La Chinoise

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

1967 / 96min / DCP

Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, and Anne Wiazemsky co-star in Godard’s rouge-tinted, slogan-splattered political comedy concerning five innocents passing their summer vacation in a shared apartment by discoursing on Mao, performing agitprop theater, and contemplating the role of terrorism in bringing on the revolution. Subtitled a “film in the making,” it doubles as a dress rehearsal for May ’68.

“This movie about a cadre of young revolutionaries holed up in an apartment discussing theory, key texts, and the possible benefits of terrorism is one of the biggest influences on my comic Reel Politik about a cadre of young revolutionaries holed up in a movie theater discussing theory, key texts, and the possible benefits of terrorism. La Chinoise, Godard’s first movie with Anne Wiazemsky (who introduced him to the young Maoists of Nanterre), is an entry point to the unfairly dismissed movies he started making a year later as part of the Dziga Vertov collective, most of which also feature Wiazemsky.” —Nathan Gelgud

Distributor: Kino Lorber

Introduction by Reel Politik author Nathan Gelgud on Friday, November 7th