Greek Film Archive pays tribute to New Wave’s Jean-Luc Godard
Film lovers with a thing for Jean-Luc Godard are finding their own at the Trianon Filmcenter this week as the Greek Film Archive’s tribute to the great French auteur continues through Thursday and will be showcasing nearly all of his films from the 1959-69 period of his career, when he was at his most influential. Among these are «A bout de souffle,» «Les Carabiniers,» «Vive sa vie: Film en douze tableaux» and «Le Mepris.» The tribute also features the 1965 study on time and space «Pierrot le fou,» as well as a new copy of 1966’s «Made in USA.» From Godard’s second period (1969-72), the Trianon’s most notable screening is «Tout va bien,» while from his third (1980-2003), the notables are «Sauve qui peut (la vie),» «Passion» and «Eloge de l’amour.» Born in Paris in 1930, Godard was an artist placed firmly at the forefront of the French New Wave, a pioneering movement born in the early 1950s and supported by a group of film theorists who later became filmmakers. Among them were Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and, of course, Godard himself, who began writing film critiques for the movement’s main vehicle, the Cahiers du Cinema, in 1952. A brief outline of the specific characteristics of the French New Wave, as described in the Cahiers du Cinema, is that first of all, it is cinema shot in the streets, not studios. Secondly, the New Wave cinema displays a great deal of improvisations both in terms of the directing and in the acting, and, last but not least, it has to be based on original scripts and not on classical literature. At the Trianon Filmcenter, 21 Kodringtonos, tel 210.821.5469.
