Film at Lincoln Center and Janus Films present “Jacques Rozier: Chronicler of Summer,” a retrospective of the French New Wave filmmaker’s influential career, featuring all five of his features and a selection of short films. The series will be presented at FLC from August 16 through August 22 and will premiere several new restorations of Rozier’s signature works, including 4K restorations of Near Orouët (1971) and Maine-Océan Express (1986).

It is well-established that the French New Wave forever changed our understanding of what a film could be, playing with both the medium’s formal conventions and Hollywood’s immortal iconography to produce some of cinema’s most stylish and enduringly influential works. Yet, for as large as such figures as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Éric Rohmer loom within standard accounts of this incomparably fertile period of film history, less well-known are the works of their contemporary Jacques Rozier, whose 1962 debut feature, Adieu Philippine, was a particular cause for the critic-iconoclasts of Cahiers du Cinéma. 

Across five idiosyncratic, episodic features, and an assortment of fiction and documentary short films, Rozier distinguished himself from his peers through his fixation on the idea of vacations as theatrical staging grounds upon which his magnetic actors could play and simply be, making him something like a more lighthearted (though no less complex) counterpart to his fellow New Waver, Jacques Rivette. It is remarkable that Rozier’s influence has been so profoundly felt considering how rarely his singular films have screened outside of France. 

Organized by Florence Almozini and Dan Sullivan. Presented in collaboration with Janus Films.