Jean Eustache

[justeleblanc]

Via rapidshare.

It seems to work fine, though there's no audio. I may just be missing a codec.

[Barmy]

I missed the FIAF series other than "Mes petites amoureuses", which is one of the best films about childhood ever (a genre I generally don't like).

[zedz]

I missed the FIAF series other than "Mes petites amoureuses", which is one of the best films about childhood ever (a genre I generally don't like).

Welcome to the club! One of my favourite French films: miles away from The Mother and the Whore, but just as accomplished.

It doesn't set out to directly subvert traditional childhood pic tropes, but quietly sets out on quite a different road, and ends up evoking, for me at least, the subjectivity of past personal experience better than almost any other film.

[justeleblanc]

Has anyone else taken a look at Mes petites amoureuses to see if they are having the same audio problems that I have been having?

[martin]

Has anyone else taken a look at Mes petites amoureuses to see if they are having the same audio problems that I have been having?

I had no problem with the audio. It's mp3, variable bitrate. Thank you for the link!

[justeleblanc]

Dang, I'll try to download it again then.

[Musashi219]

The Eustache retrospective has been playing all of May here in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center and I managed to make it to the screening of The Mother and the Whore and was completely in awe throughout its 215-minute duration. Is there some certain reason as to why Eustache's work is not more readily available on DVD? I'm disappointed to think such a film is the type one can only see once in a blue moon. Although there was a New Yorker logo at the start of the film...

[miless]

Although there was a New Yorker logo at the start of the film...

I assume it was an old print, and if so it is not always indicative of who owns the rights (when I saw Aguirre here in Portland a few weeks ago it, too, had a New Yorker logo in front of it)

[Kinsayder]

The Japanese DVD also has the New Yorker logo at the start, though the writing on the disc attributes copyright to "Elite Films / Cine qua non / Les Films du Losange / Simar Production / VM Production".

Artificial Eye apparently had the license at one point.

[Hopscotch]

I'm just as in the dark about rights to The Mother and the Whore. I vaguely remember reading that the Eustache estate has them and is refusing to hand them over unless they get some excessive amount of money? I don't know, but La Maman is a dream DVD release of mine.

[Ovader]

BAD COMPANY: THE FILMS OF JEAN EUSTACHE is at the Cinematheque Ontario from July 11 to 17.

To be screened:
BAD COMPANY
LE COCHON/THE LOST SORROWS OF JEAN EUSTACHE/"THE GARDEN OF DELIGHTS" OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH
MES PETITES AMOUREUSES
PHOTOS OF ALIX
SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES
THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE
UNE SALE HISTOIRE

[justeleblanc]

I've downloaded "Mes Petites Amoureuses" but all the subtitles i've found were awful.

Anybody with the same problem?

Yep. At some point these might be fixed by some kind fellow.

[wpqx]

I managed to miss the majority of the set at the Siskel Center, but made a point to catch Mes Petites Amoureuses which although I enjoyed it was completely night and day from the only other Eustache I had seen (Mother and the Whore). The film operated on its own time table and just sort of wandered about without any general purpose. Childhood films seem to be much more prevalent in French cinema and I suppose this was Eustache's entry to the genre.

I've heard nothing about any R1 DVD releases of any of his films but perhaps with the new retro making its way across the country we can hopefully see DVD's following suit. Would definitely like to catch some of his other films to try and form a comprehensive opinion of his work.

[zedz]

I managed to miss the majority of the set at the Siskel Center, but made a point to catch Mes Petites Amoureuses which although I enjoyed it was completely night and day from the only other Eustache I had seen (Mother and the Whore). The film operated on its own time table and just sort of wandered about without any general purpose. Childhood films seem to be much more prevalent in French cinema and I suppose this was Eustache's entry to the genre.

I've heard nothing about any R1 DVD releases of any of his films but perhaps with the new retro making its way across the country we can hopefully see DVD's following suit. Would definitely like to catch some of his other films to try and form a comprehensive opinion of his work.

Mes Petites Amoureuses is a glorious film, and even more intensely subjective than most other autobiographical childhood films (even, if I recall, in the way that the main character ages in relation to his coevals).

For a guy with such a small filmography, Eustache was an extremely diverse filmmaker. There's no other film that's quite like The Mother and the Whore - it takes certain New Wave tendencies and takes them to extremes - and there's no other film like Le Cochon, which arguably does the same thing with Franju's Le sang des betes, already a rather singular film. And there's no pair of films like La Rosiere de Pessac, not even Haneke's two Funny Games. There are so many avenues for further cinematic enquiry in that modest body of work.

[wpqx]

I was not a fan whatsoever of the Franju film so I'm not too eager to see La Cochon. I just don't particularly care to watch slaughterhouse films if I can help it.

[zedz]

I was not a fan whatsoever of the Franju film so I'm not too eager to see La Cochon. I just don't particularly care to watch slaughterhouse films if I can help it.

Then this is definitely not the film for you. The approach is more tightly focussed than Franju: you follow the fate of a single creature from start to finish, so you're made horribly aware of the process of abstraction that allows people to separate living creature from consumable meat. At some point along the process the 'meaning' of the images changes, but you know that this flipping of the switch is completely arbitrary. It's as difficult and transformative a watch as Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes.

[truefaux]

la maman et la putain was on vhs from new yorker a long time ago and is now out of print. but that's ok because it was a crappy print. the theatrical screenings i catch usually mention that the film's courtesy of the bfi. boris eustache, jean's son, used to have a conversation about bringing the films to dvd on his website but every thing was in french and all i gathered was that it's a rights/estate thing.

i e-mailed the people responsible for the recent eustache retrospective when it began about eustache dvd's and this was the response: ..the French distributor of Eustache films is working on a DVD release of most of Eustache's work, but I don't expect it to be ready before one or two years.

fingers crossed people! (maybe a set like mk2's pialat?)

[therewillbeblus]

Le Jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch, now subtitled on back channels, is a quietly hysterical exhibition of art-snob interpretation, whether in examining the behavior of analytical contradictions and arrogantly rationalizing oneself out of any challenge posed against a previous argument, or simply in detailing absurd imagery and assigning intellectual connotations with deadpan sincerity. It's like The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting detached in a banal aristocratic lecture setting modeled like Eustache's Une sale histoire. I expect fans of either of those films will enjoy this

I noticed it's not on SNAPSЖOT, and see listings that it was screened as early as '79, but IMDb and LB say '81.. We're not there yet, but this is a high list-maker for whatever year it's designated to

[swo17]

It was copyrighted in 1979. I see a lot of places saying 1980 or 1981 (when it played on a program called "Les Enthousiastes") but it apparently originated on another program called "Regards entendus" (perhaps the source of the 1980 date?) I've added it to 1980 for now