Catherine Breillat
Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones. Produced by Strand Releasing and Connor Jessup.
Right at the heart of the debates on the discrimination of women in the film industry, this documentary raises questions, while offering a voice to women and their cinema. Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Mira Nair, Margarethe Von Trotta, Ulrike Ottinger, Micheline Lanctot, Rakshnan Bani-Etemad, María Novaro but also the names of the less visible directors of the general public. Joining the filmmakers are the voices and comments of producers, film specialists and archivists through whom our images are meticulously preserved.
After a brain hemorrhage, Maud, a filmmaker, wakes up one morning in a half-dead body that has left her hemiplegic and facing inevitable solitude. Bedridden but determined to pursue her latest film project, she discovers Vilko, a con man who swindles celebrities, on a TV talk show. He is arrogant, magnetic and mesmerizing. Maud wants him for her new film. They meet. He sticks around. He swindles her, too, borrowing astronomical sums of money. He takes everything but gives her joy, a family. This film tells the story of the abuse of weakness to which Maud falls victim.
Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
Luc Moullet’s surprisingly tender look at Catherine Breillat, whose powerful explorations of female sexuality continue to divide audiences while they also gain admirers. Extraordinarily articulate, Breillat offers her own thoughts on the reactions to her films.
A man asks himself about the image of women who are offered for his gaze. A documentary about the image of women in fashion, film, and life.
On the heels of the mesmeric “Bluebeard” comes this wonderfully idiosyncratic, heady and erotic exploration of another classic Charles Perrault fairy tale by French cinema’s endlessly probing and brilliant provocateuse. Time-tripping with a truly precocious heroine, we follow a once-cursed six-year-old princess as she awakens a century later at the ripe old age of 16.
Features conversations with ten of the world's greatest living directors: Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles. The film documents Ismailos' voyage of discovering the creative personalities behind the camera.
Mutantes sheds light on a feminism that was little talked about in France. This documentary comprises of a series of interviews conducted in the USA, Paris and Barcelona, and documents from the archives about the political action of sex workers, queer activists and post-pornographic performances.
Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.
A music video directed by Catherine Breillat, featuring the music of Elodie Frégé.
A music video directed by Catherine Breillat, featuring the music of Elodie Frégé.
A music video directed by Catherine Breillat, featuring the music of Elodie Frégé.
A man rescues a woman from a suicide attempt in a gay nightclub. Walking the streets together, she propositions him: She'll pay him to visit her at her isolated house for four consecutive nights. There he will silently watch her. He's reluctant, but agrees. As the four nights progress, they become more intimate with each other, and a mutual fascination/revulsion develops. By the end of the four-day "contract", these two total strangers will have had a profound impact on each other.
After his wife leaves him for another man, Jacques hires a housekeeper, Laura, to keep his Paris apartment in order. As he starts increasing her hours and spending more time with her on her days off, Jacques is torn between the pleasure of Laura's company, and the headache that such an intrusion brings to his new domain of singlehood.
A director struggles with a difficult sex scene between a young actor and actress who can't stand one another. Aided by her loyal assistant, she is hell-bent on getting the scene right without compromise.
Matthieu and Eric are two brothers who work at the same factory as their father in Normandy. When his father is dismissed for smoking on the factory floor, Matthieu is incensed and tries to have him reinstated, in vain. His brother has just got married and, with a child and mortgage on the way, is reluctant to stir up trouble...
A short documentary exploring the ongoing relevance and power of 'Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma'.
Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl's loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.
A young French man and an older English woman spend one night together on a ship.
The film consists largely of a series of interviews with female filmmakers from several different countries and filmmaking eras. Some, such as Agnès Varda and Catherine Breillat (both from France), have been making films for decades in a conscious effort to provide an alternative to the male filmmaking model; others, such as Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia) and Carine Adler (England), are relative newcomers to directing, and their approaches seem more personal and less political. The film as a whole manages to cover some important topics in the feminist debate about film -- how does one construct a female gaze, how can one film nude bodies without objectifying the actors (of either sex), what constitutes a strong female role -- while also making it clear that “women’s film” comprises as many different approaches to filmmaking as there are female filmmakers.
Although deeply in love with her boyfriend - and indeed sleeping in the same bed with him - a schoolteacher cannot handle the almost complete lack of intimacy he will allow. Increasingly frustrated, she gradually finds her sexual appetites leading her into ever more risky situations, including a developing one with the headmaster.
Muriel, a writer nearing 50 whose older lover won't live with her in Paris, meets a man on a train - Samuel, an Arab. He's attracted to her and pursues her, dropping in, asserting himself. She's willing to connect. He's passionate, then boorish, then jealous and possessive. He seems fixed on "Who's the strongest?," while she wants respect and trust. She's self-possessed as well as sexually charged, willing to laugh, and alternately firm and forgiving. He has little money, no immigration papers, few prospects, and a gambling jag. What does each want, and why does she stick with it? Is this colonial strife, war between the sexes, or a love story?
A teenage girl helps investigators reconstruct her mother's (Isabelle Renauld) murder.
Anthology of short films about the French city of Nice, by various directors. A homage to Jean Vigo and his "À propos de Nice" from 1930.
Seemingly, Paul (Jacques Bonaffee) and Isabelle (Marie Brunel) have a wonderful, harmonious marriage. Yet Isabelle is not averse to having a little side action with another man in the afternoon, and Paul is really getting into his romance with one of his ophthalmic patients, a young woman who pursues him more than he pursued her. Even those little affairs might not indicate that there is much wrong with the marriage, but when Paul find's out about Isabelle's little affair, he behaves like a thug rather than the sensitive, easygoing man he has appeared to be. By contrast, the constant bickering of a couple they both know seems to indicate real intimacy between them, despite the fact that they are on the verge of divorce.
After a confinement in a harem, an illiterate Algerian takes her revenge by reinventing herself as a writer. Under the name of Elissa Rhaïs, she becomes the darling of the literary Paris of the inter-war period, in search of oriental fantasies.
After the disappearance at sea of a young fisherman, his childhood friend and his mother begin an ambiguous relationship.
Georges Deblache is a police inspector who is past middle age and who is so despondent about his life that he refuses to have a medical check-up, even though he suspects he has cancer. His partner is Didier Theron, who has recently married a woman whom he has worshipful feelings for -- feelings which don't stop him from routinely bedding the many women of color he encounters while doing his job. Georges takes a keen interest in his partner's unrealistically appreciated wife and pushes his way into her not entirely unwilling arms.
In Paris, unhappy movie actress Catherine Crachat becomes infatuated with the mathematician Pierre Indemini, but then breaks up with him. After a film shoot in Vienna, Catherine stays with a rich admirer, Fanny Hohenstein. Fanny has a history of many lovers of both sexes, two of whom killed themselves over her.
In this "inside look" at French filmmaking, Marechal (Francis Girod) - who is a has-been director - a producer, Vito Catene (Andre Marcon) and Camile Dor (Fabienne Babe), a big-name actress, have agreed to make a film about drugs, but don't have a story, financing, or any of the other elements needed to make it. This doesn't stop them; they cobble together the financing and begin shooting anyway. The producer is very fond of the leading actress, and when she gets hooked on drugs for real in the course of shooting what he feels to be a farcical imitation of a film, he gives up his shares in the film and heads off for the back of beyond (Zanzibar) to lick his wounds. To add insult to injury, the film winds up being a critical and commercial success.
Lili, a pouty and voluptuous 14-year-old, is caravan camping with her family in Biarritz. She's self-aware and holds her own in a café conversation with a concert pianist she meets, but she has a wild streak and she's testing her powers over men, finding that she doesn't always control her moods or actions, and she's impatient with being a virgin. She sets off with her brother to a disco, latching onto an aging playboy who is himself hot and cold to her. She is ambivalent about losing her virginity that night, willing the next, and determined by the third. The playboy's mix of depression and misogyny ends their unconsummated affair, so Lili has to hunt elsewhere.
The story of a woman whose past comes back to haunt her after a former lover re-enters her life.
A sultry French boarding school for girls, in the early twenties. The young pupil Lucienne evades but returns with a weird police inspector who should protect her. Against what or whom? Solange, the psychic unstable gym teacher? Or the voyeuristic principal Madame de Challens? Or other girls?
Mangin, a police inspector in Paris, leans hard on informants to get evidence on three Tunisian brothers who traffic in drugs. He arrests one, Simon, and his girl-friend Noria. Simon's brothers go to their lawyer. He springs Noria, who promptly steals 2 million francs that belong to the Tunisians. They suspect her of the theft; her life as well as the lawyer's is in danger. Meanwhile, Noria is playing with both the lawyer and Mangin's affections. Mangin is mercurial anyway: intimidating and bloodying suspects, falling for a police commission trainee before flipping for Noria, wearing his emotions on his sleeve. Can he save the lawyer and Noria, and can he convince her to love?
A rich Italian's shocking suicide means different things to his twin brother, mother and pregnant lover.
A filmmaker engages in a routine series of sexual encounters to pass the time while editing her latest film. When one man refuses to play by her rules, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to him.
With angry villagers driving them away from their castle in Transylvania, Dracula and his son Ferdinand head abroad. Dracula ends up in London, England where he becomes a horror movie star exploiting his vampire status. His son, meanwhile, is ashamed of his roots and ends up a night watchman in Paris, France where he falls for a girl. Naturally, tensions arise when father and son are reunited and both take a liking to the same girl.
Bored and restless, Alice spends much of her time lusting after Jim, a local sawmill worker. When not lusting after him, Alice fills the hours with such pursuits as writing her name on a mirror with vaginal secretions and wandering the fields with her underwear around her ankles. And, in true teenaged tradition, she spends a lot of time writing in her diary.
An enterprising young Paris based British prostitute decides to incorporate as an official escort business after learning about corporate practices and business ins and outs from her clients. Searching for people to invest in her scheme, she encounters both interest and setbacks.
A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, a newborn who witnesses the drastic changes a French family experiences in a brief period of time.
The Sienese Pia Tolomei is imprisoned in a castle by a jealous husband. Based on the novel by Marguerite Yourcenar, inspired by a story from the Italian Middle Ages.
A young Parisian woman begins a sordid affair with a middle-aged American businessman who lays out ground rules that their clandestine relationship will be based only on sex.
