Gérard Courant

A film about an ongoing cinematic adventure that began in 1978: a vast anthology of personality portraits called Cinématons, dealing with people in the arts. Historical, ethnological, sociological and psychological, this anthology is a living record of the artistic community of the last 20th century which attempts to answer these questions: Why film everyone? Why choose cultural personalities? How do the subjects look at their image? How much exhibitionism and narcissism is involved in being filmed?

15 years through Le Bois de Vincennes - The "before" and "after" 1999 storm destructions.

Zones césariennes (which covers the year 2002) is one of Gérard Courant's Filmed Notebooks shot on film. These episodes now coexist with their counterparts filmed on videotape. They are two films with parallel lives but opposing destinies, colliding and eyeing each other warily. They represent two approaches, two styles, two different ways of understanding cinema. Two methods for unfolding time, grasping memory, and exploring the world.

The fortuitous meeting of two women to the identical first name, Lucy, who formerly loved the same man, Jonathan, induced, in this film, of the polysemous variations on the memory, art, and the difficult relationship between creation and emotional life. Dehumanized by an exclusive artistic practice, the man lost his reference marks little by little. "Lucy en miroir" wants to be, also, a shifted and transverse second reading of "The Contempt" ("Le Mépris") of Godard, by a step more plastic than analytical or conclusive.

No synopsis available yet.

This distinctly personal journey into the artistic possibilities of independent film is not to be missed. Jonas Mekas, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Robert Kramer and many other visionaries and mavericks of the silver screen – as well as a book seller, a critic and a psychoanalyst – discuss what cinema has meant to them, what it is and what it could be and, implicitly, how it has changed over the 18 years in which this film was shot. Director Boris Lehman leads the charge, drawing in moments of absurdist humour and inventive camera work; he keeps things raw and spontaneous. His encounters with the now much-missed Jean Rouch and Stephen Dwoskin are particularly touching and stand testament to their personal playfulness and candour. An engaging, absorbing, epic odyssey of a movie.

A bicycle race is held every year in a pass of the Alps called Parpaillon. With the energy of a skillful cyclist perhaps as a great tribute to François, the mailman played by Tati in The Big Day, Moullet makes a comedy by pedaling at a pace that allows him to reinvent the possibilities of film gags.

A single-screen version of the Portraits / Mirrors multi-projection. Featuring portraits of: Aloual, Gaël Badaud, Raphaël Bassan, Yann Beauvais, Jean-Michel Bouhours, Gérard Courant, Berndt Deprez, Bertrand Gadenne, Mythia Kolésar, Christian Lebrat, Stéphane Marti, Pascal Martin, Michel Nedjar, Dominique Noguez, Vivian Ostrovsky, Bernard Roué, Martine Rousset, Alain Sayag, Unglee, and Catherine Zbinden.

Two young girls meet, Reinette from the countryside and Mirabelle from Paris, and decide to take a flat together in Paris where they attend University. Four successive stories about their daily lives illustrate the very different views, characters and relation to the world of these two friends.

Gérard Courant films the routes of his voyage in Greece with a Super8 camera. Reflections, waves, ports and landscapes are edited at a dizzying pace; in their midst, portraits appear of a very beautiful woman, along with images of the director who turns the camera on himself, showing his face reddened by the sun.

A song of love to the city of Genoa. The film wanders the streets of the city center and explore the beautiful cemetery and then climb the hills which offer an amazing view over the old town crossed by a highway and port.

No synopsis available yet.

Inspired by the detention of Jean-Paul Kauffmann and Michel Seurat in Lebanon, hostages and improbable currency for terrorists...

No synopsis available yet.

Married couple Jock & Nora are visiting the town of Litan during Litan's Day, with its carnivalesque atmosphere. When Nora wakes that morning from dreaming the bizarre death of her husband, she sets out across town to find him and warn him. But as she does, she encounters stranger and stranger people and events erupting into a frenzy in front of her. Now, she and Jock must elude all of the impediments in their way of reaching safety on the outskirts of town.

Amours décolorées is a cinematographic poem to the glory of Mariola San Martin, model, stylist, dancer and Spanish photographer.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

One of the most intimate and obstinate filmmakers in Belgium, Boris Lehman acts, directs, produces, and distributes his films, single-handedly incarnating the essence of a creator who manages to survive on the fringes of his industry. From Brussels to Paris, friends, filmmakers and critics offer their understanding of a man for whom life is a reason to film, and film, a reason to live.

This episode of the Carnets filmés, shot in Mexico, is largely devoted to Barbara Peón Solis's photographic exhibition, entitled Como Buda te Veras, which was held in Querétaro. Beyond this artistic event, Exposición (Journal du Mexique) is a stroll through Mexico City and an unusual exploration of the Teotihuacan pyramid site.

A young man tired of writing and rewriting a screenplay decides to begin a Super 8mm film diary. He films his parents and those close to him and determines to tell the about his homosexuality.

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

No synopsis available yet.

Patrick Deval, known as Bambou, the author of the cult film Acéphale, is celebrating his birthday.

Reel 34 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 34 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

An ongoing collection of single static shot, mute, showing a view of the cinema facades where Cinematons have been screened.

An ongoing collection of single static shot, mute, showing a view of the cinema facades where Cinematons have been screened.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

A film about an ongoing cinematic adventure that began in 1978: a vast anthology of personality portraits called Cinématons, dealing with people in the arts. Historical, ethnological, sociological and psychological, this anthology is a living record of the artistic community of the last 20th century which attempts to answer these questions: Why film everyone? Why choose cultural personalities? How do the subjects look at their image? How much exhibitionism and narcissism is involved in being filmed?

Reel 13 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 13 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 15 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 15 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

A simple, modest and faithful record of some moments at the Lucca Film Festival in October 2010, with songs and speeches by Abel Ferrara: trace of the co-presence of two of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, dissident and true sons of Cesare Zavattini’s revolutionary spirit.

A simple, modest and faithful record of some moments at the Lucca Film Festival in October 2010, with songs and speeches by Abel Ferrara: trace of the co-presence of two of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, dissident and true sons of Cesare Zavattini’s revolutionary spirit.

15 years through Le Bois de Vincennes - The "before" and "after" 1999 storm destructions.

15 years through Le Bois de Vincennes - The "before" and "after" 1999 storm destructions.

Reel 14 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 14 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 16 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 16 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 37 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 37 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

Zones césariennes (which covers the year 2002) is one of Gérard Courant's Filmed Notebooks shot on film. These episodes now coexist with their counterparts filmed on videotape. They are two films with parallel lives but opposing destinies, colliding and eyeing each other warily. They represent two approaches, two styles, two different ways of understanding cinema. Two methods for unfolding time, grasping memory, and exploring the world.

Zones césariennes (which covers the year 2002) is one of Gérard Courant's Filmed Notebooks shot on film. These episodes now coexist with their counterparts filmed on videotape. They are two films with parallel lives but opposing destinies, colliding and eyeing each other warily. They represent two approaches, two styles, two different ways of understanding cinema. Two methods for unfolding time, grasping memory, and exploring the world.

No synopsis available yet.