Latest news with #NouvelleVague
Mint
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
Satyajit Ray's 'blackface' moment at Cannes 2025
At the screening of Satyajit Ray's 1970 classic, Aranyer Din Ratri, at the Cannes film festival earlier this month, the audience gave a standing ovation to the celebrities on stage—Wes Anderson along with Sharmila Tagore and Simi Garewal, the only surviving members of the cast. Restored by the Film Heritage Foundation, the movie was presented by Anderson, an ardent fan of Ray. Also read: Cannes 2025: 'Nouvelle Vague' is a winsome homage to Godard Tagore played the urbane and sophisticated Aparna, beguiling four young men who arrive in Palamau (now in Jharkhand) for a break from their busy and troubled lives in Kolkata. Critic Pauline Kael once described her presence as 'incomparably graceful", a sharp contrast to Garewal's Duli, a Santhal woman, who plays a pivotal role in the denouement. For the first few days of the shoot, Ray had Garewal observe tribal women at a local watering hole. Once she had absorbed the nuances of their demeanour, she had her body blackened. On her website, the actor says it took four hours for her to become Duli, and three hours to remove the paint afterwards. In the 1960s, when Ray shot Aranyer Din Ratri, featuring a 'blackface" (an actor whose face and/or body are darkened to represent someone unlike them) on screen was par for the course. Through the 1960s, Hindi movies embraced the blackface trope with impunity. From Ashok Kumar in Meri Surat Teri Aankhen (1963), where he played the dark-complexioned Pyare with fanged dentures and a wild wig to boot, to Meena Kumari playing Rajni in Main Bhi Ladki Hoon (1964), examples of such misuses abound. Sadly, the tradition remains unbroken to this day, albeit with a shift more towards 'brownface"—Alia Bhatt in Udta Punjab (2016), Hrithik Roshan in Super 30 (2019), and Bhumi Pednekar in Bala (2019), the examples are plenty. It's disappointing, though not entirely surprising, that mainstream cinema is yet to rid itself of such regressive traits. After all, misogyny, homophobia and Islamophobia, in various degrees, not only continue to be part of India's commercial cinema, but have led to blockbusters like Kabir Singh (2019) and Animal (2023). The baffling part is that a director like Ray, widely lauded for his humanism and aestheticism, should have fallen for the same problematic trope. When questioned about her choice to play a Santhal, Garewal spoke of the exigency behind the decision: 'You needed a professional to play the role." One wonders if Ray would have taken the same line to defend himself. The irony is heightened, considering that the film (inspired by a novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay of the same name) lays bare the hypocrisy of upper-caste elites towards those they regard as less 'civilised" than them. The word sabhya (civilised) appears several times in the original Bengali novel, especially in the context of the young men who want to momentarily relinquish all decorum of modern life to immerse themselves in the 'wild" freedom of the forests. Their distance from civic rules gives them an unfettered licence to behave like overlords in the land of the oppressed. They demand to be served, sexually and otherwise, and remain largely oblivious to the inconveniences they cause to the dwellers of the forest. A couple of these men do feel periodic stabs of conscience, triggered by the fragile political ecosystem of the 1960s, when the novel was written. Sanjay, who is in charge of labour relations in a factory, is particularly pricked by the disgraceful behaviour of his friends. Back home in Kolkata, as the ultra-left Naxal movement upturns systems of governance, in the so-called idyll of the forests, Sanjay and his well-educated friends hanker for a taste of the lives of the nobles savages—by partaking of their food, liquor and women, while refusing to give up their daily necessities, like having boiled eggs for breakfast. Did Ray internalise this mindset while casting Garewal as Duli? Or was he, in fact, mocking himself as a member of the same elite as the protagonists, by putting her in the role? From the distance of 55 years, we can only speculate on these questions, while reckoning with our discomfort, either way. Also read: Lounge Loves: Sri Lankan director Sumitra Peries' 'Gehenu Lamai'
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Richard Linklater's ‘Nouvelle Vague' Draws Raft Of International Buyers For Goodfellas
EXCLUSIVE: Richard Linklater's love letter to the New Wave Nouvelle Vague has sold to more than 20 theatrical distributors worldwide for Goodfellas following its buzzy Cannes premiere, as one of four French majority productions in Competition this year. They join Paris-based distributor ARP Sélection which will release the film in cinemas in France on October 8 on 500 screens, having produced the film under the banner of ARP Production with Linklater's Austin-based Detour Film. More from Deadline Zoey Deutch Felt Jean Seberg's Spirit Helped On The Set Of Richard Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague': It Was 'A Wild Story' – Cannes Studio Doc Talk In Cannes: Deadline Podcast Hosts American Pavilion Panel On Challenged State Of Documentary Industry Sony Pictures Classics Takes North America & Multiple Territories For Cannes Caméra D'Or Winner 'The President's Cake' The French-language production about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's 1960s New Wave classic Breathless has sold out in Europe for Paris-based sales company Goodfellas. It has unveiled deals to Benelux (Cherry Pickers), the UK & Ireland (Altitude), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Germany, (Plaion), Spain (Elastica Films), Greece (Cinobo), Italy (Lucky Red /Bim), Portugal (Alambique), Scandinavia (TriArt Film), Ex-Yugoslavia (MCF Megacom), Romania (Independenta), Baltics (Scanorama) and CIS (MJM Group). In the rest of the world, it has been acquired for Latin America (Cine Canibal), Japan (Nikkatsu Corporation/AMG), Australia (Transmission Films), South Korea (AUD), and Indonesia (Falcon Pictures). Canada, China and Asia are among territories currently under negotiation. Goodfellas says all the distributors are planning theatrical releases for the film. Nouvelle Vague, which is Linklater's first French-language film, received the support of France's National Cinema Centre (CNC), Ciné+OCS and Canal+. ARP's Michèle Halberstadt, who is a producer and co-writer on the film, and Goodfellas will submit Nouvelle Vague as a candidate to be France's Best International Feature Film entry for the 2026 Oscars. The selection process takes place in the fall. The international deals announcement follows news that Netflix has acquired U.S. rights for the film, where it will receive an awards-qualifying theatrical run and have support through the fall season. Nouvelle Vague reconstructs Godard's chaotic, improvised, hand-held shoot of Breathless on the streets of Paris over the summer of 1959. Shot in black and white and with a 4:3 aspect ratio, it stars Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo with other New Wave figures making appearances including François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard), Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson) and Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat). The film enjoyed an 11-minute ovation in Cannes and strong reviews, with Deadline critic Pete Hammond writing of the film: 'Linklater's splendid love letter to the French New Wave and Godard will make you fall in love with movies all over again.' Best of Deadline 'Hacks' Season 4 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out? Everything We Know About 'Hacks' Season 4 So Far 'The Last Of Us': Differences Between HBO Series & Video Game Across Seasons 1 And 2
New European
a day ago
- Entertainment
- New European
Richard Linklater and the new wave of new wave
This isn't a documentary, but a drama that recreates the Paris of 1959, the streets and the cars and the cafes and the clothes, all shot in black and white, just like the masterpiece of iconoclastic indie film-making itself, the one that defined the new wave of this film's title. Sometimes, it's like they make the movies just for you. Who else would possibly enjoy this? I wondered, as I sat there in Cannes' main temple of cinema, the Grand Theatre Lumiere, dedicated to those founding brothers of the movies, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, watching a film all about the making of another film, the one that practically reinvented cinema: Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle. Directed by American indie stalwart Richard Linklater and shot entirely in French, Nouvelle Vague could come across as indulgent and niche. I hope so. The more indulgent, the nichier the better, say I. But if you love French cinema and love Paris and love À bout de souffle (and let's face it, if you do the two former, it's probably due to the brilliance of the latter), then you'll love Nouvelle Vague. I settled into my seat and realised I was in the sweet spot of my happy place. If you don't know the many stories behind À bout de souffle, Linklater's effortlessly amiable film will fill you in. He describes it as: 'The story of Godard making À bout de souffle, told in the style and spirit in which Godard made À bout de souffle.' So there must be some licence taken even if I think everything here is true, or at least it feels that way – which, as Godard himself might say, is all you need for a movie. Using mostly unknown French actors, Linklater introduces us to the main instigators of this zeitgeisty mid-century moment, including François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard), Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson), Éric Rohmer (Côme Thieulin) and JLG himself (a superbly accurate Guillaume Marbeck, swathed in cigarette smoke and dark glasses) as well as actors Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) and Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch, fabulous). Then there are what one might term the lesser-known creatives such as cinematographer Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) and stills photographer Raymond Cauchetier (Franck Cicurel), whose images were equally instrumental in defining the era. So, yes, it's a sort of faux documentary at times: whenever the characters are introduced on screen, they pause for a couple of seconds and stare at the camera in a composed tableau, as if posing for an old-fashioned still photograph, while their names come up on the screen. There's a whiff of Wes Anderson whimsy here, but the film is nothing like Anderson's archly American The French Dispatch. Linklater is immersed in the moment, in the spirit of '59, the better to make us feel the fun of it all, the breezy joie de vivre that's still instantly conjured up whenever you think of À bout de souffle. So the film takes us through the agonies of Godard's jealousy watching his fellow film critics at Cahiers du Cinéma make their film debuts, and his conversations with producer Georges de Beauregard before he launches into the 20-day shoot of À bout de souffle, writing by hand the day's pages in a cafe every morning (there was never a script), ending the day's filming when he's run out of ideas, making it up on the spot, smoking, smoking, smoking, and cutting, cutting, cutting. But, under Linklater's worshipful gaze, it all feels like the biggest, boldest adventure, illuminated by the playful machismo of Jean-Paul Belmondo and the stylish beauty of Jean Seberg's gamine star quality. Linklater re-creates famous lines and scenes from the film, but shoots them from a reverse angle, from Godard and the camera's point of view, thus throwing new light on images we might have seen many times before, now appearing as fresh as they day they were printed. There are oodles of cinephilic in-jokes, too, including cameos from contemporary luminaries Roberto Rossellini (Laurent Mothe), Jean-Pierre Melville (Tom Novembre), Robert Bresson (Aurelien Lorgnier), who was making Pickpocket at the time, Jean Cocteau (Jean-Jacques Le Messier) and Juliette Gréco (Alix Benezech). There are quips and quotes, there are delicious movie-making moments capturing how Godard directed his actors and how they moved to his strict instructions. You don't have to be an expert in French cinema to love this, though it probably helps. I am, unashamedly, so I don't know or care, which is why I say I felt like they were making it just for me. Maybe that (Cannes-do?) spirit of self-starting and rule-breaking appealed to me because, as some of you might know, I'm about to make my first movie as a producer (A Waiter in Paris, based on the memoir by Edward Chisholm), due to be shot partly on the streets of Paris, on a film partly inspired by all this nouvelle vague coolness. The first night I arrived in Paris to live for a year, as a language assistant in 1991, I went to watch À bout de souffle, for the very first time. My life changed that night, or at least shifted into a different gear. I fell in love, with Paris and with movies. So now, watching Godard, his crew and his contemporaries take to the streets in their various contraptions – shopping carts and wheelchairs adapted to get their handheld shots and sense of movement – it rang out again, pushing me into another new gear with what felt like a challenge and a validation, that every now and then cinema can and must be reinvented, injected with fresh visions and personality, the prevailing order given a right run for its money until it is literally out of breath. And that I can do this, go from critic to film-maker. I'm not directing my movies and, somewhat worryingly, the only guy that looks a bit exasperated in Nouvelle Vague, is the producer character, George de Beauregard, forever fretting that no one's shooting, or that there's no script, to the point that he and Godard come to blows and a full-on grapple match on a cafe floor. Is that what I'm signing up for? Worth it for the creation of a classic, I'd say – plus Beauregard went on to produce Cléo de 5 à 7, Une femme est une femme, Le Mépris, Pierrot le fou… I'd take that, if it means I have to roll with the punches. Then there's all the music Linklater uses, not just some of the famous Martial Solal soundtrack to Breathless, but also other jazz and French sounds of the time, such as Sacha Distel, Dalida and I'm sure I heard Michel Legrand's work with Miles Davis from Legrand Jazz, which came out in 1958… then again, I always hear Miles Davis's trumpet when I see Paris on screen, whether it's there or not. And a word, too, for Deutch, the only American actor here (she previously starred in Linklater's campus film Everybody Wants Some from 2016), playing Jean Seberg and capturing all her American-accented French so perfectly, as well as her haircut and her walk, that jaunt up the Champs-Élysées shouting 'New York Herald Tribune,' all her style, dressed in Chanel and exuding the magical, diva quality that made producer Beauregard fork out half the budget on hiring her (see, producer's instincts are everything). I don't usually focus on one film from Cannes, but Nouvelle Vague, playing in Competition, struck me as something special, something new. I didn't catch them all, this year. For the last 25 years or so, I've seen all the Competition films, fearful that I might miss the Palme d'Or winner, but with producing duties taking over this year, I had to do meetings with financiers, listen to co-production and tax credit panels and sit down with sales agents, very important people at Cannes, no doubt. But as Nouvelle Vague shows, when the history of cinema is told, when they recount the legends of making movies to pass on the baton to a new generation, such as Linklater does here, on screen there are critics, costumiers, cinematographers, actors, writers, script editors, the assistant director. There's a producer and, briefly, the marketing guy. But there are no sales agents or financiers. One might wonder where all this ancestor worship fits in Linklater's own ever-growing and mutating oeuvre. Now 64, he's always been a flag bearer for indie film, since his loose-limbed breakthrough Slacker helped define the golden era of '90s American movie making, compounded by Dazed and Confused and the rather brilliant Before trilogy, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy across the years, with my favourite being the achingly romantic Before Sunset, taking place in Paris. But he's also had the big hit of School of Rock, as well experimental animation work, and the mighty yet subtle achievement of Boyhood, spanning decades. He ticks off the styles and the stats with a Godardian appetite, reflecting on the passing of time (his films can take place in a day, or over long periods), ambition (or lack of it) among young people, and the act of artistic creation. His films are often about just hanging out with a bunch of characters, so Nouvelle Vague is right up his boulevard I'd say, as if he's actually totally disappeared into À bout de souffle while showing it at one of his famous Austin Film Society nights, like the characters in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo. (Allen himself recently fulfilled a dream of making a film entirely in French, Coup de Chance, though it may prove his last). Nouvelle Vague is a 'hang out' movie, a chance to transport yourself to a Cahiers editorial meeting, or to the Cinematheque, to a new wave film set, and to the cafes and streets of 1959 Paris, to smoke and drink coffee, to be reminded of youthful arrogance, even if these tweedy French intellos do look a bit like university professors than punk-like rebels. Let's remember that film critics can become great film-makers, because we all love movies after all. Let's keep cinema sexy and daring, it says, let's aim high to match the best. Let's remember what Godard said: 'You don't make a film, the film makes you.' And let's ride that wave.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Harry Potter' TV series casts its Harry, Hermione, and Ron
HBO's Harry Potter series has found its Harry, Hermione, and Ron. Dominic McLaughlin will play Harry Potter, Arabella Stanton will play Hermione Granger, and Alastair Stout will play Ron Weasley, the network announced Tuesday. More from GoldDerby Post-Cannes, here are 5 international films to watch out for at the 2026 Oscars Jennifer Lopez sets Vegas residency, Richard Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague' lands at Netflix, and more of today's top stories How designer Marg Horwell transforms Sarah Snook in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' through quick costume changes (exclusive images) "After an extraordinary search led by casting directors Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockmann, we are delighted to announce we have found our Harry, Hermione, and Ron," showrunner and executive producer Francesca Gardiner and director and executive producer Mark Mylod said in a statement. "The talent of these three unique actors is wonderful to behold, and we cannot wait for the world to witness their magic together onscreen. We would like to thank all the tens of thousands of children who auditioned. It's been a real pleasure to discover the plethora of young talent out there." SEE Everything to know about HBO's Harry Potter TV series McLaughlin, Stanton, and Stout — who will follow in the footsteps of film stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, respectively — join previously announced cast members John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape, Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid, Luke Thallon as Quirinus Quirrell, and Paul Whitehouse as Argus Filch. The trio of child stars are largely unknown. McLaughlin will be in the upcoming Sky movie Grow. Stanton starred as Matilda in the West End's Matilda: The Musical in 2023-24. Harry Potter is Stout's first major credit. Filming is slated to begin this summer. Described as a "faithful adaption" of J.K. Rowling's book series, the series is expected to adapt one of Rowling's seven books each season. Rowling, who's become a polarizing figure in recent years for her controversial views on the transgender community, will serve as an executive producer. Best of GoldDerby 'The Pitt' star Supriya Ganesh on Mohan 'reworking' her trauma and when she'll realize Abbot is flirting with her Dream Team: 'Étoile' creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino on the secrets of their partnership: 'You want to be jealous of something someone has done' TV sound editors roundtable: 'Adolescence' and 'Secret Level' Click here to read the full article.
Geek Tyrant
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
First Teaser Trailer for Richard Linklater's Black and White Tribute to Jean-Luc Godard NOUVELLE VAGUE — GeekTyrant
The first teaser trailer has been released for director Richard Linklater's ( School of Rock , Boyhood , Where'd You Go, Bernadette? ) new film, Nouvelle Vague ( New Wave ). The black-and-white tribute to French/Swiss film director and screenwriter Jean-Luc Godard premiered at Cannes film festival, receiving an 11-minute ovation, and now we can get our first look at the pic. In the movie, Guillaume Marbeck portrays Godard as he directs his first feature, 1960's Breathless , in Paris. Featuring the same warm black-and-white '60s film aesthetic of the seminal source film, Nouvelle Vague is 'told in the style and spirit in which Godard made Breathless ,' directed by Linklater from a script by Vince Palmo, Michèle Halberstadt, Laetitia Masson and Holly Gent. Along with Marbeck as Godard, the cast includes Zoey Deutch as American actress Jean Seberg and Aubry Dullin as her French co-star Jean Paul-Belmondo. Nouvelle Vague will premiere in theaters on October 8th. The movie was also recently acquired by Netflix. Check out the first teaser below:
