Pathbreakers

French filmmaker Jean Luc Godard’s engagement with social and political upheavals could have been addressed in a heavy-handed manner,but it’s his rejection of classical cinematic forms and his youthful iconoclasm that made him such a formidable force in modern cinema. Along with his contemporaries François Roland Truffaut,Eric Rohmer ,Claude Chabrol,Jacques Rivette he was one of the most prominent figures of what is called the French New Wave Cinema.

To celebrate the 50 years of new wave cinema, Alliance Française du Bengale has brought to Calcutta a selection of the best of French new wave films. Heading the list is Chabrol’s Handsome Serge which is about a man who returns to his village after a long time only to find his best friend as an alcoholic wreck.

Truffaut’s Jules and Jim is another celebrated work to be screened at the festival. It is about two friends and their obsession with a woman who gets emotionally attached with both of them. Godard’s Pierrot le fou is a visually lush film about an unhappily married and has been recently fired from his job at a TV broadcasting company. He leaves his wife for his daughter’s babysitter only to realise that has managed to involve himself in a soup involving Algerian gangsters.

The closing film of the festival is Alphaville,a strange adventure of Lemmy Caution,follows the life of a Paris-based private eye.

The festival is on at Nandan till Feruary 11