Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

Filmmakers discuss the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock and the book “Hitchcock/Truffaut” (“Le cinéma selon Hitchcock”), written by François Truffaut and published in 1966.

Éric Rohmer converses with collaborators and admirers.

When she was working as cutter for films like La Carrière de Suzanne, La Collectionneuse and La Boulangère de Monceau, Jackie Raynal was most fascinated by how Rohmer handled sound. Unusual in times of digital access to every sound bit, the director insisted on using the original sound from exact the same place and time where the scene has been shot. So every bird, every gust of wind and every tree got it’s specific sound.

What was your first desire? What did you long for most? Arielle Dombasle put these questions to a wide circle of famous people.

A conversation between Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder.

Les Contes Secrets ou les Rohmériens features interviews with 16 actors who have appeared in Rohmer's films, and they talk on camera about his unusual working methods, his personality, and his spare but evocative signature style. Among the thespians who share their memories are Jean-Louis Trinitignant, Marie-Christine Barrault, Zouzou, Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Françoise Fabian, and Andre Dussolier; the film also includes rare footage of Rohmer himself at work on the set of his 1978 effort Perceval.

In 1995, producer Françoise Etchegaray recorded the production of A Summer's Tale. The footage remained on the shelf for years until director Jean-André Fieschi combined the images with bits of the finished film.

Part of the Cinéastes de notre temps series.

Twenty-six people - including two daughters, an ex-wife, his last lover, actors, fellow directors and writers, a neighbor, and boyhood friends - talk about François Truffaut. They discuss his attitudes toward wealth, his early writings about cinema, the undercurrent of violence in his films and his personality, the way he used and altered events in his life when making films, his search for a father (both artistic and biological), his relationship with his mother, the scenes in his films that cause a squirm of embarrassment, and his ultimate mysticism. Clips from a dozen of his films are included.

Two young girls meet, Reinette from the countryside and Mirabelle from Paris, and decide to take a flat together in Paris where they attend University. Four successive stories about their daily lives illustrate the very different views, characters and relation to the world of these two friends.

A series of stories told by Rosette about her vacation. Filmed in super 8 by Eric Rohmer.

Passionate about music, Julien nevertheless works with a sculptor. One day, he meets young Hermine at a religious bookseller.

A film by Haydée Caillot with Eric Rohmer, Anne Rouanet, Jean-Pierre Caminade, et al.

A film by Haydée Caillot with Rosette, Eric Rohmer, Françoise Bécam et al.

Three friends — Paul, a conservative intellectual: Selena, a dancer who specialises in African dance: and Gabriel, an artist who manages to move with ease between the centres of their different worlds Paul maintains an ambiguous friendship with Gabriel, who goes through a series of homosexual affairs. For Selena, emotions become difficult to handle when she finds herself involved with both men. in the contradictory position of being in the centre and on the outside.

An interview with French film director Eric Rohmer.

A German Marquise has to deal with a pregnancy she cannot explain and an infatuated Russian Count.

Out 1: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we realize that there is a plot—perhaps playful, perhaps sinister—that implicates not just the thirteen characters, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Real life may be nothing but an enormous yarn someone somewhere is spinning...

While two theater groups rehearse plays by Aeschylus, two solitary individuals wander the Parisian streets hustling the populace for cash.

French television program discussing Jean Renoir's 1932 film "Boudu Saved from Drowning".

This is a short film reviewing Tire-au-Flanc by Jean Douchet and Eric Rohmer.

An interview with François Truffaut on the cinema of Jean Vigo.

Stéphane Mallarmé is one of the many educational documentaries that Éric Rohmer did for the television during the 1960’s. At the beginning of the film, Rohmer states that he has placed in Mallarmé’s mouth words taken from an interview with the writer by Jules Heuret published in 1891.

Eric Rohmer leads a conversation with Jean Renoir and Henri Langlois on the art of filmmaker Louis Lumière.

Episodes in the lives of two country girls at school in Paris and their opinions.

Six vignettes set in different sections of Paris, by six directors. St. Germain des Pres (Douchet), Gare du Nord (Rouch), Rue St. Denis (Pollet), and Montparnasse et Levallois (Godard) are stories of love, flirtation and prostitution; Place d'Etoile (Rohmer) concerns a haberdasher and his umbrella; and La Muette (Chabrol), a bourgeois family and earplugs.

Some time after marrying a sensual girl, Pozdnychev realizes the only link to his spouse is that of physical love. When a violinist with whom his wife plays regularly the “Sonata to Kreutzer” appears, the young woman blooms in a new passion. From then on, her husband is eaten away by jealousy.

Shot in 16mm, Berenice is Rohmer’s first finished film. The film is based on a story by Edgar Allen Poe about a man who becomes obsessed with his fiancé’s teeth. The film was shot at Andre Bazin’s house by Jacques Rivette. Rivette also edited the film.