As part of the retrospective « William Klein : Films, etc.», this screening invites you to discover two essential films: « Broadway By Light », William Klein’s first film, and the collective film « Loin du Vietnam », which includes two segments by William Klein.
This screening is preceded by a general introduction to the William Klein : Films, etc. retrospective by Emmanuel Bacquet, curator of the retrospective, and Cécile Tourneur, PhD in cinema history and aesthetics. Broadway By Light | Screened in a new 35 mm print 10 minutes, 1958 Directed by William Klein, produced by Argos films Just after William Klein had published New-York, Alain Resnais, through Chris Marker, advised him to devote himself to a film. Klein then rented a 16 mm camera and got hold of some Kodachrome. He then walked at night along the glowing sidewalks of 42 e rue and Broadway. Anatole Dauman, who finalized the production, added the names of Marker and Resnais to the credits for CNC purposes. « I felt that the signs and their animated cycles were already cinema. I filmed them and edited them together, and I looked for music with Maurice Le Roux. And it became Broadway by Light, an abstract film. My first film. » First film, and probably also the first pop film, this cinematic ready-made signaled from the outset Klein’s attraction to recycling popular visual culture, to posters, to advertising. « Every evening, in the center of New York, an artificial day dawns. (…) This day has its inhabitants, its shadows, its mirages, its ceremonies. It also has its sun… » Chris Marker (Argos Films) Loin du Vietnam 115 minutes, 1967 Directed by: William Klein, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Joris Ivens, Claude Lelouch. This manifesto film, bringing together major directors, faced enormous difficulties. First came artistic disagreements among its authors, despite their shared pacifist idea. Above all, however, the film’s commercial release was ruined by violent actions by the far-right commando group Occident, which vandalized the Kinopanorama cinema during the premiere. French society was already under strain, and barely five months after the film’s release, the events of May 68 began. Those events ultimately pushed the film into obscurity, after which it was relegated to very limited circulation. The two sequences in the film directed by William Klein are titled A Parade is a Parade and Vertigo. William Klein described the experience as follows: « An attempt, more or less transformed, at a collective film. But almost unique of its kind in cinema in recent years. Coordinated by Chris Marker, 200 technicians: camera operators, directors, editors, sound engineers, and laboratories devoted more than 4 months to carrying out this fierce condemnation of American aggression in Vietnam. How do you make a useful film? Pamphlet, fiction film, information film, what should be done? Joris Ivens spoke of North Vietnam, Lelouch of the South, Pic of Cuba, Resnais of lost intellectuals, Godard of himself, and I of America. Each person did what they could, and the film was what it was. After this experience, it was no longer possible to work as before, at least not for me. »
Admission: From 0 to 14 euros.
Source: paris.fr — photo: Still from the film « Loin du Vietnam »