In most discernible ways, the respective bodies of work of the long-married French Left Bank filmmakers Agnès Varda (1928-2019) and Jacques Demy (1931-1990) have remained quite distinct from one another. Unlike some other notable filmmaking couples (like Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, for instance), Varda and Demy rarely worked on each other’s films in any… Read more »
Every month, A Place for Film brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked… Read more »
Guest post by Caitlyn Stevens, IU Cinema’s Social Media Specialist and Marketing & Engagement Assistant. I was first exposed to the work of Claire Denis years ago when I blind-bought a copy of White Material during a Criterion Collection sale. I absolutely loved the film (which was one of the sparks that ignited my obsession… Read more »
La Pointe Courte (1955), Agnès Varda’s first film, is often considered one of the major precursors for the French New Wave, a movement that would begin a few years later with (depending on who you ask) either Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge (1958) or François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). Varda has been branded the… Read more »
Guest post by Evie Munier. What is reality? Is there only one reality? Can there be several? These are some of the questions that the film series Cinéma Sans Frontières, offered by the French and Italian department in collaboration with IU Cinema, tries to ask. The rationale behind the series was born from the assumption… Read more »
Robert Bresson is a filmmaker apart. Or, so his friend Jean Cocteau once quipped about him, and this remark has summed up the general critical response to Bresson’s filmography for decades. His work is inscrutable, seemingly without other film referents. And a mythology has built up around him – not completely without merit. However, over… Read more »