500 Francs
Early Short Films of the French New Wave
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12m
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 it up through the grate fail, and when a poor young man comes along to try his luck, the boy’s jealousy leads to a series of ultimately ineffective attacks. Finally, he makes one last quixotic attempt to get his hands on the precious banknote.
Up Next in Early Short Films of the French New Wave
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Directed by Jean Rouch • Drama • 2023 • 25 minutes
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Love Exists
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 ...
