1968 All Over Again

Not just a period film, La Chinoise, blazing in all its glory on a new 35 mm print, is a chunk of the period. Godard (pictured) had begun the ’60s tinkering with montage and rewiring movie genre; as the decade progressed, he addressed its ongoing cultural revolution. Thus La Chinoise, most simply described as the tale of five young militants who establish their Maoist cell in a spacious Paris apartment left vacant for the summer by its bourgeois owners, then argue their way toward an act of political terror. Neither drama nor documentary, La Chinoise is a movie that jettisons narrative suspense for something both more spontaneous and more detached. It’s a fiction transparently imposed on reality; the camera is sometimes shown, and the filmmaker can be heard prompting his young performers with questions. Continues through Thursday, March 20. (NR)
Fri., March 14, 7 & 9 p.m., 2008