Comédie

Documentary about the emergence of rock and roll bands and fans in France

Marin Karmitz's avant-garde short film is a haunting tale about an alcoholic novelist facing a crippling case of writer's block.

A young composer is suffocating in his social and family life. He dreams of leaving and starting his life over somewhere else... Jacques goes on a tour of the provinces with a ballet troupe who dance to his music. They live in hotel rooms, train compartments, and dressing rooms where the excited dancers liven up the atmosphere. The girls, among themselves, describe their problems, experiences and hopes in their crude, colorful language. He falls madly in love with one dancer who is as distraught as he is. Maybe this is a way to find happiness again. But the tour comes to an end... It was just a 'brief encounter'. At the Gare de Lyon, Michèle, his wife, is waiting for him. Jacques lets Catherine go...

Oscar nominated documentary short from 1966, centered on the teenage students of a famed ballet teacher.

22 year-old- Yan is trying hard to find his way in life: a job he likes, an ideal. In Saint-Nazaire, his home town, he vegetates, just like his father, an unambitious worker. His fiancée, Juliette, has middle class values and dreams of nothing but a comfortable married life. Dissatisfied, he moves to Paris where he becomes an assembly line worker at the Billancourt Renault car factory. Sick of the working conditions he and his fellow workers have to endure there, he soon turns into a leftist activist...

The film describes a strike in a French textile factory, when the striking workers occupy the factory.

Jean Ravel's A Distant Gaze (D'un lointain regard) is a 12-minute observance of people on the streets backed by Michel Legrand music.

Samuel Beckett directs for German television for the last time.

The first broadcast of the radio play in English on the BBC on 6th October 1964. The play opens with a familiar Beckettian theme, the search to put an end to language: “—story . . . if you could finish it . . . you could rest . . . sleep . . . not before”. “The shape of the narrative itself is indicative of the mind already in the process of degenerating towards an impasse. Voice alternates between talking about the story-telling itself, or the need to find the story to end all stories, and narrating [what it hopes will be that final] story." (Wiki) The term ‘cascando’ (‘cascades’) involves the decrease of volume and the deceleration of tempo.

Samuel Beckett directs a second production of Eh Joe for German television, after the first one of 1966.

Samuel Beckett directs for German television.

A lone man sits at a table dreaming. He dreams of singing a few bars of Schubert's lied, "Nacht und Träume." Then unseen people give him a communion cup and wipe his brow. He is shown dreaming again, then the dream repeats, only much slower.

Performed at the Royal Court Theatre on 16th January, 1973 Produced for the BBC in 1977 by Tristram Powell Directed by Anthony Page and Samuel Beckett Cast: Billie Whitelaw

Samuel Beckett himself directs his piece for German television. Shot on video in one take. Not to be confused with the English version, directed by Alan Gibson for the BBC.

A twenty-minute, almost totally silent film (no dialogue or music, one 'shhh!') in which Buster Keaton attempts to evade observation by an all-seeing eye. But, as the film is based around Bishop Berkeley's principle 'esse est percipi' (to be is to be perceived), Keaton's very existence conspires against his efforts. This was Samuel Beckett's only venture into the medium of cinema.

Cloaked, cowled figures wander in patterns to rhythm instruments.

Samuel Beckett directs for German television.