In 1963, 22-year-old Bertrand Blier invited 11 of his peers to come to a film studio and talk about their lives. The record of what was said, Hitler? Connais pas!, is a discussion of values that remains relevant and fascinating today. The footage was shot just five years prior to May 1968, and the atmosphere of that time is clearly discernible: these young people may not yet be revolutionaries, but there is clearly a ferment in the air.
Tag: FRANCE
Magda is the unwed daughter of a white South African farmer. Spending much of her time looking after her father, Magda leads an uneventful and isolated life, largely avoiding other people. However, that changes when Magda discovers that her father has been having an affair with one of the farm’s African workers. Unable to handle the revelation that her dad has a mistress, Magda takes surprisingly drastic and violent action.
In Paris, a gold smuggler is at war with other local gangsters who want piece of the action. Then the mob shows up and makes things worse. Also, an undercover US Treasury Department agent is trying to infiltrate the smuggler’s business.
Jacques Arnaud arrives in a small town somewhere in the province. Soon a citizen reports to him that strangers have broken into his house where they stole a mysterious “black dossier”.
In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in the 11th arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ’60s. It is the best, and certainly the funniest, of self-reflexive deconstructions of the documentary form. Ruiz drolly exaggerates every hare-brained convention of TV reportage, from shot/reverse shot ‘suture’ and talking-head experts to establishing shots and vox pops (narrator’s note to himself: “Include street interviews ad absurdum”.)
In a mainframe, a series of punch cards are used to process data. One punch hole is bored. It decides to harass some of the other holes hoping that it would be more exciting. Can the other holes keep him in check?
A chance meeting reunites Lise and Antoine, ex-lovers who had a brief fling 20 years before. Humbled by Antoine’s lofty position as a university professor, Lise is reluctant to admit that she’s a lowly police inspector. But, when a high-profile case involving a potential serial killer of politicians is assigned to Lise, she’s forced to admit what she does for a living. Together, the old flames race against the clock to stop the murderer.