Cinémathèque

May '68

MAY ’68: BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE EVENTS

The complex series of social and political incidents we today sum up as May ’68 — in which students and workers seemingly united to challenge the government and combat police in the streets of Paris — marked the wholesale politicisation of French film culture. All the serious magazines (Cahiers du Cinéma, Positif, Cinethique) and virtually every significant filmmaker (from Truffaut to Polanski) made a sharp ‘left turn’ into radicalism.

As has often been stated, the agitations in the film sector near the start of 1968 — the campaign to retain Henri Langlois as the head of the Cinémathèque Française, the protests which brought the Cannes Film Festival to a halt — helped usher in the events of May. Of course, much of the French film scene was already politicised well before 1968. In particular, what is known as the ‘Left Bank’ group — including Chris Marker, Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais and Armand Gatti — had long sought to bring the poetic and political aspects of cinema together and, in the process, they created a highly internationalised cinema spanning Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.

The same can be said of the Situationsists and the Lettrists. But it is fair to say that the ‘Right Bank’ group — the cluster of filmmakers we precisely identify as the Cahiers du Cinéma core of the Nouvelle Vague — was more conservative than radical, at least in the early 1960s. The cheekiness of Jean-Luc Godard, the philosophical games of Eric Rohmer, the genre-bending of François Truffaut and the metaphysics of Jaques Rivette all tended to be fashionable Parisian introversion, a shutting-out of the wider world.

By 1967, however, when Godard made the prescient La Chinoise, the revolution was ripe to burst, and no one working in film could ignore it. May ’68 changed the language of cinema as well as its means of production, exhibition and distribution.

PREMONITIONS

Masculin, Féminin marked Godard’s turn towards left-wing politics, and a search for a film form to match this growing commitment. La Chinoise was a landmark in his career: on the one hand, Godard was mingling with the radical students of Nanterre University, and on another, he was soaking up experimental painting, happenings and Brechtian theatre. The result was this prophetic film, which was shot quickly in a Left Bank apartment then rigorously edited.

La Chinoise 1967 Ages 15+
35MM, 96 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, SUBTITLED / JEAN-LUC GODARD
Fri 14 Sep 7.30pm / Cinema A

THE LETTRISTS

Lettrism was founded in the late 1940s by Isidore Isou, devoted to the anarchistic ‘chiselling’ of established art forms. Isou’s protégé Maurice Lemaître made films joyously connecting with May ’68. Marc’O became a lettrist in the early 1950s, but left to develop a troupe devoted to radical music theatre in the 1960s. The Idols is about the spectacle and industry of pop-rock music, and is an extraordinary prophesy of the self-destructive excesses of today’s celebrity culture.

The Youth Uprising (Le Soulèvement de la Jeunesse) 1969 Ages 15+
16MM, 28 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / MAURICE LEMAÎTRE
The Idols (Les Idoles) 1968 Ages 15+
35MM, 105 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / MARC’O
Sat 15 Sep 12 noon / Cinema A

THE SITUATIONISTS (PART 1)

Of all the theorist–artists of Situationism (an offshoot of Lettrism), Guy Debord was the most (in)famous and the most closely involved with cinema. Over a four-decade series of uncompromising works, Debord crafted an anti-cinema that reduced the medium to graphics, black frames, sampled footage and a collage of voices. On the Passage of a Few People through a Relatively Short Period of Time is a before-the-fact critique of the Nouvelle Vague, and Society of the Spectacle offers an illustration of his classic 1960s tract.

On the Passage of a Few People through a Relatively Short Period of Time (Sur le Passage de Quelques Personnes à Travers une Assez Courte Unité de Temps) 1959 Ages 15+
16MM, 20 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / GUY DEBORD
Society of the Spectacle (La Société de Spectacle) 1973 Ages 15+
16MM, 88 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / GUY DEBORD
Sat 15 Sep 2.00pm / Cinema A
Thu 29 Nov 12 noon / Cinema A

THEN AND NOW

A student film shot in June 1968 (described by Serge Daney as the ‘primal scene of militant cinema’) shows, in a single nine-minute take, workers returning to the Wonder factory after a three-week strike — except for one angry, crying woman who vows to never enter. Decades later, writer Hervé le Roux launches an extensive historical investigation into this footage: where are these people now, especially this defiant woman? Who are they? What has happened in their lives?

Reprise 1996 Ages 15+
35MM, 195 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / HERVÉ LE ROUX
Sun 16 Sep 10.30am / Cinema A

SHORTS OF THE ‘MEDVEDKIN GROUPS’

Long before 1968, what is known as the Left Bank group — including Chris Marker, Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais and Armand Gatti — had sought to bring the poetic and political aspects of cinema together to create an ‘internationalised’ style. The Groupes Medvedkine, inspired by a populist initiative in Soviet cinema of the 1920s, aimed not simply to depict working class struggles but to hand the production process over to workers. The utopianism of this project remains inspiring.

Cinétracts 1968 Ages 15+
16MM, B. & W., FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / COLLECTIF (ALAIN RESNAIS, JEAN-LUC GODARD, CHRIS MARKER)
Nouvelle Société no. 6 1969 Ages 15+
16MM, 9 MINS, B. & W., FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / SLON-GROUPE MEDVEDKINE
Lettre à Mon Ami Pol Cèbe 1970 Ages 15+
16MM, 20 MINS, B. & W., FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / MICHEL DESROIS
Le Traîneau-Échelle 1970 Ages 15+
16MM, 8 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / JEAN-PIERRE THIÉBAUD
See You Soon (À Bientôt,j’Espère) 1967–68 Ages 15+
16MM, 43 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / CHRIS MARKER, MARIO MARRET
Classe de Lutte 1969 Ages 15+
16MM, 37 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / DU GROUPE MEDVEDKIN (CHRIS MARKER, RENÉ VAUTIER, PIERRE LHOMME, JORIS IVENS, JEAN-LUC GODARD)
Sun 16 Sep 2.30pm / Cinema A

‘ACTUALITY’, DOCUMENTARY AND REPORTAGE (PART 1)

May ’68 generated an enormous amount of documentary and news footage of every kind: militant, amateur, experimental, slick, sympathetic, antipathetic. These two programs offer a sampling of the many films and television series shaped from this footage then and since.

History of May (Histoire de Mai) 1978 Ages 15+
16MM, 284 MINS, COLOUR & B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / PIERRE-ANDRÉ BOUTANG
Sat 29 Sep 2.00pm / Cinema A — Part 1 (69mins)
Sat 29 Sep 3.30pm / Cinema A — Part 2 (69 mins)
Sun 30 Sep 2.00pm / Cinema A — Part 3 (73 mins)
Sun 30 Sep 3.30pm / Cinema A — Part 4 (73 mins)

‘ACTUALITY’, DOCUMENTARY AND REPORTAGE (PART 2)

Power Is in the Streets is a short, on-the-spot reportage by Swiss director Alain Tanner, while 1960s photographer William Klein’s Maydays is a vivid and passionate document of events at their violent height.

Maydays (Grand Soirs et Petit Matins) 1968–78 Ages 15+
16MM, 97 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / WILLIAM KLEIN
Wed 17 Oct 4.00pm / Cinema A

Power Is in the Streets (Le Pouvoir est dans la Rue) 1968 Ages 15+
16MM, 47 MINS, B. & W., MONO, SWITZERLAND, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / ALAIN TANNER
Wed 17 Oct 4.00pm / Cinema A

THE UNDERGROUND

Pierre Clémenti is best known for his role as the suave gangster in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour 1967, but his work as a writer, filmmaker and activist is being re-evaluated today as a crucial creative contribution. Clémenti collaborated with members of the Zanzibar group in the 1960s, and he fully embraced the lifestyle revolution ushered in by the ‘underground’: sexual liberation, anarchist agitation, aesthetic experimentation. An early champion of DIY formats such as Super 8, his ‘diary films’ are illuminating.

It’s Only a Beginning — The Revolution Goes On (Ce n‘est qu’un Début — la Révolution Continue) 1968 Ages 15+
16MM, 23 MINS, COLOUR, SILENT, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / PIERRE CLÉMENTI
New Old 1979 Ages 15+
16MM, 64 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / PIERRE CLÉMENTI
Thu 18 Oct 12 noon / Cinema A

FREEDOM AND CHAOS

Out 1: Noli me Tangere is one of the key works of cinematic modernism, but has been almost impossible to see for the past 35 years. Today, it registers almost as a documentary on the post-May atmosphere, which quickly turned bleak and oppressive for many: paranoia, madness, drugs, refuge in the avant-garde ghetto, lifestyle experiments . . . all options are canvassed in Rivette’s spawling conspiracy narrative, inspired by a Balzac story.

Out 1: Noli me Tangere 1971 Ages 15+
35MM, 773 MINS, B. & W., COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / JACQUES RIVETTE
Sat 20 Oct 10.00am / Cinema A — Episode 1–2
Sat 20 Oct 1.30pm / Cinema A — Episode 3–4
Sun 21 Oct 10.30am / Cinema A — Episode 5–6
Sun 21 Oct 2.00pm / Cinema A — Episode 7–8

THE PEOPLE’S REVOLUTION

Known today as France’s most visible producer, distributor and exhibitor of art-house cinema, Marin Karmitz is less recognised as a key exponent of post-May ’68 cinema. Blow for Blow is often compared with the more formalist Everything Is Alright; both depict the dynamic process of a factory strike from the workers’ viewpoint but in Blow for Blow the political and personal experiences of women take centre stage.

Blow for Blow (Coup par Coup) 1972 Ages 15+
35MM, 89 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, SUBTITLED / MARIN KARMITZ
Fri 2 Nov 6.00pm / Cinema B

LIVING AND WORKING HISTORICALLY

In the immediate aftermath of May ’68, Godard joined forces with young Gorin and other radicals to form the Dziga-Vertov Group, pursuing an extreme, sometimes dogmatic (and barely distributed) approach to political cinema. Everything Is Alright is a return to narrative, which is simultaneously a bitter and exuberant analysis of post-May ’68 France.

Everything Is Alright (Tout Va Bien) 1972 Ages 15+
35MM, 95 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / JEAN-LUC GODARD, JEAN-PIERRE GORIN
Fri 2 Nov 8.00pm / Cinema B

THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL

Although he crossed paths with Marc’O and the Nouvelle Vague, Jean Eustache was a dandy, a wryly fascinated observer of behaviour and the creator of a singular ‘cinema of cruelty’. Nonetheless, his classic The Mother and the Whore captures both the spirit of May ’68 and the melancholic retreat afterwards. The film is a corrosive analysis of emotional and sexual relations in the era of feminist revolt.

The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) 1973 Ages 15+
35MM, 215 MINS, B. & W., COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / JEAN EUSTACHE
Sat 3 Nov 11.00am / Cinema A

HOPE AND DESPAIR

Romain Goupil was a precocious activist: barely 16, and on the barricades in the company of Garrel and Duras. His cinema mixes fictional, essayistic and lyrical modes. In the 1980s and 1990s, he became an occasional collaborator of Godard. To Die at 30, a Camera d’or winner at Cannes, is a biographical documentary account of Michel Recanati, a revolutionary whose life veered from the hopes of political organisation in 1968, to despair in the following period.

To Die at 30 (Mourir a Trente Ans) 1982 Ages 15+
35MM, 97 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / ROMAIN GOUPIL
Sat 3 Nov 3.00pm / Cinema A

THE INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE

From his writings of the late 1940s to the installations of today, Marker was among the first postwar multi-media creators to combine probing political essays with poetic forms of audiovisual art. Grin without a Cat takes the ‘long view’ of a brief but intensive historical period in the 1960s and 1970s.

Grin without a Cat (Le Fond de l’Air est Rouge) 1977 Ages 15+
35MM, 240 MINS, B. & W., MONO, COLOUR, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / CHRIS MARKER
Sun 4 Nov 12 noon / Cinema B

THE SITUATIONISTS (PART 2)

We Spin around the Night Consumed by the Fire is Guy Debord’s testament: an autobiographical collage looking back on the revolutionary years of the 1950s and 1960s, reflecting on the social rollback of the period since, and trying to make some personal sense of the total historical pattern. A modern masterpiece.

We Spin around the Night Consumed by the Fire (In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni) 1978 Ages 15+
16MM, 105 MINS, B. & W., MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / GUY DEBORD
Sat 1 Dec 11.00am / Cinema A

INTOXICATED INSURRECTION

Rouch’s films, freely mixing fiction with documentary and employing handheld cinematography and direct sound recording, were a key influence on the Nouvelle Vague since the 1950s. The ecstatic, sophisticated primitivism of his work, his belief in both individual instinct and community, both predates and postdates May ’68. In Dionysos, Rouch’s manifesto, a revolutionary philosopher lectures on how a ‘factory will be transformed into a pleasure workshop, whose workers will build a new prototype of the car — the perfumed panther!’

Dionysos 1984 Ages 15+
35MM, 100 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, FRANCE, FRENCH, LIVE SUBTITLING / JEAN ROUCH
Sat 1 Dec 2.00pm / Cinema A

THE BALANCE SHEET OF MAY ’68

Philippe Garrel began as an experimental filmmaker in his teen years, and hurled himself body and soul into the movement of May ’68. All of his films refer back implicitly or explicitly to this flashpoint, but here he directly represents the event — and then its melancholic aftermath, idealism lost in opium, isolation and disillusionment. Garrel regards May ’68 objectively as a failure but his own loosely autobiographical film is a testament to its enduring aesthetic of poetic resistance.

Regular Lovers (Les Amants Réguliers) 2005 Ages 15+
35MM, 178 MINS, B. & W., DOLBY DIGITAL, FRANCE, FRENCH, SUBTITLED / PHILIPPE GARREL
Sun 2 Dec 12 noon / Cinema A

May '68 curated by Adrian Martin (Rouge, Monash University), with accompanying film notes.

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May '68

MAY ’68: BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE EVENTS

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