à Bout de Souffle

Jean-Luc Godard - Numéro deux (1975)
MPEG2 Video 480x480 (4:3) 29.97fps 2520Kbps | MPEG Audio 44100Hz stereo 128Kbps | French | ENG hard subs | 2x41mins | 2x630MB
Drama/Art-house | "Number Two" | Starring: Sandrine Battistella, Jean-Luc Godard, Pierre Oudrey

Jean-Luc Godard says that this film is a remake of À bout de souffle (1960). Due to financial matters, the film was shot on Video. The finished Movie (on Video) was filmed back into 35mm to distribute it that way. This was Godard's first film after the Dziga Vertov collaborations of the late sixties and early seventies,and his last feature film for five years.It can be seen as poised uncertainly between the analytical agitprop of the Vertov period and the more accessible films of the eighties which were his return to commercial film making.Its radical innovation which is at once striking and deeply unsettling for the average viewer is his use of split screen for most of the running length. The film tells of a youngish couple who live a seemingly conventional family life with their two young children and his mother and father, but beneath the facade of normality there runs a relentless deconstruction of the sexual power play of married life,the boredom and frustration of the wife and the alienation of the husband trapped in an exploitative job. An extremely pessimistic and very difficult film to watch.
La vie d'un jeune couple au travers d'un reportage vidéo. Les images se succèdent, présentées sous formes de tableaux présentant les membres de la famille et leurs activités.

Je suis né d'une cigogne (1999)
XVID 656x400 25.00fps | French Dolby AC3 384Kbps | link to English subs .txt | 01:14:58 | 700 MB
Drama/Comedy | Director: Tony Gatlif | aka "Children of the Stork" | Romain Duris, Rona Hartner

Je suis né d’une cigogne is both an insanely anarchic portrait of adolescent rebellion and an ingenious parable of social exclusion and immigration in an uncaring society. Social realism rapidly gives way to black comedy and madcap surrealism in a film which broaches some pressing social issues with precision and well-intended irony. From both its look and its content, Je suis né d’une cigogne feels like a blatant homage to the works of Jean-Luc Godard, one of the leading figures of the French New Wave. The plot looks like a crazy mélange of Godard’s À bout de souffle , Pierrot le fou and Weekend, whilst the manic use of jump cutting and over-exposure is Godard’s technique carried to an extreme which even Godard may have considered excessive. It may seem unlikely but this very unusual visual style works well and the result is something that is far more substantial and worthy than a shameless appropriation of another director’s technique.
Chaque matin Otto et Louna se croisent dans le RER. Otto vit dans une HLM avec sa mere. Il est chomeur et vend un journal pour SDF. Louna est coiffeuse et vit chez une vieille dame harcelee par les huissiers. Un jour ils decident de tout plaquer. Accompagnes d'Ali, un jeune immigre fugueur et spirituel, ils volent une voiture et partent au hasard des routes. Une cigogne blessee trouvee au bord du chemin va donner un sens a leur cavale. Ils l'adoptent, la baptisent Mohamed, decident de lui faire passer la frontiere allemande pour retrouver ses parents.

The first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and one of the seminal films of the French New Wave, Breathless is story of the love between Michel Poiccard, a small-time hood wanted for killing a cop, and Patricia Franchini, an American who sells the International Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as Michel hides out from a dragnet. Breathless uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio.