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In this radically unconventional television series, Godard and Miéville analyze the political economy of personal and mass media communications in relation to society, culture, family and the individual. Their inquiry focuses "on and beneath" communications in a provocative critique of the power of media images in contemporary culture and everyday life. Each of the six programs is constructed of two complementary segments: A discursive visual essay on one aspect of the production and consumption of images is paired with a related interview on labor and leisure with an individual — an amateur filmmaker, a dairy farmer, the mathematician René Thom, Godard himself. These extended interviews provide a subjective counterpoint to the theoretical essays on work, economics and mass cultural imagery.
This French romantic comedy-drama concerns Claude Langmann, a middle-aged auctioneer, who is in a loving marriage with his second wife of 15 years. Though he is deeply in love with his wife and has remained faithful to her, he finds himself unable to perform in bed. His wife says she is satisfied with Claude's love and tenderness, but he visits a sex specialist anyway. There he learns of Viagra, which is not yet approved in France, though it is available in Switzerland over the counter. Soon Claude is on his way to Geneva, and eager to prove his manhood, tries to bed Agnes, his very attractive and very available assistant. His daughter, who also comes along for the trip, interferes with her own problems.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
The film narrates a utopian abandonment, consensual and festive of the market economy and high productivity. The population decides on a number of resolutions beginning with "We stop everything" and the second "After a total downtime will be revived-reluctantly-that the services and products including lack will prove intolerable. Probably: water to drink, electricity for reading at night, the TSF to say "This is not the end of the world, this is an 01, and now a page of Celestial Mechanics". The implementation of these resolutions is the first day of a new era, Year 01. The Year 01 is emblematic of the challenge of the 1970s and covers such diverse topics as ecology, negation of authority, free love, communal living, rejection of private property and labor.
The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.
Jeanne Quester is a psychologist-on-the-airwaves in a radio station. She got a raw deal when she was a child.
Paula Barretto (Juliet Berto) is caught in the underworld because her father was involved in the drug business, her brother is in the real estate scam, and her lover is an armed thief. Although she tries to get out of her corrupt and dangerous environment, it is not an easy task when even the police officers cannot be trusted, and the underworld has informants everywhere.
Anita is a barmaid at the center of a community of street preachers, prostitutes, dealers and users. When a beloved friend (and young drug dealer) is caught by narcotics agents, Anita takes it upon herself to score for his struggling clients.
When her mother dies, a teenage girl, together with her five-year-old brother, decides to find her long-absent sailor father.
It all begins when Lucien Lachenay (André Dussollier), famous builder of the moving sidewalk for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, saves the life of the beautiful Alice Avellano (Kristin Scott Thomas), whom her husband, who has gone mad, was trying to strangle. Lucien Lachenay is himself threatened by a group of anarchists who have instructed a young worker, Alphonse (Benno Fürmann), to suppress him. Alphonse messes up the job, but Lucien, impressed by his inexhaustible energy and thirst for knowledge, agrees to be his mentor instead of handing him over to the police. In the years that follow, Lucien, Alphonse, Alice and the young and attractive Laure (Isabelle Carré) will face the game of rivalry, betrayal and reconciliation.
Jean-Luc Godard mixes video and film in his Grenoble studio, discussing how he secured funding for the film. The action unfolds on two monitors, as a young working-class couple lives in a claustrophobic, high-rise apartment complex and marital discord is set off by the wife’s infidelity.
Mary and Louis have been married for 10 years and have 2 children. Louis is a construction worker who, to support his wife and children in a comfort, works more and more. Mary asks Louis to spend more time with his family, but he replies that it is impossible. Marie makes the acquaintance of a former teacher of her son, he seems seduced by Marie who invites her over several times in the company of his children, his home ... The couple become unglued a little more when Louis meets a young prostitute. Can the couple manage to get through this?
Two enigmatic women, both with a hidden but shared motive, separately arrive in Paris. As they navigate the city and their search progresses, various characters become entangled within their conflict, one which increasingly comes to take a fantastical turn. These characters too, driven by their own desires, strive for their own goals in the fight. From a Paris, drenched in an otherworldly ambiance, a tale of desire and power emerges through mystery.
Marie is just out from prison when she runs into Baptiste, a young paranoid needing companionship. In their pursuit of a mysterious briefcase carried by Marie's former lover, they roam the street of Paris, transformed into a giant board game, a maze spotted with mysterious traps, puzzling clues, and chance encounters. Maybe they are bricks in some sinister scheme, maybe they are playing a board game, maybe it's a fairy tale, maybe it's yet something else...
Edouard is patriarch of a large family: his second wife, Jeanne, has just had a baby and finally had enough of his philandering. As the marriage between them unravels, Edouard's daughters experience their own emotional shock waves. Dina, in a relationship with playwright Paul, wants more from her daily life, while Sidone is married to a fellow musician but is terrified of performing in public. Fast-forward seven years: Edouard is gravely ill, and the family shares their issues, hopes and fears.
Lili lives near the port of Le Havre. She is mourning her lover Pablo, who died leaving unfinished a video game he was developing for a Japanese trust. A young boy decides to take over the project, while Lili, guided by a mysterious figure called Doctor Digitalis, struggles with her grief and searches for meaning in his absence. The film blends reality and dreamlike visions against the backdrop of the docks and port landscapes.
In this astonishing twelve-part project for and about television — the title of which refers to a 19th-century French primer Le tour de la France par deux enfants — Godard and Miéville take a detour through the everyday lives of two children in contemporary France.
An African narrator tells the story of earth history, the birth of the universe and evolution of life. Beautiful imagery makes this movie documentary complete.
A witty, despairing French-Russian-Italian-Swiss art movie set in 16th-century Georgia, Stalinist Georgia, contemporary Georgia, and contemporary Paris, featuring the same set of actors in all four settings.
Michel is a bored, lonely, cheap-thrills-seeker. Everything changes when he finds an unusual bobble head doll in the shape of a pretty woman that can say "I love you" and falls in love with it to the point of obsession.
