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

Les Malheurs de Marc Allégret

Les Malheurs de Marc Allégret 2023

1

“Les Malheurs de Marc Allégret” shows the ravages of time on the rushes of the unfinished film “Les Corsaires” which Marc Allégret began filming in 1940 and which was interrupted by the Second World War. By isolating and slowing down the most damaged parts of the French filmmaker's film rushes, I managed to create an object with abstract shapes and, insidiously, give another life to a major artistic work. - Gérard Courant

2023

Tu vois, mon fils, l'espace ici naît du temps

Tu vois, mon fils, l'espace ici naît du temps 1984

1

Every year since 1980, I have filmed the Good Friday ceremony reconstructing the Passion of Christ in Burzet, a remote village in the Ardèche area, where for seven hundred years, the local people have dressed up to celebrate and perpetuate this religious rite. (Gérard Courant)

1984

Oh ! Plainte ! Plainte ! Plainte effroyable

Oh ! Plainte ! Plainte ! Plainte effroyable 1991

1

Every year since 1980, I have filmed the Good Friday ceremony reconstructing the Passion of Christ in Burzet, a remote village in the Ardèche area, where for seven hundred years, the local people have dressed up to celebrate and perpetuate this religious rite. (Gérard Courant)

1991

L'Hiver a fui, l'avril est là

L'Hiver a fui, l'avril est là 1984

1

Every year since 1980, I have filmed the Good Friday ceremony reconstructing the Passion of Christ in Burzet, a remote village in the Ardèche area, where for seven hundred years, the local people have dressed up to celebrate and perpetuate this religious rite. (Gérard Courant)

1984

Trio

Trio 1987

1

Trio is a cinematic series of filmed portraits that shows, in a single large, fixed and silent shot of 3 minutes and 20 seconds, three people free to do what they want.

1987

Travellings

Travellings 1992

1

A travelling journal of 100 movements from 1978 to 1992.

1992