French New Wave

3 units

French cinema from 1958-1968 offered La Nouvelle Vague or The New Wave, one of the most innovative, influential, and critically discussed movements in film history. The New Wave marked a major turning point in the relationship between film, thought, and politics in France, as well as a unique bridge between art cinema and pop-culture. Speaking for more than just the youth generation of its own country, it had a major influence on new approaches in subsequent European, American and Asian cinemas. This course offers a detailed look at the social values, artistic motivations, and aesthetic experiments embodied in the French New Wave through the films of Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, François Truffaut, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, and others, positioning their work within the larger social, political, and cultural environment of this period. As many of these directors collaborated as filmmakers and also were active as film critics and theorists, this class provides a unique insight into the overlapping between visual theory and practice, film and other media, culture and society. Weekly screening required.