The Nouvelle Vague was a film movement that emerged in the late 1950s in France, characterised by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favour of experimentation and personal expression.

With the cinema release of Richard Linklater’s splendid Nouvelle Vague - which celebrates/recreates the filming of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal title of the French New Wave, Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1959) - we thought it might be fun to use the film to suggest a season of films to accompany our run of the film. Keen not to make any assumptions about what films and filmmakers aren’t classed as being of the Nouvelle vague – there are entire books written on the subject! – we’ve chosen to take our lead from Mr. Linklater and stick to film directors who are actually represented on screen in his film.

Unsurprisingly all the (influential film magazine) Cahiers du Cinéma critics-turned-filmmakers and founders of the movement are in there – Godard himself, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette – as is Agnès Varda. Several filmmakers not of the Nouvelle Vague but very much revered by it, also ‘appear’ in the film: Jean-Pierre Melville, Roberto Rossellini, Jean Cocteau and Robert Bresson, who can be spotted making Pickpocket (1959) in the Paris Métro!

Bonnes projections!