Souvenirs, Souvenirs. 1967–78. France. Directed by Pierre Clémenti. With Clémenti, Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Kalfon. DCP from 16mm. Courtesy the Cinémathèque française. Silent. 28 min.
Recently rediscovered in the vaults of the Centre Pompidou, these rushes for Pierre Clémenti’s unfinished early short suggest a prismatic and hallucinatory home movie, with fleeting observations of Catherine Deneuve, Philippe Garrel, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, and Bulle Ogier on film shoots. Clémenti had met Kalfon and Ogier in the mid-1960s as actors in Marc’O’s experimental theater company on Paris’s Left Bank (see Les bargasses and Les idoles).
Notre Dame de la Croisette. 1981. Switzerland. Written and directed by Daniel Schmid. With Bulle Ogier. In French, German, Italian; English subtitles. 53 min.
A contemporary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Werner Schroeter, and Rosa von Praunheim, the Swiss-German actor-director Daniel Schmid collaborated with Bulle Ogier on this clever and funny sendup of the Cannes Film Festival, in which she plays a cinephilic gate crasher at the 1981 edition who’s constantly denied entry to premieres and press conferences. It’s a love letter to the golden age of the movies, starring an iconic actress able to make fun of the absurd theatricality of it all.