As part of the Princeton French Film Festival, Richard Brody ’80, film critic for The New Yorker, will examine to what extent the history of French cinema still feels contemporary and necessary. 

Brody began writing for The New Yorker in 1999 and has contributed articles about the directors Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Wes Anderson. Since 2005, he has been the movie-listings editor at the magazine; he writes film reviews and a blog about movies. He is the author of the book “Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard,” and is at work on a book about the lasting influence of the French New Wave. The French cinema has an international status far greater than its commercial one, because the French cinema symbolizes the idea — or the ideal — of the cinema as an art. The French New Wave embodied that notion in the form of a movement that seemed almost like the cinematic equivalent of a political revolution. But that movement is now more than 60 years old — half the distance from today to the birth of movies — and its luminaries have all passed away, yet its films and its personalities retain a great measure of power and influence. To what extent does the history of French cinema still feel contemporary and necessary, what aspects of its current-day productions extend that history, why does the French cinema (whether its realities or its myths) continue to inspire filmmakers and critics internationally? And, for that matter, what is French about the French cinema?  

Free and open to everyone upon registration, this event will take place on Wednesday, April 17, 2024 at 12 noon in East Pyne 010 Room (downstairs). 

Check out the festival’s whole schedule on our website.