FilmNewYork

Friday, June 16--------The BamCinematek, the repertory arm of the BAM Rose Cinemas at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is presenting a newly restored film print of a true classic from iconic director Jean-Luc Godard  for a limited run starting this evening. PIERROT LE FOU, a 1965 milestone from the most innovative director of the French New Wave of the 1950s and 1960s, will have a special 10 day revival, reminding audiences of the audacity, sexiness and visual splendor of this iconic director's prolific early period.

PIERROT LE FOU, which originally premiered at the 1965 Venice Film Festival, stars Jean-Paul Belmondo (never sexier) and Anna Karina (the blond blank goddess of French cinema)  as a couple on the run. For his performance, Belmondo was nominated for a BAFTA Award. Godard, who allegedly shot the film without a script, described the film as "an attempt at cinema. Life is the subject with CinemaScope and color its attributes. In short, life filling the screen as a faucet fills a bathtub that is simultaneously draining at the same rate." The film has been revived by Janus Films, a fifty year old company whose mission is the preservation of world cinema classics.

The ten-day run was preceded by a special two-day revival of Godard's international breakthrough hit, the 1959 classic BREATHLESS. Many filmmakers have tried over the years to capture the anarchic pace and humor of this gangster-cum-love-story set in a romanticized Paris, but the film remains a true original, still shockingly in vogue nearly fifty years after it was originally shot. Belmondo stars again in an iconic performance, with the delicate Jean Seberg in the role of her lifetime. For more information on this special engagement, plus upcoming film programs at BAM, log on to their website: www.bam.org

Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor