Fifty years ago this fall, from September 10-19, 1963, the first New York Film Festival was held. The cinema world was different in those days. In an era before home video and DVDs, the few venues for film fanatics to see non-mainstream or foreign films were repertory cinemas, college film societies or festivals. The top grossing film that year was Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. And although Beatlemania had reached a critical mass in Britain, the band had yet to conqu...

By Sophie Nellis   Belmondo and Seberg    The French New Wave – known as la nouvelle vague– was a celebration of youth, Paris and, above all, cinema. Many people don’t know that the term nouvelle vague was first used in 1957 to describe the new generation of French youth, emancipated 18 to 30 year olds who were free-thinking and keen to throw off the legacy of the Second World War. It was only following the success of François Truffaut’s Les...

The NoDa Film Festival returns from Sunday, February 25 to Tuesday, February 27 to the historic Neighborhood Theater. This time we’re celebrating “French New Wave Cinema,” the movement that transformed movies and paved the way for today’s independent film culture. Co-sponsored by the Alliance Francaise, the festival is FREE and open to the public. The New Wave took movies away from the studios and gave them back to the filmmakers themselves. Shot on location and on the fly, French New ...