French filmmakers of the late 1950s are often divided into Left and Right Bank. The Right Bank is represented by the New Wave filmmakers, Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and Rivette, who, in looking back at film history, looked forward to a new film language. The Left Bank filmmakers, Resnais, Marker and Varda, explored the film essay, with questioning voice-overs that created a fluid sense of time and space. In his documentaries, Alain Resnais takes us to places whose presence speaks of the past. In Toute la Memoire du Monde (All the World's Memories), the camera wends through the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, past rows and stacks of books, each unique, but which together, we're told, comprise our universal memory. Because man is forgetful, the library is chosen as the place where all is remembered, and where that which was forgotten can happily be found. In Georges Franju's last short film La Première Nuit, a young boy catches a fleeting glimpse of a woman-a memory? a fantasy?-and follows her through the Paris Metro. During the long night he experiences desire, a longing for the out-of-reach, suggested by reflections cast on subway windows, endlessly receding tunnels, and doors which close just before one gains access. In 1956, Resnais created a film on Auschwitz, its long tracking shots taking us from the present to the recent past. Refusing darkness, refusing obscurity, in Night and Fog Resnais brings to light archival images of the Nazi death camps. In his powerful, poetic essay, the images remember so that we cannot forget. Kathy Geritz Please note: Toute la Memoire du Monde is in French; an English translation will be provided.