French Cinema

Guy Debord released this semi-experimental, essay-film adaptation. Using the classic Situationist technique of "detournement," Debord overlays a dizzying array of still and film images with text from the book. The result is a kind of organized chaos that nonetheless manages to provide a sharp commentary on a world dominated by image and power. Debord casts a wide net, drawing in footage of topless women, manufacturing, fashion shoots, Hollywood movies, and scenes of war, uprisings, and protests being crushed by police. He accompanies these images with his critique of life

Varda's most recent effort-- the first filmed with a digital videocamera-- focuses on gleaners, those who gather the spoils left after a harvest, as well as those who mine the trash. Some completely exist on the leavings; others turn them into art, exercise their ethics, or simply have fun. The director likens gleaning to her own profession-that of collecting images, stories, fragments of sound, light, and color."--Www.imdb.com.

Director's commentary by Laurent Tirard; the making of Molière featurette.

Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, this piece documents the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek. One of the first cinematic reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust and contrasts the stillness of the abandoned camps' quiet, empty buildings with haunting wartime footage.