PROGRAM NOTES

Narrow Margin will present at Institute of Contemporary Arts as a part of the In Focus: Luc Moullet series.

“I've always wanted two people sitting next to each other to come to blows when watching my films, one screaming in anger, driven mad by the constant laughter coming from the seat to their left." — Luc Moullet

“Cinema so free it makes your heart fall out" — Jean-Luc Godard

Born in 1937, Luc Moullet was and is the youngest and most overlooked director of the French New Wave. After beginning his career writing for the legendary film journal Cahiers du cinéma aged eighteen — prompting Cahiers doyen Éric Rohmer to remark, “At this rate we’ll soon have critics in short trousers” — Moullet made his first short film, Un steak trop cuit, in 1960. Produced by Georges de Beauregard on the recommendation of Moullet’s friend Jean-Luc Godard, it established the irreverence, directness and modesty of means that would be the salient features of Moullet’s work for the next five decades.

Though much of Moullet’s work occupies a distinctive realm of anarchistic, absurdist comedy — Jean-Marie Straub called him “the only heir to both Buñuel and Tati”, while Jacques Rivette described him as “our Jarry” — he has made films in more genres than perhaps any of his peers: comedy, western, adventure, period drama, travelogue, and social documentary. Working consistently — and usually with extremely low budgets — across both cinema and television, Moullet has carved out a path unique not only in a French context but in world cinema, as a kind of one-man version of the Hollywood Poverty Row which produced many of his own favourite directors.

Following retrospectives across the USA, this programme, curated by the international film magazine Narrow Margin, presents a selection of Moullet’s shorts and features, recently restored in 4K. Spanning almost forty years of Moullet’s output, from the early masterpiece Les Contrebandières (1967) to the riotous, self-parodic Le Prestige de la mort (2006), it aims to introduce new viewers to work that has often been difficult to find outside of (and sometimes within) France, and to give long-time devotees a rare chance to see Moullet’s films on the big screen.

In addition, Luc Moullet himself will be joining us via video link for a Q&A to discuss his films, following the programme on 4 December.