anne Wiazemsky. With Henri de Maublanc, Wiazemsky. Stark, poetic, and quivering with emotion, Garrel’s autobiographical work is as raw as it
is exquisite. The ecstasy of togetherness and the despair of loneliness, loss, and insanity collide in a succession of scenes propelled by a sense of great urgency. Visualizing pure states of being and traces of life-defining moments, Garrel allows us to experience the relationships of his characters as they live together-and apart. 95 min.
Friday, February 10, 9:30. T1; Monday, February 13, 6:30. T2

Le Jardinier (The Gardener). 1980. France. Directed by Jean-Pierre Sentier. Screenplay by Sentier, Daniel Lathoux. With Maurice Bénichou, Michele Marquais, Jean Bolo. Unfolding in an industrial wonderland of rusted machinery and collaged coupons, this absurdist fairy tale centers on the delicate love between a nimble green thumb and the cloistered, kept woman of two factory owners. Full of recognizable detritus that has been repurposed for fanciful games, the film adheres to its own system of logic-one that is never fully explained but remains hauntingly intriguing. 96 min.
Saturday, February 11, 6:00. T1; Sunday, February 12, 4:00. T2

À bout de souffle (Breathless). 1960. France. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Screenplay by Godard, based on an original treatment by François Truffaut. With Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg. Iconic, stylish, and often cited as inaugurating the French New Wave, Breathless is also a distinctively modern romance: three parts ambivalence, one part love. Courtesy New Yorker Films. 95 min.
Elle et lui. 1988. France. Written and directed by François Margolin. Cinematography by Caroline Champetier. With Hélène Lapiower, Pascal Nzonzi. Marriage and prostitution are kissing cousins in this starkly lit and beautifully photographed lesson in the art of seduction. 22 min.
Saturday, February 11, 8:15. T1; Sunday, February 12, 1:30. T2

Le Beau Serge. 1959. France. Written, directed, and produced by Claude Chabrol. With Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy. Forced to confront the drunken despair and aimless vulgarity that consume a former friend, an ailing sophisticate tries to make sense of what has become of his childhood home and its once brightest light. Courtesy Janus Films. 98 min.

Le Bleu du ciel (Sky Blue). 2000. France. Directed by Christian Dor. Screenplay by Dor, Virginie Reyns. With Sylvain Périsse, Colin Pitrat. An absorbing glimpse of the details and habits of daily life, this beautifully shot portrait of a well-off teenage boy elliptically follows his readjustment after a stay in a mental hospital. 27 min.

Thursday, March 2, 6:00; Saturday, March 4, 2:00. T1

Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?). 1965. France. Written and directed by William Klein. With Dorothy MacGowan, Sami Frey, Jean Rochefort. A scathing and outlandish laugh at 1960s fashionista France, Klein’s trippy satire centers on a bucktoothed American beauty surrounded by an entourage of charming princes, twiggy models, and her own version of Diana Vreeland. Courtesy Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. 100 min.

Des filles et des chiens (Girls and Dogs). 1991. France. Directed by Sophie Fillières. Fillières sets the easy teasing and torment of adolescent female friendship against the backdrop of Paris street life. 7 min.

Thursday, March 9, 6:30; Saturday, March 11, 2:00. T1

Paris s’éveille (Paris Awakens). 1991. France/Italy. Written and directed by Olivier Assayas. With Judith Godrèche, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Thomas Langmann. A headlong dive into the passion and anger of adolescents on the cusp of adulthood. With graceful, ever-moving camerawork, Assayas’s third feature conveys the restless and chaotic state of Louise and Adrien, teenage lovers quick to wound and not yet scarred. Courtesy Pathé. 96 min.

Eponine. 1984. France. Written, directed, and scored by Michel Chion. With Elizabeth Tamaris, Karine Sacco. Using textured, nearly pointillist images and an ominous sound design, Chion envelops a skittish young girl’s encounter with her mother in an aura of gothic terror. 13 min.

Thursday, April 6, 8:00; Saturday, April 8, 5:00. T1

Olivier Assayas and Luc Barnier’s Hotel Atithi, with a soundtrack by Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore

New York premiere

Hotel Atithi. 2005. France. Directed by Olivier Assayas and Luc Barnier. Music by Mirror/Dash. A distillation of the visual fluidity and eroticism that run throughout Assayas’s oeuvre, this experimental work unfolds against the recorded soundtrack of a live performance by Mirror/Dash members Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. 35 min. New York premiere

Sonic Youth: 1991—The Year Punk Broke. 1992. USA. Directed by Dave Markey. With Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Toys in Babeland, Courtney Love. The riotous performances and summer shenanigans of Sonic Youth during their landmark European tour are captured, along with some good-humored buffoonery from their then-little-known opening act, Nirvana. 95 min.

Saturday, April 8, 2:00 and 8:00. T1

La Noire de… (Black Girl). 1965. France/Senegal. Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène. With Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinek. Lovingly photographing his title character, Sembène heightens the contrast between a young, beautiful African woman and the petty bourgeois French family who house and ultimately destroy her. A direct and aching parable about colonialism and cultural identity. Courtesy New Yorker Films. 80 min.

Léon la lune (Leo the Moon). 1956. France. Directed by Alain Jessua. Screenplay by Robert Giraud, Jessua. With Jacques Prévert. Set in the streets of a deserted Paris, this atmospheric portrait of an old drifter wears its poetic realist influences on its sleeve. Courtesy Archives Françaises du Film (CNC). 16 min.

Thursday, April 20, 6:30. T1; Saturday, April 22, 2:00. T2

La Jetée. 1962. Written, directed, and photographed by Chris Marker. With Jean Négroni. Often billed as a landmark of science fiction, Marker's story of menacing governmental experiments and time travel is told through a succession of still images and clear and chilling narration. A rare screening of the original English-language version. Courtesy New Yorker Films. 29 min.

Les Statues meurent aussi (Statues Also Die). 1953. Directed by Alain Resnais, Chris Marker. Screenplay by Marker. With Jean Négroni. An image-essay examining African sculpture and its entombment in European museums. Courtesy Édition Présence Africaine. 29 min.

Pondichéry, juste avant l'oubli. 1987. Directed by Joël Farges. With Souni Sukla, Maurice Sukla. A cinematic love letter to Pondicherry, a port town in South India that still bears the stamp of its French colonial past. Farges evokes the birthplace he will never return to and the sister he will never see again. Courtesy Les Films de L'Atalante. 52 min. Program approx. 110 min.

Thursday, May 4, 8:00; Saturday, May 6, 2:00. T1

Trop de bonheur. 1994. Directed by Cédric Kahn. Screenplay by Ismaël Ferroukhi, Kahn. With Estelle Perron, Caroline Trousselard. Against the backdrop of sun-drenched southern France, the awkward and overlapping infatuations of smalltown teenagers unfold. Courtesy La Sept/ARTE. In French, without subtitles. 85 min.

Les Filles de mon pays. 1999. Written and directed by Yves Caumon. With Lauryl Brossier, Amandine Monin. Caumon whisks us through the afternoon stir-craziness and evening misadventures of a fifteen-year-old vamp. Courtesy Sunday Morning Productions. 30 min.

Thursday, May 18, 6:45; Saturday, May 20, 2:00. T1

Dix Juin 1944 (June Tenth, 1944). 1962. Directed by Maurice Cohen. Screenplay by Edmond Agabra, Maurice Cohen. Narrated by Jean Négroni. Against the empty streets of Oradour-sur-Glane, Négroni recounts, blow by blow, the battle held there nearly twenty years earlier. 15 min.

Certaines Nouvelles. 1979. Directed by Jacques Davila. Screenplay by Davila, Marie-France Bonin. With Micheline Presle, Bernadette Lafont, Gérard Lartigau. Set in 1961, Davila’s film juxtaposes the terrorism and violence of the French-Algerian war with the daily sun-tanning and chit-chatting routine of a local affluent French family. 97 min.

Thursday, June 1, 6:00. T1; Saturday, June 3, 3:45. T2

Histoire de Paul (Story of Paul). 1974. Written and directed by René Feret. With Paul Allio, Michel Amphou, Roland Amstutz. A young man’s commitment and incarceration in a mental hospital is portrayed with vivid and methodical realism. Eschewing sensationalism, Feret forces the audience to confront the harsh daily life of a patient in an institution. 80 min.

Thursday, June 1, 8:15. T1; Saturday, June 3, 2:00. T2

L’Enfance nue. 1969. France. Directed by Maurice Pialat. Screenplay by Arlette Langmann, Pialat. With Michel Tarrazon, Marie-Louise Thierry, Rene Thierry. Literally translated as “naked childhood,” the title of Pialat’s purportedly autobiographical first feature announces what’s not to follow: sentimentality, pop psychology, and nostalgia. Stripped of the accoutrements that often gussy up renderings of the ugly-duckling stage of life, Pialat’s portrait of a hyperactive ten-year-old and the foster families in which he’s placed registers as acutely and devastatingly honest. Courtesy Roissy Films. 82 min.

Thursday, September 14, 6:45. T1; Sunday, September 17, 4:00. T2

La Vie ne me fait pas peur (I’m Not Afraid of Life). 1999. France. Directed by Noémie Lvovsky. Screenplay by Florence Seyvos, Lvovsky. With Magali Woch, Ingrid Molinier, Julie-Marie Parmentier. Adorned in an eye-aching assemblage of patterned tunics, Kermit-green bellbottoms, and pseudo-masochistic tops heavy on zippers, four girls on the brink of neurotic womanhood are at the center of Lvovsky’s energized feature—while their less vibrant parents, teachers, and love objects look on. Courtesy Connaissance du Cinema and Arena Films. 111 min.
La Coupure (The Break). 2003. France. Written and directed by Nathalie Loubeyre. With Agnès Sourdillon, Hammou Graïa. With two hours to kill between shifts, a cashier meanders in and around a sparsely populated strip mall—and life happens. 20 min. Thursday, September 14, 8:30 (introduced by Loubeyre). T1; Saturday, September 16, 4:30. T2

Bako, l’autre rive (Bako, the Other Shore). 1978. France/Senegal. Directed by Jacques Champreux. Screenplay by Champreux, Cheikh Doukouré. With Sidiki Bakaba, Doura Mane. A wrenching tale of immigration and inhumanity, Bako tracks the journey of a Senegalese young man intent on reaching France in order to make money to send back to his village. Determination notwithstanding, his trip is littered with profiteers and pitfalls. Bakaba’s impressive acting lifts the portrayal of one man’s immigration attempt within a postcolonial world into the realm of myth. 110 min.

Friday, September 15, 6:00 (introduced by Champreux). T1; Sunday, September 17, 6:00. T2

Absences répétées (Repeated Absences). 1972. France. Written and directed by Guy Gilles. With Danièle Delorme, Patrick Penn, Nathalie Delon. Punctuated by a haunting title song written and sung by French icon Jeanne Moreau, Gilles’s personal and episodic feature is more poetry than prose. With a malaise colored by heroin addiction and communicated through diary excerpts, narration, and direct address to the camera, François (Penn) checks in and out of life, only vaguely registering his Parisian surroundings. Courtesy Gaumont and Les films de la Gueville. 79 min.

Friday, September 15, 8:30. T1; Saturday, September 16, 7:30. T2

La Belle Vie (A Beautiful Life). 1963. France. Directed by Robert Enrico. Screenplay by Enrico. Dialogue by Maurice Pons. With Frédéric de Pasquale, Josée Steiner, Odile Geoffroy. Frédéric, a young man returning from two years of military service in Algeria, marries Sylvie and settles in picturesque Paris with hopes of resuming his former life as a photographer. The film—the title of which is rendered ironic by recurrent documentary footage linking the miseries of poor nations, colonial warfare, and police brutality within France—points out the disparity between the dreams of young people and the cruel realities of the world in the 1960s. 105 min.

Thursday, October 12, 6:30. T1; Saturday, October 28, 4:15. T2

Les Yeux clairs (Pale Eyes). 2005. France. Written and directed by Jérôme Bonnell. With Nathalie Boutefeu, Marc Citti, Lars Rudolph. Commended with comparisons to silent-era masterworks, Bonnell’s second feature nails the complex mix of trepidation and longing that makes first love so hard to navigate—and harder still to re-create. At the center of his disquieting fairy tale is a skittish and imbalanced young woman (the lovely Boutefeu) who, on a road trip to see her father’s grave, finds solace in a wordless romance. Courtesy EuropaCorp. 86 min.
Les Femmes de Stermetz. 1958. France. Directed by Louis Grospierre. A documentary about seven widows maintaining their lives and their town—both devoid of men due to the outbreak of war. 16 min.

Friday, October 13, 6:00. T1; Saturday, October 28, 2:00. T2

La Vie de Jesus (The Life of Jesus). 1997. Written and directed by Bruno Dumont. With David Douche. A new chapter in the tradition of humanist filmmaking, Dumont’s remarkable debut caused visceral reactions and divided critics with its stark and direct visual language, and complex, uncompromising, and unfettered vision. In this story of a bad boy’s thorny path to redemption, Freddy, a naive, taciturn young man with epilepsy and no real future, commits an act that destroys his last shred of humanity. This apparent end-of-the-line act becomes the beginning of a quest for grace—a quest made completely believable by Dumont’s clean, organic approach to his material. Courtesy The Weinstein Company. 96 min.

Thursday, October 26, 8:30. T1; Saturday, October 28, 6:30. T2

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Pictured above:
Ramparts of Clay. 1970. France/Algeria. Directed by Jean-Louis Bertucelli