Henri Langlois

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

A journey in the company of Bernadette Lafont, French Cinema’s most atypical actress. Tracing her career from pin-up girl, to New Wave model of sexual freedom, to drug-dealing granny in the film Paulette, by way of La Fiancée du Pirate and Les Stances à Sophie, this film pays tribute to her extraordinary life and artistic odyssey. Her grand-daughters, Anna, Juliette and Solène, revisit the dreams of Bernadette, in the family home in the Cevennes region where they, like her, grew up. Her close friends, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon, reminisce on their artistic and human complicity. Throughout the film, Bernadette Lafont in person, with her inimitable character actress voice, re-evokes a life in cinema marked with insolence, courage and freedom.

An account of the extraordinary life of film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861-1938) and the amazing story of the copy in color of his masterpiece A Trip to the Moon (1902), unexpectedly found in Spain and restored thanks to the heroic efforts of a group of true cinema lovers.

Life and work of the founder of the Cinémathèque Française.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

A profile of the film director Roberto Rossellini, looking at his life, personality and films, following his career and his relationship with Ingrid Bergman.

A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.

Documentary portrait of Henri Langlois, co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française.

The Challenge... A Tribute to Modern Art is a 1974 American documentary film directed by Herbert Kline. The film shows footage of great modern artists in their studios creating and commenting on their work, with narration and commentary by Orson Welles. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Henri Langlois, interviewed in the Cinema Museum at the Palais de Chaillot, talks about his vision of cinema's past, present and future, before a brief jaunt through the museum as it was in 1975.

Henri Langlois, founder and director of the Cinémathèque française, is interviewed in his museum at the Palais de Chaillot and talks about cinema. “Henri Langlois's anti-courses” are made up of a set of short films, or more exactly of chapters. Each chapter is devoted to a filmmaker or to a significant pivotal period of such or such a country and of such or such style, or to a group of men whose action was, at one time, decisive for the course of cinema.

No synopsis available yet.

Unfinished documentary portrait. During 1971, Henri Langlois was spending his life at the Cinémathèque at the Palais de Chaillot and devoting himself entirely to the development of his museum without ever sparing himself. He needs to touch, place, nail, shape each corner himself, imagining each new arrangement. The smallest detail counts, the smallest fold of costume. He can spend hours adjusting a jacket, and fatigue sometimes surprises him around a staircase ...

On September 12, 1973, Charlie Chaplin was present at the Cinémathèque française for the inauguration of a retrospective in his honor.

Eric Rohmer leads a conversation with Jean Renoir and Henri Langlois on the art of filmmaker Louis Lumière.

Furtive traces of a visit, a certain February 22, 1962: Buster Keaton.

A documentary portrait of Carl Th. Dreyer, filmed shortly after the Paris premiere of "Gertrud." Through Dreyer’s own reflections on his films, the documentary explores his ideas about script, casting, acting, set design, and the pursuit of simplicity as the foundation of cinematic style.

In this documentary, giants of italian cinema such as Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini and Zavattini talk about the importance of cinema after WW2, and about huge moments of social rebellion. This movie gives the floor to the creators of italian neorealism.

Made for Cinéastes de notre temps series. In 1964, several French New Wave auteurs discuss the success and crisis of the wave. Featuring Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rozier, Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda, Jean Rouch, and many others.

Wanderings during the Cannes and Hyères 1966 festivals. Interviews with Louise de Vilmorin, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Louis Comolli, François Truffaut. Lunch on the grass of the Cahiers du cinéma, young onlookers on mopeds, children from the surrounding villages, the film portrays an era, a cinephilia, a cinema still in balance between art and industry.

Wednesday July 31, 1968, almost six months after the start of the "Langlois affair" which saw the government attempt to oust the founder of the Cinémathèque française, triggering massive support from the biggest names in world cinema, Henri Langlois finally resumed possession of the hall of the Palais de Chaillot and celebrates his return with a tribute to Charlie Chaplin.

Documentary about filmmaker Jean Grémillon.

No synopsis available yet.

Documentary portrait of Dziga Vertov, father of documentary cinema.

In April 1954, the legendary Henri Langlois visited the Jugoslovenska kinoteka for the presentation of his exhibition “Fifty Years of French Cinema”.