The Cinematheque

“Sublimely beautiful.”

Michael Chaiken, Film Comment

An understated, achingly-intimate ciné-memoir set against the events of May 1968, Philippe Garrel’s Prix-Louis-Delluc-winning epic, perhaps his best known work in and outside France, feels like a towering summation of the director’s signature obsessions as a film artist. Touted as an answer-song to Bernardo Bertolucci’s sexed-up, similarly-themed The Dreamers, this monochrome masterwork stars Garrel’s son Louis (also from Bertolucci’s 2003 film) as a Parisian artist and idealist who takes to the barricades during the doomed revolution, then struggles to stave off apathy and remain radical in its aftermath. Louis, playing a version of his father at 20, picked up the César for Most Promising Actor. At Venice, Philippe won a Silver Lion for direction, while his cameraman, the late, great William Lubtchansky (a key collaborator of Godard, Rivette, and Claude Lanzmann), won a Golden Osella for his textural, transportive Academy-ratio cinematography.

preceded by

Actua 1
France 1968
Philippe Garrel
6 min. DCP

Long thought lost, this newly-recovered, on-the-ground portrait of May 1968 is comprised of 16mm and 35mm footage shot by Garrel and fellow soixante-huitards.