Lettre à L

Lettre à un amant is the final chapter of Paradis’ video trilogy. It deals with a couple's break-up. It is both a letter and a reflection, and it concerns giving of one's self, sharing and exchanging. It is also a response to the other person's flight, the absence, the void. The images attempt to replace the fear and silence. A need sublimated in the exacerbation of pleasure conveyed by images and sounds, Lettre à un amant is a masterful conclusion to the series. At the same time, it poses several questions about the dichotomous love-image paradox present in love. This work also refers to an earlier work by Marc Paradis, La Cage, because of its erotic homosexual content and its many electronic applications. Richard Anger's original score was composed to emphasize the dramatic aspect while several processes proper to the video medium serve to peg the images in an aesthetic approach.

After a novice nun learns of the sudden death of her parents, she leaves the convent to manage the family business and look after her teenage sister. Both of them fall prey to a womanizing mechanic with psychopathic tendencies.

A faceless traveller takes a journey through the barren reaches of a Siberia caught between tradition and modernity, imparting his philosophical musings on its people and places, wildlife and culture.

Vienna, in the 1930s. The attractive and famous writer Albert Rank receives the letter from a stranger. He discovers that she devoted her entire life to her boundless love. In her letter, Rose looks back on a variety of meetings with Albert: Since childhood, she is slavishly in love with him and she never got away from her throughout her life. In many encounters Rank could not recognize them, even if the shared moments had been wonderful. As an adult woman, Rose's love is too painful to go on, and she has dire consequences.

She was 18. They were in love and lived together for ten years. 20 years later, he receives a letter from her. L is very ill. He grabs hold of his camera and films while trying to make her talk about other things, about cinema and what’s become of those political struggles…

Michael Gondry's examination of childhood love is replete with his trademark surreality. One evening at the turn of the century, Stephane discusses with his brother the end of the millenium, but also girls, particularly Aurelie, a classmate with whom he is secretly in love. The following day, Aurelie has a letter to give to him....

A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.

Halfway between real memories, dedication and fantasy, this essay-poem takes the form of a postcard on a background of maritime fable in which eloquent speakers trace the outlines of a legacy, that of a mysterious mentor.

Benedicte is a divorced woman who is greatly appreciated by those around her. One day, she finds an anonymous declaration of love on her desk. The strange letters accumulate and Benedicta is eager to discover the author. And who better to help her in this exciting investigation than her wild ten-year-old daughter?

Nabila Djahnine, president of the feminist association Thirghri N'tmetout, died in hands of an armed group in Tizi Ouzou (Algeria) in 1995. The Islamists forced women, on pain of death, to wear the hijab or stop working. It was the first time a feminist woman paid with her life. Nabila wrote a letter to her sister Habiba in 1994. This documentary is her answer. In 2006 Habiba comes back to the place to restore her sister’s memory, her point of view, the day of her death and the political moment Algeria was going through at that time.

Julien and Nina sign a pact with the universe: they must enjoy life, whatever the cost. Will that decision lead them to happiness, or to their disappearance?

1981: at the moment the left won power, French television commissioned Godard to make a film on the theme of change. Like Lettre à Freddy Buache, this film is born of the impossibility of carrying out the commission. For the space where change appears is not the image but the gap between images.

A movie director attemps to film the way he writes a screenplay.

Such diverse modes of expression as dance, music, poetic narration and images drawn directly on film combine to tell the story of a letter and the joy it carries to its destination. In French, with English sub-titles.

Eva grieves over her lost love. She is surprised by the ghost of her sister who consoles her by taking her into a wild rêverie, in the middle of desertic and industrial landscapes. Eva regains consciousness on a railroad bridge, when she suddenly hears the humming of a train.

Lettre d’un cinéaste à sa fille is a playful, free and personal film in the form of a letter, a film interwoven with a thousand stories knit together with different textures, a book of images where a filmmaker shows the images and the stories he wants to share.