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Les Roses de la vie (1962)
Character: N/A
François Truffaut said of Paul Vecchiali in his early days that he was "the only true heir of Jean Renoir." The first short film of this director, who was to become a singular figure of independent French cinema, follows the path of an elderly woman towards her memories and beyond. Attentive, affectionate and sometimes cruel, Vecchiali's camera invents its own expressive language.
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Du côté de Robinson (1964)
Character: L'Ami
Two young men near the place de Clichy are looking for fun and whatever trouble comes with it. Unsurprisingly, their attention ultimately falls on a girl. They go to a dancing called "Robinson". Spurned when she decides to go dancing with someone else, their thoughts quickly turn to revenge. Slowly, we discover the layer of despair that sits just under their carefree appearance.
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Odette Robert (1971)
Character: Self
Eustache’s grandmother Odette Robert was a key figure in his life, serving as a substitute mother during much of his childhood (My Little Loves was dedicated to her). In 1971, he recorded an interview with her that went largely unseen until 2003—Eustache never screened the complete film publicly, although a radically truncated version was presented on television. In a string of long, stationary takes, the camera watches over Eustache’s shoulder while he pours countless glasses of whiskey and Odette tells the stories of her life. A number of her themes resonate with those of Eustache’s films: cruelty, male philandering, the Rosière festival of Pessac. Number Zero is a return to origins—of cinema and of the self—and an experiment in narration, both restrained and deeply personal.
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La Peine perdue de Jean Eustache (1997)
Character: Self (archival footage)
Ángel Díaz’s documentary The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache, concentrates on Eustache as cinematic thinker and archivist of his own life. Actors read texts written by Eustache, including the following reflection: “The role of the author in cinema should be one of non-intervention.” This sentence reminds us that he belongs to the greatest of film traditions (he cites Griffith, Renoir, Dreyer, and Lang as his models), the one that sees cinema as a matter of placing the camera in front of reality and capturing it ardently, precisely, and without tricks.
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Le Jeune Cinéma : Godard et ses émules (1967)
Character: Self
Influenced and inspired by Jean-Luc Godard, some young french directors (Jean Eustache, Francis Leroi, Jean-Michel Barjol, Romain Goupil, Luc Moullet) are talking about their problems in producing less expensive and more free films in the french industry of cinema of the 60's.
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À Jean Eustache (1982)
Character: Self
Milena Gabanelli sits in her room while listening to one of the last voice recordings of Jean Eustache.
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L'Accompagnement (1969)
Character: N/A
A musician has to compose a commissioned work for a film. But his mind is guided by external solicitations that constantly divert him from his work.
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Les Ministères de l'art (1989)
Character: Self (archive footage)
Philippe Garrel’s documentary on France’s second wave of masterful filmmakers. Featuring Jean Eustache, Chantal Akerman, André Téchiné, Leos Carax, Jacques Doillon and Benoit Jacquot.
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Bernadette Lafont : Et Dieu créa la femme libre (2016)
Character: N/A
A journey in the company of Bernadette Lafont, French Cinema’s most atypical actress. Tracing her career from pin-up girl, to New Wave model of sexual freedom, to drug-dealing granny in the film Paulette, by way of La Fiancée du Pirate and Les Stances à Sophie, this film pays tribute to her extraordinary life and artistic odyssey. Her grand-daughters, Anna, Juliette and Solène, revisit the dreams of Bernadette, in the family home in the Cevennes region where they, like her, grew up. Her close friends, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon, reminisce on their artistic and human complicity. Throughout the film, Bernadette Lafont in person, with her inimitable character actress voice, re-evokes a life in cinema marked with insolence, courage and freedom.
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Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1966)
Character: N/A
Daniel needs some money to buy a duffle coat that is in fashion, so he agrees to work for a photographer by dressing up as Santa Claus. He discovers that it is much easier to meet girls when he is in his costume.
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Week End (1967)
Character: L'Auto-Stoppeur (uncredited)
A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.
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La Maman et la Putain (1973)
Character: Man in Sunglasses in Store (uncredited)
Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.
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Mes petites amoureuses (1974)
Character: Man on bench (uncredited)
Daniel lives with his grandmother and, after a year of high school, goes to live with his mother in the south of France; a harsher environment which rapidly changes his perception of friends, work, and women.
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Der amerikanische Freund (1977)
Character: Friendly Man
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
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Numéro zéro (1971)
Character: Self
A family portrait in which the director profiles his grandmother, Odette Robert. Eustache includes in the film the conditions of its production — he is seated at the table with her, pours her some whiskey, speaks with the camera operator, manipulates the clapboard at the head and tail of the reels, and even takes a phone call. Robert, who was seventy-one, speaks rapidly and tells the story of her life, starting from her early childhood in villages in the Bordeaux region of France. A shorter version of the film ("Odette Robert") was edited in 1980 to be broadcast on television on TF1. The complete film only gained exposure in 2002, when it was salvaged by Boris Eustache, Thierry Lounas, João Bénard da Costa, Jean-Marie Straub, and Pedro Costa.
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Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974)
Character: Spectateur au cabaret / Lecteur à la bibliohèque (uncredited)
Julie, a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline, an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama.
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Une sale histoire (1977)
Character: A listener (uncredited)
A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version. Then, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.
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