Fascinating, fearless, fiercely committed actresses, Jane Birkin and her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg have been at the vanguard of international cinema for over five decades. Bursting onto the scene with a much-talked-about cameo in Michelangelo Antonioni’s seminal Blow-Up, the British-born Birkin went on to become an icon of cool through her association with legendary chanteur Serge Gainsbourg and one of France’s most in-demand actresses, conveying a soulful vulnerability in her collaborations with directors like Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Doillon. Like her mother, Charlotte Gainsbourg has built her career on adventurous roles for visionary auteurs, crafting a beguiling screen presence defined by an innate intelligence and a raw emotional intensity. Taken together, their body of work is an astonishing, often provocative, and always bold survey of the last half-century of European cinema.

Additionally, on display in the Film Society’s Furman Gallery throughout the retrospective will be “Actresses by Kate Barry,” an exhibition of photographs by the late Kate Barry—daughter of Jane, half-sister of Charlotte and formidable artist in her own right—presented in collaboration with the Institut Français.

Acknowledgments:
Institut Français; Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York; Kristy Matheson, Australian Centre for the Moving Image; Leslie Ricci; Olivier Gluzman

Retrospective organized by Dennis Lim and Dan Sullivan; exhibition organized by Florence Almozini and Rufus de Rham.