Tag Archives: bamcinematek

CHANTAL AKERMAN — IMAGES BETWEEN THE IMAGES: “ONE DAY PINA ASKED . . .”

Rarely screened 1983 documentary delves into Pina Bausch’s creative process (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

“ONE DAY PINA ASKED…” (UN JOUR PINA A DEMANDÉ) (Chantal Akerman, 1983)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, April 28, 7:00 & 9:30
Series continues through May 1
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In 1982, Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman followed Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal on a five-week tour of Europe as the cutting-edge troupe traveled to Milan, Venice, and Avignon. “I was deeply touched by her lengthy performances that mingle in your head,” Akerman says at the beginning of the resulting documentary, “One Day Pina Asked . . . ,” continuing, “I have the feeling that the images we brought back do not convey this very much and often betray it.” Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; Je tu il elle) needn’t have worried; her fifty-seven-minute film, made for the Repères sur la Modern Dance French television series, is filled with memorable moments that more than do justice to Bausch’s unique form of dance theater. From 1973 up to her death in 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, Bausch created compelling works that examined the male-female dynamic and the concepts of love and connection with revolutionary stagings that included spoken word, unusual costuming, an unpredictable movement vocabulary, and performers of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Akerman captures the troupe, consisting of twenty-six dancers from thirteen countries, in run-throughs, rehearsals, and live presentations of Komm Tanz Mit Mir (Come Dance with Me), Nelken (Carnations), 1980, Kontakthof, and Walzer, often focusing on individual dancers in extreme close-ups that reveal their relationship with their performance. Although Bausch, forty at the time, is seen only at the beginning and end of the documentary, her creative process is always at center stage. At one point, dancer Lutz Förster tells a story of performing George and Ira Gershwins’ “The Man I Love” in sign language in response to Bausch’s asking the troupe to name something they’re proud of. Förster, who took over as artistic director in April 2013, first performs the song for Akerman, then later is shown performing it in Nelken. (Bausch fans will also recognize such longtime company members as Héléna Pikon, Nazareth Panadero, and Dominique Mercy.)

Documentary includes inside look at such Tanztheater Wuppertal productions as CARNATIONS (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

Documentary includes inside look at such Tanztheater Wuppertal productions as NELKEN (photo courtesy Icarus Films)

As was her style, Akerman often leaves her camera static, letting the action occur on its own, which is particularly beautiful when she films a dance through a faraway door as shadowy figures circle around the other side. It’s all surprisingly intimate, not showy, rewarding viewers with the feeling that they are just next to the dancers, backstage or in the wings, unnoticed, as the process unfolds, the camera serving as their surrogate. And it works whether you’re a longtime fan of Bausch, only discovered her by seeing Wim Wenders’s Oscar-nominated 3D film Pina, or never heard of her. “This film is more than a documentary on Pina Bausch’s work,” a narrator says introducing the film. “It is a journey through her world, through her unwavering quest for love.” ”One Day Pina Asked…” is screening April 28 at 7:00 and 9:30 at BAM Rose Cinemas as part of the month-long BAMcinématek series “Chantal Akerman: Images between the Images,” which pays tribute to the influential, experimental director, who died in October 2015, reportedly by suicide; the earlier showing will be preceded by two Akerman shorts featuring cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton, 2002’s Avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton and 1989’s Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher. Not coincidentally, Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal has been performing at BAM since 1984. The film series continues through May 1 with such other films by Akerman as La Captive, Jeanne Dielman, and From the East.

CHANTAL AKERMAN — IMAGES BETWEEN THE IMAGES: NEWS FROM HOME

Chantal Akerman combines footage of 1970s New York with letters from her mother in NEWS FROM HOME

NEWS FROM HOME (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, April 16, 7:00 & 9:00
Series continues through May 1
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In 1971, twenty-year-old Chantal Akerman moved to New York City from her native Belgium, determined to become a filmmaker. Teaming up with cinematographer Babette Mangolte, she made several experimental films, including Hotel Monterey and La Chambre, before moving back to Belgium in 1973. But in 1976 she returned to New York City to make News from Home, a mesmerizing work about family and dislocation, themes that would be prevalent throughout her career. The film consists of long, mostly static shots, using natural sound and light, depicting a gray, dismal New York City as cars move slowly down narrow, seemingly abandoned streets, people ride the graffiti-laden subway, workers and tourists pack Fifth Ave., and the Staten Island Ferry leaves Lower Manhattan. The only spoken words occur when Akerman, in voice-over, reads letters from her mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, sent during Chantal’s previous time in New York, concerned about her daughter’s welfare and safety. “I’m glad you don’t have that job anymore and that you’re liking New York,” Akerman reads in one letter. “People here are surprised. They say New York is terrible, inhuman. Perhaps they don’t really know it and are too quick to judge.” Her mother’s missives often chastise her for not writing back more often while also filling her in on the details of her family’s life, including her mother, father, and sister, Sylviane, as well as local gossip. Although it was not meant to be a straightforward documentary, News from Home now stands as a mesmerizing time capsule of downtrodden 1970s New York, sometimes nearly unrecognizable when compared to the city of today. The film also casts another light on the relationship between mother and daughter, which was recently highlighted in Akerman’s final film, No Home Movie, in which Chantal attempts to get her mother, a Holocaust survivor, to open up about her experiences in Auschwitz. Nelly died shortly after filming, and Akerman committed suicide the following year, only a few months after No Home Movie played at several film festivals (and was booed at Locarno). News from Home takes on new meaning in light of Akerman’s end, a unique love letter to city and family and to how we maintained connections in a pre-internet world. News from Home is screening April 16 at BAM Rose Cinemas as part of the BAMcinématek series “Chantal Akerman: Images between the Images,” which continues through May 1 with such other films by Akerman as Golden Eighties, Histoires d’Amerique, From the Other Side, and her masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. In addition, Anthology Film Archives will host “Chantal Akerman x 2,” showing No Home Movie and Là-Bas April 15-21.

CHANTAL AKERMAN — IMAGES BETWEEN THE IMAGES: HOTEL MONTEREY AND LA CHAMBRE

Chantal Akerman’s HOTEL MONTEREY was filmed in an Upper West Side transient hotel

HOTEL MONTEREY (Chantal Akerman, 1972) and LA CHAMBRE (Chantal Akerman, 1972)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, April 8, 2:30 & 7:30
Series continues through May 1
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

BAMcinématek continues its month-long tribute to the late Chantal Akerman, which began April 1 with a two-week run of the Belgian auteur’s latest, and last, film, No Home Movie, with a double feature of two extraordinary experimental works she made while living in New York City in the early 1970s. In 1972, following 1968’s Saute ma ville and 1971’s L’enfant aimé ou Je joue à être une femme mariée, Akerman and cinematographer Babette Mangolte took a camera to the Hotel Monterey, an Upper West Side welfare hotel, and set it up in the lobby, elevator, and various floors as it made its way upstairs and ultimately to an open window, where it ventures outside into the gray dimness of the city. The camera very rarely moves before then, instead capturing curious residents as they hang out in the lobby, look into the lens, or choose not to get into the dark elevator with the unexpected object; each shot lasts approximately one minute, and the entire film is silent. In hallways, the static shots sometimes look like photographs or paintings, the dreary, fading colors of the walls and floors adding a haunting, mysterious quality that is at times eerily reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which came out eight years later, while also evoking Michael Snow’s Wavelength. Occasionally, the camera enters a room: in one, a pregnant woman looks off in a Vermeer-like pose; in another, a well-dressed gentleman sits in a chair, looking directly into the lens; and in a third, a woman sits in a chair by a window, as if wondering what awaits her. A shot of an empty room with a striking red bed in the center can’t help but lead viewers into creating their own stories about what might have gone on there. Artfully edited by Geneviève Luciani, Hotel Monterey is a mesmerizing, and challenging, sixty-five-minute architectural journey into the physical and psychological properties of what film can show and how it is perceived.

LA CHAMBRE repeatedly scans a downtown tenement apartment, where the director alluringly waits in bed

The day after shooting Hotel Monterey, Akerman and Mangolte went downtown to SoHo, where they made La Chambre, an eleven-minute silent film influenced by Snow’s <----> (“Back and Forth”). In a cramped room in a tenement house where Akerman occasionally stayed, a camera slowly pans around the space, sometimes stuttering to remind the viewer that there is someone holding it. The camera treats every object the same, revolving past a table, a sink, a stovetop with a kettle on it, and Akerman in a white nightgown in bed. As it returns to familiar spots, you look deeper, perhaps to see if you missed anything the previous time, or to check if something changed, a natural inclination while watching a movie. However, the only element that changes is Akerman herself; each time the camera pans by her, she is in a slightly different position, fully aware she is being watched — but taking the power back as she stares directly into the camera, playing off her sexuality. She even picks up an apple and lasciviously takes a bite out of it, referencing Eve in the Garden of Eden. And then the camera suddenly goes from rotating counterclockwise to clockwise, completely shifting the visual narrative while obliterating all expectations, Akerman boldly telling everyone who is in control. It’s a thrilling eleven minutes that makes you rethink the way you experience cinema, especially in this age of social media and constant surveillance; in the early 1970s, people did not have the same opportunities to post aspects of their everyday life for all to see, and they were not used to being on camera everywhere they went, including lobbies and elevators.

Both La Chambre and Hotel Monterey, along with Saute ma ville, which is also set in small rooms, reveal Akerman’s fondness for shooting in tight, often confining spaces. For the Brussels-born director, these tableaux evoked her mother’s imprisonment in Auschwitz as well as the trapped role of women in society. “We can read the Akerman-room as a sort of artist’s installation, a reduced stage on which the filmmaker reenacts her agency as artist,” Ivone Margulies explains in “La Chambre Akerman: The Captive as Creator,” a paper delivered at the December 2005 symposium “Images between Images” at Princeton. “Despite the affinity of this room with other video and performance images, ‘la chambre Akerman’ can be found only in her films. For this room gains its performative raison d’être from its relations to other spaces. The primary impetus for the room is its erection of a separate, rigorously demarcated space for the self. . . . The Akerman-chamber works as a display case for the conflict between artistic autonomy and the temptations of another less productive, obsessive kind of autonomy.” Throughout her career, Akerman, who was also a writer and installation artist, was nothing if not autonomous and obsessive; she actually made Hotel Monterey and La Chambre with money she had skimmed from her job at a gay porn theater in New York. All of the elements would later come together in her boundary-shattering feminist classic, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Akerman died last October, reportedly by suicide, shortly after the death of her mother. “Chantal Akerman: Images between the Images” continues through May 1 with such other films by Akerman as Tomorrow We Move, The Meetings of Anna, From the Other Side, News from Home, and La Captive. In addition, Jeanne Dielman is at Film Forum through April 7 and Anthology Film Archives will host “Chantal Akerman x 2,” showing No Home Movie and Là-Bas April 15-21.

CHANTAL AKERMAN — IMAGES BETWEEN THE IMAGES: NO HOME MOVIE

Chantal Akerman creates a unique profile of her mother in deeply personal NO HOME MOVIE

NO HOME MOVIE (Chantal Akerman, 2015)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
April 1-14
Series continues through May 1
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
icarusfilms.com

Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie was meant to be a kind of public eulogy for her beloved mother, Natalia (Nelly) Akerman, who died in 2014 at the age of eighty-six, shortly after Chantal had completed shooting forty hours of material with her. But it also ended up becoming, in its own way, a public eulogy for the highly influential Belgian auteur herself, as she died on October 5, 2015, at the age of sixty-five, only a few months after the film screened to widespread acclaim at several festivals (except at Locarno, where it was actually booed). Her death was reportedly a suicide, following a deep depression brought on by the loss of her mother. No Home Movie primarily consists of static shots inside Nelly’s Brussels apartment as she goes about her usual business, reading, eating, preparing to go for a walk, and taking naps. Akerman sets down either a handheld camera or a smartphone and lets her mother walk in and out of the frame; Akerman very rarely moves the camera or follows her mother around, instead keeping it near doorways and windows. She’s simply capturing the natural rhythms and pace of an old woman’s life. Occasionally the two sit down together in the kitchen and eat while discussing family history and gossip, Judaism, WWII, and the Nazis. (The elder Akerman was a Holocaust survivor who spent time in Auschwitz.) They also Skype each other as Chantal travels to film festivals and other places. “I want to show there is no distance in the world,” she tells her mother, who Skypes back, “You always have such ideas! Don’t you, sweetheart.” In another exchange, the daughter says, “You think I’m good for nothing!” to which the mother replies, “Not at all! You know all sorts of things others don’t know.”

Shots of a tree fluttering in the Israeli wind enhance the peaceful calm of NO HOME MOVIE

Later they are joined by Chantal’s sister, Sylviane, as well as Nelly’s home aide. The film features long sections with no dialogue and nobody in the frame; Akerman opens the movie with a four-minute shot of a lone tree with green leaves fluttering in the wind in the foreground, the vast, empty landscape of Israel in the background, where occasionally a barely visible car turns off a far-away road. Akerman returns to Israel several times during the film, sometimes shooting out of a moving car; these sections serve as interludes about the passage of time as well as referencing her family’s Jewish past. At one point, Akerman makes potatoes for her mother that they eat in the kitchen, a direct reference to a scene in Akerman’s feminist classic, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai due Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Knowing about what happened to both mother and daughter postfilming casts a shadow over the documentary, especially when Chantal tells her mother, “I’m in a very, very good mood. . . . Let’s enjoy it; it’s not that common.” As the film nears its conclusion, there is almost total darkness, echoing the end of life. Through it all, Akerman is proud of her mother; reminiscing about kindergarten, she remembers, “And to everybody, I would say, this is my mother.” No Home Movie achieves that very same declaration, now for all the world to see and hear. No Home Movie is screening April 1-14 at BAM Rose Cinemas, kicking off the month-long BAMcinématek series “Chantal Akerman: Images between the Images,” which continues through May 1 with such other films by Akerman as Toute une nuit, Night and Day, A Couch in New York, Letters Home, and La Captive. In addition, Marianne Lambert’s new documentary, I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman, continues (for free) at Film Forum through April 5, the extraordinary Jeanne Dielman is at Film Forum through April 7, and Anthology Film Archives will host “Chantal Akerman x 2,” showing No Home Movie and Là-Bas April 15-21.

FROM THE THIRD EYE — EVERGREEN REVIEW ON FILM: BOY

A child (Tetsuo Abe) seeks a better way of life in postwar Japan in Nagisa Oshima’s BOY

BOY (SHONEN) (Nagisa Oshima, 1969)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, March 25, 2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:15
Series runs through March 31
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Controversial outlaw filmmaker Nagisa Oshima takes a unique, poignant look at the continuing problems in postwar Japan in the underseen 1969 drama Boy. After a major search for an actor to play the nameless title character, Oshima found Tetsuo Abe in an orphanage, and the young boy delivered one of the most memorable performances ever by a child. Inspired by actual events, the film follows wounded war veteran Takeo Omura (Fumio Watanabe), his second, common-law wife, Takeko Taniguchi (Akiko Koyama), their baby (Tsuyoshi Kinoshita), and Omura’s son from his previous marriage, played by Abe and referred to only as “kiddo.” The family travels across Japan, surviving by means of a classic con: First the stepmother, then the boy pretend to be hit by cars so they can extort money from the drivers. Meanwhile, the boy creates an alternate fantasy life that he shares with his baby brother, involving aliens and monsters, the only time he gets to be like a real kid. Otherwise, he is often by himself, never going to school, wandering lonely through the snow or walking down an empty path on one side of the screen as children play boisterously on the other side. As the authorities close in on the family, tragedy awaits.

Nameless brothers (Tsuyoshi Kinoshita and Tetsuo Abe) amid troublesome circumstances in BOY

Nameless brothers (Tsuyoshi Kinoshita and Tetsuo Abe) experience troublesome circumstances in BOY

Best known for radical, cutting-edge films filled with violence and sexuality, including Cruel Story of Youth, The Pleasures of the Flesh, In the Realm of the Senses, and Taboo — as well as Max, Mon Amour, in which Charlotte Rampling plays a diplomat’s wife who falls in love with a chimpanzee — Oshima shows a warm, gentle touch in Boy, led by a tender lead performance by Abe, who is often shown standing firmly, dressed in a uniformlike outfit, like a little soldier. Oshima and cinematographers Yasuhiro Yoshioka and Seizo Sengen bathe the film in bursts of yellow, blue, and red, setting the bright colors against an essentially black-and-white palette that turns a haunting blue and then sepia near the end, accompanied by Hikaru Hayashi’s evocative, wide-ranging score. Hovering around the tale, which serves as a parable for the many troubles families experienced after World War II and is perhaps most reminiscent of François Truffaut’s nouvelle vague standard-bearer, The 400 Blows, is the Japanese flag; the father and the baby wave a small one in their hands, the family stops underneath one when figuring out their next move, and a large one taunts them on a back wall as the father berates the stepmother in a hotel room. Through it all, the boy remains steadfast. “I’m a cosmic messenger of justice,” he declares to his baby brother. Boy turned out to be Abe’s only film, as he returned to the orphanage after it was finished. Boy is screening on March 25 in the BAMcinématek series “From the Third Eye: The Evergreen Review on Film,” celebrating the release of From the Third Eye: The Evergreen Review Film Reader, a collection of writings from the influential counterculture magazine headed by Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset. The series, which continues through March 31 with such other films as Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Man Who Lies, Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, and Dick Fontaine’s Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?, is curated by critic Ed Halter, who edited the book with Rosset, who passed away in 2012 at the age of eighty-nine.

CHANTAL AKERMAN: NEW YORK REMEMBERS

Chantal Akerman’s life and career will be celebrated at free event at Lincoln Center

Who: Jonas Mekas, Babette Mangolte, Andrew Bujalski, more to be announced
What: Tribute to Chantal Akerman
Where: Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
When: Saturday, March 19, free, 10:00 am
Why: The Film Society of Lincoln Center and City College of New York are teaming up for a memorial tribute on March 19 for Belgian-born, Paris-based pioneer, writer, director, teacher, and artist Chantal Akerman, who died on October 5 of last year at the age of sixty-five, apparently by suicide. For “Chantal Akerman: New York Remembers,” friends and colleagues will gather at the Walter Reade Theater for a free tribute to the longtime New Yorker; admission is first come, first served. The scheduled guests so far include Anthology Film Archives cofounder Jonas Mekas, longtime Akerman cinematographer Babette Mangolte, and mumblecore master Andrew Bujalski, with more to be announced. Whether making short films, a Hollywood movie, documentaries, or cutting-edge experimental works, Akerman always did things her way; among her major triumphs were I, You, He, She; News from Home; and the one and only Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The presentation will feature film clips, personal memories, music, and more, followed by a reception in the Furman Gallery. In 2013, Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation), in an interview with Vulture’s Jennifer Vineyard, cited Akerman as one of his influences: “I studied film as an undergrad at Harvard, and she was my thesis adviser. She gave me two pieces of advice, which I haven’t taken yet. She told me girls wouldn’t like me until I stopped dressing like a fourteen-year-old, and that I should stop being pretentious and just make comedies. I think of Computer Chess as a comedy, but it probably behooves me to go out and make a real one sometime.” More guests are expected to be announced for this two-and-a-half-hour special event. (In addition, BAMcinématek will be hosting a career retrospective of Akerman’s work in the series “Chantal Akerman: Images between the Images,” running April 1 through May 1, while Film Forum will be presenting Marianne Lambert’s I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman for free March 30 through April 1, followed by Jeanne Dielman April 1-7 for $14.)

BAMcinématek FAVORITES — GALLIC 60s: A MAN AND A WOMAN / PIERROT LE FOU

Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant play characters trying to escape their pasts in Claude Lelouch’s A MAN AND A WOMAN

A MAN AND A WOMAN (UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME) (Claude Lelouch, 1966)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Wednesday, March 2, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Winner of both the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman is one of the most popular, and most unusual, romantic love stories ever put on film. Oscar-nominated Anouk Aimée stars as Anne Gauthier and Jean-Louis Trintignant as Jean-Louis Duroc, two people who each has a child in a boarding school in Deauville. Anne, a former actress, and Jean-Louis, a successful racecar driver, seem to hit it off immediately, but they both have pasts that haunt them and threaten any kind of relationship. Shot in three weeks with a handheld camera by Lelouch, who earned nods for Best Director and Best Screenplay (with Pierre Uytterhoeven), A Man and a Woman is a tour-de-force of filmmaking, going from the modern day to the past via a series of flashbacks that at first alternate between color and black-and-white, then shift hues in curious, indeterminate ways. Much of the film takes place in cars, either as Jean-Louis races around a track or the protagonists sit in his red Mustang convertible and talk about their lives, their hopes, their fears. The heat they generate is palpable, making their reluctance to just fall madly, deeply in love that much more heart-wrenching, all set to a memorable soundtrack by Francis Lai. Lelouch, Trintignant, and Aimée revisited the story in 1986 with A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later, without the same impact and success. A recently restored print of the original will be shown on March 2 at 7:30 as part of the BAMcinématek series “BAMcinématek: Gallic 60s,” in honor of the film’s fiftieth anniversary. The two-day treat continues March 3 with Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina should be more excited about recent restoration of Jean-Luc Godard classic

PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, March 3, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Art, American consumerism, the Vietnam and Algerian wars, Hollywood, and cinema itself get skewered in Jean-Luc Godard’s fab faux gangster flick / road comedy / romance epic / musical Pierrot Le Fou. Based on Lionel White’s novel Obsession, the film follows the chaotic exploits of Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina, Godard’s then-wife), former lovers who meet up again quite by accident. The bored Ferdinand immediately decides to leave his wife and family for the flirtatious, unpredictable Marianne, who insists on calling him Pierrot despite his protestations. Soon Ferdinand is caught in the middle of a freewheeling journey involving gun running, stolen cars, dead bodies, and half-truths, all the while not quite sure how much he can trust Marianne.

Filmed in reverse-scene order without much of a script, the mostly improvised Pierrot Le Fou was shot in stunning color by Raoul Coutard. Many of Godard’s recurring themes and styles appear in the movie, including jump cuts, confusing dialogue, written protests on walls, and characters speaking directly at the audience, who are more or less along for the same ride as Ferdinand. And as with many Godard films, the ending is a doozy. A few years ago, when the film was shown at Anthology Film Archives as part of a series selected by John Zorn, the avant-garde musician explained, “Pierrot holds a special place in my heart — I am really a Romantic, not a Postmodern — and this film’s music never ceases to reduce me to tears.” You can see and hear for yourself when last year’s fiftieth-anniversary restoration of this Nouvelle Vague favorite screens on March 3 in the two-day BAMcinématek series “BAMcinématek: Gallic 60s,” which begins March 2 with Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman.