One New Wave movement included Blondie and The Police. The earlier New Wave movement included, in the words of director Jean-Luc Godard, “a girl and a gun.” That would be the French New Wave, the explosive and influential cinematic movement that sprang forth as a direct rejection of the more tame and traditional motion pictures so common in the 1950s. Godard, Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol were among its primary practitioners, and their works will be included in the French New Wave Film Festival today through Tuesday at The Neighborhood Theatre. The third event in the NoDa Film Festival series (following last year’s programs on African-American cinema and Asian film), this one splits the eight featured flicks into three categories: “New Wave Classics” today, “New Wave Noir” tomorrow, and “New Wave Nightmares” on Tuesday. Naturally, Truffaut’s groundbreaking The 400 Blows will be screened, yet the big news is the Charlotte premiere of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 Army of Shadows, which was finally released in the U.S. last year and subsequently earned numerous citations from critics’ groups. Admission to all films is free; for a complete list of titles, see Cheap Thrills or go to www.nodafilmfestival.org.
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2007.
