Private Lives: The Films of Alain Cavalier

3/31/10 to 4/20/10

We sample from the unusual career of French filmmaker Alain Cavalier, from his New Wave debut through the exquisite Thérèse to the intimate personal documentaries he makes today.

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Thérèse, April 16

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Films

Lieux saints
- Tuesday, April 20 7:00 pm
Alain Cavalier (France, 2007). Leave it to Cavalier to turn a series of trips to the toilet into a “sentimental journey.” With Alain Cavalier, 7 Chapters, 5 Days, 2 Rooms w/Kitchen, in which the director explicates his unconventional career. (87 mins)
Thérèse
- Friday, April 16 7:00 pm
Alain Cavalier (France, 1986). An exquisite portrait of Thérèse of Lisieux. “One of those rare films whose visual beauty is not ornamental or a substitute for something else . . . The film celebrates Thérèse's mysticism in a manner that remains utterly rational.”-N.Y. Times. With short Lettre d'Alain Cavalier. (108 mins)
La rencontre
- Wednesday, April 14 7:00 pm
Alain Cavalier (France, 1996). This intensely intimate documentary record of a love affair explores how objects and creatures become vessels for emotion, and how love is bound up with mortality. (74 mins)
Le combat dans l'île
- Saturday, April 3 8:30 pm
Alain Cavalier (France, 1962). Cavalier's first feature embeds the political tensions and contradictions of early-sixties France in a New Wave love triangle. With Romy Schneider, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Henri Serre. “Not to be missed.”-Village Voice (104 mins)
Portraits
- Wednesday, March 31 7:00 pm
Alain Cavalier (France, 1988–92). A series of mercurial sketches about women and their work, focusing on rare and disappearing crafts that recall traditions long lost. (88 mins)

Private Lives: The Films of Alain Cavalier

3/31/10 to 4/20/10

Some filmmakers start small, with personal, independent projects, and work their way up to bigger budgets, bigger crews, bigger audiences. Not Alain Cavalier. A protégé of Louis Malle, whom he assisted on Elevator to the Gallows and The Lovers, Cavalier (b. 1931) began his career in the early sixties with films that, although they took on challenging political themes, were relatively traditional in method: they had narrative scripts, professional crews, and trained actors. Over the years, he has moved away not only from overt politics and fictional storytelling but from anything resembling conventional methods of production. His works of the past decade are acutely personal and resolutely small-scale—the better to capture the fullness of life, in all its detail.

This series skips through Cavalier’s career, rediscovering his contribution to the New Wave in Le combat dans l’île and featuring his...

This series skips through Cavalier’s career, rediscovering his contribution to the New Wave in Le combat dans l’île and featuring his greatest success, the modestly sublime Thérèse, which won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes. The bulk of the films here are portraits—of strangers and friends and of Cavalier himself, along with Françoise Widhoff, his collaborator, costar, and sometimes cantankerous muse. In chronicling his own and others’ experiences, Cavalier unites the process of filming with the process of living. The resulting documents are banal and beautiful, goofy and profound, never anything more or less than human.

Juliet Clark
Editor

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Series organized at PFA by Kathy Geritz. Private Lives: The Films of Alain Cavalier is made possible by CulturesFrance. PFA wishes to thank Antoine Sebire, La Maison Française, Embassy of France, Washington, D.C.; Sandrine Butteau and Delphine Selles, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York; and Denis Bisson and Cecile Hokes, French Consulate, San Francisco. We are also grateful to Alain Cavalier and Françoise Widhoff, and acknowledge Peggy Parsons at the National Gallery, Washington, D.C., and Jake Perlin, BAMCinématek.

Private Lives: The Films of Alain Cavalier

3/31/10 to 4/20/10

Past Films

Lieux saints

Thérèse

La rencontre

Le combat dans l'île

Portraits