Les Amis de Cinématon

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.

Reel 20 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

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

Reel 11 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Lire is a cinematographic series of filmed portraits that shows, in a single large fixed and sound sequence shot of 3 minutes 20 seconds, a writer reading the beginning of his last published book.

Reel 16 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 26 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

"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).

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.

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

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.

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.

Reel 10 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

A fake "Cinematon".

Reel 38 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

Reel 24 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.