For those encountering the nouvelle vague for the first time, this is an appropriate place to start-at its beginnings. Those who come to re-encounter favorites can, with the benefit of hindsight, spot in these early shorts the initial swells that soon erupted into a New Wave of cinematic style. La Premiere nuit, directed by Georges Franju (1958, 20 mins, No dialogue): Made before Franju's first fiction feature film, but after his documentaries, this atmospheric film is the story of a young boy's first encounter with love. After glimpsing a young girl on a subway car, he runs away, and dreams of re-encountering her. Through his use of space, rhythm and focus, Franju transforms the everyday world of the boy into the "fantastic world" of his imagination. Une Histoire d'eau, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, written by Godard, François Truffaut (1958, 20 mins, English narration): Using footage Truffaut shot for an abandoned project, Godard fashioned a film very much his own. Both the story of a romantic encounter, and the history of a flood, Une Histoire d'eau is irreverent and funny, full of references to art, films, and literature, verbal and visual puns...and more than one Godardian digression. Charlotte et son Jules, directed and written by Jean-Luc Godard. (1958, 20 mins): Jean-Paul Belmondo's monologue pondering the nature of love and cinema, but more urgently, an attempt to convince his love, an aspiring actress, to come back to him, contains all the elements of his character in Breathless. (It's actually Godard's voice we hear on the soundtrack; Belmondo had to leave for military service.) Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick) (All the Boys Are Called Patrick), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, written by Eric Rohmer (1957, 21 mins): In this scenario by Eric Rohmer, all the "girls" fall for the same "boy". Godard's love for word games is already apparent as he plays with repetition and context. Includes his first use of newspapers and magazines; a headline reads, "The French cinema is aging under the weight of false legends." Les Mistons (The Mischief-Makers), directed and written by François Truffaut (1958, 30 mins, English narration): A gang of boys fall in love with a young woman. She becomes the object not only of their desire, but of their mischief, as they pass a summer in no-man's land-no longer boys, but not yet young men. Truffaut's delightful portrait, his first film, includes an homage to Lumière. Le Coup du Berger (Fool's Mate), directed by Jacques Rivette (1956, 29 mins, 35mm): Rivette's affection for structuring films as games is already evident in this, his first short film. The relations of a wife, husband, lover and sister are compared to an intricate chess game. Notes by Kathy Geritz