Programmed January 2022

French New Wave

Featuring hours of archival interviews with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Agnès Varda, and more There was cinema before the French New Wave, and there was cinema after. The explosion of creative innovation that emanated from France in the late 1950s and early ’60s forever altered the course of film history by opening up new avenues of stylistic experimentation and trumpeting the concept of the “auteur” director, whose aesthetic vision and thematic obsessions took center stage. Led by a coterie of passionate film critics and cinephiles who took up cameras—including the radical Jean-Luc Godard ( Breathless , Pierrot le fou ), the romantic François Truffaut ( The 400 Blows , Jules and Jim ), the restless Agnès Varda ( Cléo from 5 to 7 , Le bonheur ),…