Directed by Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1956 • 21 minutes

This recently restored early short by French New Wave director Alain Resnais (perhaps best known for Hiroshima Mon Amour), pays homage to the National Library of France. For centuries, the library has served as a repository for all the ...

Directed by Jacques Rivette • Drama • With Virginie Vitry, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze • 1957 • 27 minutes

An early film from the six-decade career of hugely influential French director and critic Jacques Rivette.

Claire (Virginie Vitry) is given a gorgeous fur coat by her lover...

Directed by François Reichenbach • Documentary • 1957 • 21 minutes

François Reichenbach follows a group of young men from the day they enlist in the US Marine Corps, all the way through basic training. The power of this is twofold. It lies in the poetic visuals focused on the men’s faces and exp...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • Drama • 1957 • 12 minutes

In ALL THE BOYS ARE CALLED PATRICK, Charlotte (Anne Colette) and Véronique (Nicole Berger) are roommates who share a tiny flat with a single bed. Charlotte’s taste in books ranges from Hegel to The Fate of the Immodest Blonde, while Véroniq...

Directed by Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1957 • 13 minutes

Recently restored and digitized in 2K!

THE SONG OF STYRENE is the perfect example of how to turn a commissioned industrial film into a lyrical, satirical film masterpiece. When the young Alain Resnais was asked by the Péchiney plastics...

Directed by Agnès Varda • Documentary • With Danièle Delorme • 1956 • 21 minutes

This early Agnès Varda short looks at the castles of the Loire Valley — and the unusual histories and personalities behind them. Punctuated by first-person accounts, excerpts from well-known poems, and stylish re-cr...

Directed by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze • Drama • 1957 • 25 minutes

A morality tale about the dangers of modern urban life. Catherine (Yane Barry), a champion young typist from small-town France, heads to Paris to be with her fiancé (Jean-Pierre Cassel) — who also happens to be her new boss. Living ...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut • Drama • 1958 • 12 minutes

As the spring melt floods the streets of a town outside Paris, a student (Caroline Dim) faces one obstacle after another while trying to get to the Sorbonne. Eventually, she meets up with a dashing young driver (Jean-C...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • Drama • 1958 • 13 minutes

“Let me finish,” Jules (Jean-Paul Belmondo, voiced by Jean-Luc Godard) repeatedly tells his ex Charlotte (Anne Colette) without ever pausing long enough for her to actually say anything. When Charlotte appears in his apartment eating an ice...

Directed by Maurice Pialat • Documentary • 1961 • 19 minutes

Maurice Pialat may have grown up in the suburbs, but he has little love for them. In this poetic but critical essay, he turns his gaze to a range of post-war Paris suburbs: From the bourgeois plots of land where the “little” aesthetic ...

Directed by Maurice Pialat • Drama • 2023 • 17 minutes

During a desultory night on the town—playing pool, buying the paper, eating fries—two men talk about their experiences with women. One of them (Hubert Deschamps) disparages his ex-wife, “the queen of whores,” who he admits to beating with hi...

Directed by Melvin Van Peebles • Drama • 1961 • 12 minutes

Set to a percussive, syncopated soundtrack, this early Melvin Van Peebles short is a small-scale tale of obsession, greed and violence. In a run-down neighborhood, a boy notices a 500-franc note in a sewer. His improvised efforts to pull...

Directed by Guy Gilles • Documentary • 1962 • 10 minutes

This is a love letter to living in Paris — even on a bitterly cold winter’s day. Interspersed with shots of the city, we hear from Parisians, including a group of boys on the joys of pelting passers-by with snowballs, and a 73-year-old who...

Directed by François Reichenbach • Documentary • With Johnny Hallyday, Les Chaussettes Noires • 1963 • 11 minutes

IN MEMORY OF ROCK captures the power, promise, and fear generated by the early days of rock n’roll. It is also a fascinating study in the juxtaposition of image and music. Outside an...

Directed by François Reichenbach • Documentary • 1963 • 12 minutes

A slice-of-life film shot in a provincial cafe and hotel in the city of Bethune in the department of Pas-de-Calais, in Northern France. Older men smoke, drink beer and read the paper, young lovers gaze into each other’s eyes, and...

Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1965 • 28 minutes

As West African cities faced explosive growth in the 1960s, young people found themselves displaced, living in urban centers far from their families and home regions.

Enter the goumbés—youth associations combining networking, mutual aid, ...

Directed by Jeanne Barbillon • Drama • With Bernadette Lafont, Louis Mesuret • 1965 • 15 minutes

In a small French town, Flora (Bernadette Lafont) has a six-week fling with a soldier. But this is no passionate affair. Her lover, the cartoonish Charles (Louis Mesuret), ignores her advances, insis...

Directed by Jean Rouch • Drama • 2023 • 25 minutes

“When I’m old, at 25, I’ll get married and that will be the end.” —Véronique 

In this short, Jean Rouch turns his anthropological eye to bourgeois teenage girls in Paris, in the summer of 1964. Caught in the in-between world of adolescence (the...

Directed by Gisèle Braunberger • Documentary • 1968 • 22 minutes

Actor Gisèle Braunberger sits across a small table from Jean Renoir. She leans forward, focusing intently on the director, her hands rhythmically fidgeting, as he outlines the premise of the script page he is about to work through ...

Directed by Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1948 • 18 minutes

Classic French New Wave director Alain Resnais’ early film, VAN GOGH won an Oscar for best short documentary film. Recently restored, this 1948 boundary-pushing short brilliantly evokes the life of Vincent Van Gogh, using only his paint...