The Virgin of Pessac 79
Jean Eustache
France,
1979
Eleven years after the first La Rosière de Pessac, Jean Eustache filmed another documentary about his hometown’s annual coronation of a young woman of upstanding moral integrity. The differences between the ritual in 1968 and in 1979 are subtle yet telling: the selection process is slightly more fraught in ‘79 than in ‘68, while local leaders are more concerned with the current economic depression than wide-scale social upheaval. The ceremony also provides a stage on which progressive changes are made official, with a local order, the Fellows of Pleasant Pessac, inducting their first female member. Finally, this time around Eustache employs color photography to capture the ceremony, an appropriate choice given its verdant outdoor spring setting.
Latest Releases
-
A celebration of an artist’s life in the purest sense, Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus is the definitive swan song of one of the world’s greatest musicians.
Neo Sora Japan, 2023
DCP, Blu-ray -
Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty proved a watershed event for African cinema.
Med Hondo Mauritania, 1979
DCP, Blu-ray -
Nestled away in wintry East Anatolia, public-school art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) yearns to leave the sleepy village for cosmopolitan Istanbul.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan Turkey, 2023
DCP -
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts.
Jean-Pierre Melville France, 1967
DCP, Blu-ray, DVD -
Horace Ové’s fiction-film debut marks a watershed in the history of British cinema: the nation’s first feature to be written and directed by a Black filmmaker and the first to focus on the perspective of Black characters.
Horace Ové United Kingdom, 1975
DCP, Blu-ray