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

Le Passeur immobile

Le Passeur immobile 2021

1

Le Passeur immobile, which covers the year 1987, is a Booklet filmed stuck between The Days and the Nights (1986) and The Artifice and the Fake (1988). These Notebooks have been punctuating my activity as a filmmaker for about fifteen years. They are like a life parallel to my other films and film series (Cinema, Group Portrait, Read, etc.). They are also like a letter to the spectators.

2021

Dérapages

Dérapages 2020

1

During a shoot with an Eagle K4 camera, a failure caused freeze-ups with abstract shapes.

2020

Cinématon XXVIII

Cinématon XXVIII 1983

1

Reel 28 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

1983

Vivre à Naples Et Mourir

Vivre à Naples Et Mourir 2011

1

"On the occasion of the premiere of Nel Regno di Napoli in Cannes in 1978, Werner Schroeter gave me an audio interview about this film and about his work in general. Our meeting took place on the terrace of the Hotel Majestic, in the midst of excitement of the Cannes festival life, a few days after the screening of Nel Regno di Napoli and in the presence of the photographer Jean-Claude Moireau. Vivre à Naples et mourir is the audio capture of that informal meeting that happened on 20 May 1978 and which is, as per director's wish, more like a casual conversation than an interview in the strict sense of the term (a set of questions and answers).

2011

Dubai Winter Diary VI: Light and Reflections

Dubai Winter Diary VI: Light and Reflections 2011

1

Gérard Courant's "Filmed Diary" of December 14, 2011, produced in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). Between December 7 and 15, 2011, Gérard Courant was invited by the Dubai International Film Festival, in the United Arab Emirates. It was an opportunity for him to film many "Cinematons" of personalities from the Arab world and to continue his "Film Notebooks" from which he brought back 7 episodes.

2011

Couple

Couple 1986

1

Couple is a cinematic series of portrait films, which show two persons, who free to do what they wish, in a fixed camera shot of 3:20 minutes.

1986

Abel Ferrara in Lucca

Abel Ferrara in Lucca 2012

1

A simple, modest and faithful record of some moments at the Lucca Film Festival in October 2010, with songs and speeches by Abel Ferrara: trace of the co-presence of two of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, dissident and true sons of Cesare Zavattini’s revolutionary spirit.

2012

Cinématon XXXIII

Cinématon XXXIII 1984

7.00

Reel 33 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

1984