Jean-Claude Rousseau

Can you tell if yours is a colour or black and white dream ? If yours is a silent or sound dream ? If ther’s a voice off or actual sound ?

My films are like that: in a room, but looking out onto an open sky. [...] I can’t really say it except to repeat that Bresson note, ‘that without a thing changing, everything is different.’ The film exists. The fiction is set up, and we believe in it. The justness of the agreement leads us to believe it, because everything plays equally at being a sign. That’s the arrangement of the elements. It’s an act of faith. La vallée close is just this: elements treated above all as if in a documentary that, without being changed, portray the story and reveal between them the elements of fiction. But above all seen as they are, insignificant. And then in the relations they set up, they can satisfy our desire for a story. -- Rousseau

The continuing demand for high standards is what sets Rousseau's work apart. What makes this film distinctive is the way Rousseau explicitly returns to the source of his creative inspiration. So here he is at home reciting «Bérénice» to himself, whilst going about his household chores. It verges on the comical: There are repeated shots of him obstinately trying to turn off a dripping tap, or the jubilant close up of bare feet carried away in performing a dance step or two. Combining art with life in such a way, that nothing is compartmentalised, nothing lost - that is the goal.

A double bed with untouched sheets. A man is sitting in the room, hat and coat placed next to him. He is waiting. He gets up and walks into an adjoining room. Background sounds turn into voices emerging from the next room, with the places steadily getting closer to each other. The man's waiting is directly communicated to the viewers. It's a waiting for the next discovery, which needs no looking for, because it can be made anywhere.

Jean-Claude Rousseau is a filmmaker who believes in the natural power of images. The rigid compositions create something like a pure state, which constantly changes during the period of its viewing – like an empty and simultaneously detail-packed field. During this period the viewer is challenged to find and occupy his own position, to find his perspective in a similar way the filmmaker has found his in several places. Festival combines places the artist has visited during the last few years. Jean-Claude Rousseau’s films not only make beautiful discoveries, they are beautiful discoveries.

No synopsis available yet.

Can you tell if yours is a colour or black and white dream ? If yours is a silent or sound dream ? If ther’s a voice off or actual sound ?

My films are like that: in a room, but looking out onto an open sky. [...] I can’t really say it except to repeat that Bresson note, ‘that without a thing changing, everything is different.’ The film exists. The fiction is set up, and we believe in it. The justness of the agreement leads us to believe it, because everything plays equally at being a sign. That’s the arrangement of the elements. It’s an act of faith. La vallée close is just this: elements treated above all as if in a documentary that, without being changed, portray the story and reveal between them the elements of fiction. But above all seen as they are, insignificant. And then in the relations they set up, they can satisfy our desire for a story. -- Rousseau

My films are like that: in a room, but looking out onto an open sky. [...] I can’t really say it except to repeat that Bresson note, ‘that without a thing changing, everything is different.’ The film exists. The fiction is set up, and we believe in it. The justness of the agreement leads us to believe it, because everything plays equally at being a sign. That’s the arrangement of the elements. It’s an act of faith. La vallée close is just this: elements treated above all as if in a documentary that, without being changed, portray the story and reveal between them the elements of fiction. But above all seen as they are, insignificant. And then in the relations they set up, they can satisfy our desire for a story. -- Rousseau

The continuing demand for high standards is what sets Rousseau's work apart. What makes this film distinctive is the way Rousseau explicitly returns to the source of his creative inspiration. So here he is at home reciting «Bérénice» to himself, whilst going about his household chores. It verges on the comical: There are repeated shots of him obstinately trying to turn off a dripping tap, or the jubilant close up of bare feet carried away in performing a dance step or two. Combining art with life in such a way, that nothing is compartmentalised, nothing lost - that is the goal.

The continuing demand for high standards is what sets Rousseau's work apart. What makes this film distinctive is the way Rousseau explicitly returns to the source of his creative inspiration. So here he is at home reciting «Bérénice» to himself, whilst going about his household chores. It verges on the comical: There are repeated shots of him obstinately trying to turn off a dripping tap, or the jubilant close up of bare feet carried away in performing a dance step or two. Combining art with life in such a way, that nothing is compartmentalised, nothing lost - that is the goal.

A double bed with untouched sheets. A man is sitting in the room, hat and coat placed next to him. He is waiting. He gets up and walks into an adjoining room. Background sounds turn into voices emerging from the next room, with the places steadily getting closer to each other. The man's waiting is directly communicated to the viewers. It's a waiting for the next discovery, which needs no looking for, because it can be made anywhere.

Jean-Claude Rousseau is a filmmaker who believes in the natural power of images. The rigid compositions create something like a pure state, which constantly changes during the period of its viewing – like an empty and simultaneously detail-packed field. During this period the viewer is challenged to find and occupy his own position, to find his perspective in a similar way the filmmaker has found his in several places. Festival combines places the artist has visited during the last few years. Jean-Claude Rousseau’s films not only make beautiful discoveries, they are beautiful discoveries.

No synopsis available yet.

A hotel room and a few sweets, their wrappers stacked like gold leaf... An interview with Chantal Akerman and ongoing coverage of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, and what emerges is a genuine tragedy, as simple as Racine's.

A hotel room and a few sweets, their wrappers stacked like gold leaf... An interview with Chantal Akerman and ongoing coverage of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, and what emerges is a genuine tragedy, as simple as Racine's.

A man is waiting in a hotel.

No synopsis available yet.

Jean-Claude Rousseau's Jeune femme à sa fenêtre lisant une lettre is not only his first medium-length film, but a chance to discover this filmmaker whom Jean-Marie Straub has called, along with Frans Van de Staak and Peter Nestler, the greatest working in Europe. With this newly restored print there is also a possibility to discover the relationship between Rousseau's art of filming and Jan Vermeer's famous painting. As Prosper Hillairet wrote in 1988, four years after Rousseau had finished Jeune femme ... (for the first time as we know today): «Without adopting the usual systematic spirit and form of cinéma structurel, Rousseau presents us with simple images and leaves it at that. Keeps the image in hand. A minimalist and ascetic expression of cinema: a shot that lasts.»

Jean-Claude Rousseau's Jeune femme à sa fenêtre lisant une lettre is not only his first medium-length film, but a chance to discover this filmmaker whom Jean-Marie Straub has called, along with Frans Van de Staak and Peter Nestler, the greatest working in Europe. With this newly restored print there is also a possibility to discover the relationship between Rousseau's art of filming and Jan Vermeer's famous painting. As Prosper Hillairet wrote in 1988, four years after Rousseau had finished Jeune femme ... (for the first time as we know today): «Without adopting the usual systematic spirit and form of cinéma structurel, Rousseau presents us with simple images and leaves it at that. Keeps the image in hand. A minimalist and ascetic expression of cinema: a shot that lasts.»

Short film commissioned by the Cinemathèque Suisse to celebrate Jean-Marie Straub’s 85th birthday.

No synopsis available yet.

A short film by experimental filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau.

Experimental short film by Jean-Claude Rousseau

Where may the reds and goldens be? Where may the so promised city be? The lover beholds his fate in a faded Venice.

The loneliness of the white fish in the goldfishes’ aquarium.

Veduta means "view". A plan of the city of Florence.

"Wednesday, 3:57pm. Good evening. I won’t be able to get there by 5 o’clock…but maybe…maybe, but I’ll confirm in a bit and call back…yes…but I’m not sure…well, I…but I’ll call back." (Jean-Claude Rousseau)

Jean-Claude Rousseau homage to Michael Snow’s film Wavelength.

The title is playing with us, claiming that the film is a detective story. Witch in a way it is not untrue. The camera is peeping tom and it does not lose a thing (almost) in its surveillance: every movement, people coming and going, sounds, a sudden shot... A crime ? Maybe. Some phone calls and nobody answering: another crime ?

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet” Franz Kafka

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet” Franz Kafka

No synopsis available yet.

“My eyes are imprisoned/ Weeping with great longing”. Soèdade (saudade) — “longing” or “yearning” — is a Portuguese word that does not have a precise translation in English. It has been described as a “…vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist…”

An except of verse by Racine is used as the title of Jean-Claude Rousseau’s last film, in order to make us aware. Aware of what? That it is first of all a matter of construction and art. That it perhaps concerns unhappy love stories. And that, all in all, it consists in exactly and discreetly giving a story and its settings tragic accents, without which they would fade into the unrepresentable blandness of "futile amusement".

Sous un ciel changeant. Jean-Claude Rousseau uses his signature black frames to create Durasian elisions between painterly, Corot-conjuring tableaux.

‘Her triumph was the dance named Flamenco. What a tragic dance! It is, so to speak, all passion expressed in three acts: desire, seduction, and pleasure.’ (Pierre Louÿs, The Woman and the Puppet, 1898)

A structuralist work composed of static, long-duration shots of Roman ruins and architectural details, all filmed on Super 8. The film operates without a traditional narrative or dialogue, relying on fixed compositions to document the interplay of light and shadow across ancient stone. By framing monuments through windows and doorways, Jean-Claude Rousseau explores the relationship between historical space and the act of observation.

A journey to Kyoto. From the temple’s highest terrace visitors have a view of the city in the distance, under the changing sky.

At first glance, Jean-Claude Rousseau’s films seem like quickly outlined sketches. They are snapshots of various situations and locations, as in this program of nine miniatures, shot in hotel rooms and parks, at the shore of a lake, and – in the longest contribution – on a restaurant terrace. Rousseau’s observations of everyday life, however, are about precision rather than contemplation. With each minute that passes, they sharpen the view of the observant and expectant outsider for a moment of surprise – be it a jump into the water or a huge crucifix.

At first glance, Jean-Claude Rousseau’s films seem like quickly outlined sketches. They are snapshots of various situations and locations, as in this program of nine miniatures, shot in hotel rooms and parks, at the shore of a lake, and – in the longest contribution – on a restaurant terrace. Rousseau’s observations of everyday life, however, are about precision rather than contemplation. With each minute that passes, they sharpen the view of the observant and expectant outsider for a moment of surprise – be it a jump into the water or a huge crucifix.

Three friends lounge around on pillows after having lunched on the terrace. One of them leaves staggering. It is a matter of expectation and temporal perception.

Thirty-five years after "Keep in Touch", Jean-Claude Rousseau’s filmmaking returns to the city of Carl Andre and Hollis Frampton. It’s like a miniature remake of "Rear Window", but a New York version – Rear Window as seen by a minimalist artist from New York. The window takes up almost the entire frame, the photographer is nowhere to be seen and the gaze, no longer voyeuristic, flutters over the surface of a red brick façade on the other side, studded by myriad identical windows. On the surface of the windows or in the depths of the bedrooms, life passes by, takes its leave and returns, always inaccessible.

No synopsis available yet.

After Faibles Amusements and Contretemps, this is the third film in a triptych mischievously entitled Three Time Nothing, probably a discreet homage to Bresson. It remains faithful to the previous films ,in both its storyline and its form. Apart from some fades that make up the almost comic surprise of this episode, the main characters are the same: Jean-Claude Rousseau himself and his young friend. The other "characters" are also the same ones that have figured in the director ’s films for a long time. We already know them:time (or rather its translation in the wait for love)and landscape (or rather its appearance on the cinema screen). As Rousseau ’s voice says with faked surprise: "Ah,there you are!... I thought you had gone over to the other side!", his cinema has stayed on the same side.

No synopsis available yet.