La Chinoise

In-person: cartoonist and illustrator Nathan Gelgud.

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

La Chinoise

France, 1967

A major influence on Nathan Gelgud’s book Reel Politik, Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise follows a group of students who form a Maoist revolutionary group over their summer vacation. No lazy bunch, they start each day with calisthenics and slogans before a crowded schedule of Maoist lectures and discussions they lead themselves. Like the theater workers in Reel Politik, they learn revolution as they go. Boldly designed and obliquely stated, the film itself doubles as a catalog of its own political and aesthetic influences, with a regular stream of propaganda posters, comic books, news photos, book covers and slogans filling the frame like a cinematic syllabus for radical home schooling.—Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm

DCP, color, in French with English subtitles, 96 min. Director/Screenwriter: Jean-Luc Godard. With: Anne Wiazemsky, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto.