Cinématon

Cinématon 1978

4.30

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

1978

Urgent ou à quoi bon exécuter des projets puisque le projet est en lui-même une jouissance suffisante

Urgent ou à quoi bon exécuter des projets puisque le projet est en lui-même une jouissance suffisante 1977

5.50

Gérard Courant applies the Lettrist editing techniques of Isidore Isou to footage of late 70's pop culture. Courant posits that his cinema offers an aggressive détournement to the French mainstream, reifying a Duchampian view of film: "I believe in impossible movies and works without meaning... I believe in the anti-movie. I believe in the non-movie. I believe in Urgent... My first full length movie that is so anti-everything that I sometimes wonder if it really does exist!"

1977

Genova Genova

Genova Genova 1984

1

A song of love to the city of Genoa. The film wanders the streets of the city center and explore the beautiful cemetery and then climb the hills which offer an amazing view over the old town crossed by a highway and port.

1984

Sha-Dada

Sha-Dada 1978

1

Sha-Dada is an "expanded" film on two screens which presents itself as a confrontation between two imperialisms.

1978

Vivre est une solution

Vivre est une solution 1980

7.00

Surroundings of the Canal Saint-Martin’s in Paris, a popular district where modernization is just about to begin.

1980

Coeur bleu

Coeur bleu 1980

6.00

"In this journey, Courant's heroine wanders through the clouds and Pyrenees mountains way after the world's destruction [...] Songs by Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe and Leonard Cohen, scores by Vivaldi, Kraftwerk and Johan Strauss, they all form this eclectic and defying musical atmosphere from which Courant dreams about a point of view that would allow him to find a rhythm in a constantly changing abysmal paradise" -Diego Trerotola

1980

Cinématon III

Cinématon III 1978

1

Reel 3 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

1978

Cinématon VIII

Cinématon VIII 1980

1

Reel 8 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

1980

Je meurs de soif, j'étouffe, je ne puis crier...

Je meurs de soif, j'étouffe, je ne puis crier... 1979

6.00

"This is the story of a search, that of a woman in pursuit of her own identity. This woman, Marie-Noëlle Kauffmann, ventures into the world of representation, meets four characters who, each in their own way, give her a key to cross the five sequences/initiations of the film which are all benchmarks that she must absolutely cross to have an answer to the question: Can cinema help find a lost balance?" -Gerard Courant

1979

Cinématon VI

Cinématon VI 1979

1

Reel 6 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

1979

Cinématon XIII

Cinématon XIII 1981

1

Reel 13 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

1981

Cinématon V

Cinématon V 1979

1

Reel 5 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

1979

C'est Salonique

C'est Salonique 1984

1

"During the invitation to a film festival in Thessaloniki, Greece, where I presented the Cinématon and my feature film Blue Heart (which won a prize), I filmed the daily life of the city. The seafront, the university and the city where I was staying."

1984