What a Flash! (1972) Directed by Jean-Michel Barjol
Comedy / Fantasy
Film Synopsis
The Beatnik movement was at its height when the filmmaker Jean-Michel Barjol
conceived his wildest idea for a film - to bring together two hundred people
from the performing arts and force them two spend three whole days together
in a film studio. In what is so obviously the forerunner to today's
reality television, Barjol's experimental film sees actors, musicians, painters
and other artists acting out 72 hours in their lives in the presence of fifteen
cameras. Amidst this ferment of talent we glimpse some familiar faces
- Bernadette Lafont, Tonie Marshall and Jean-Claude Dreyfus - but for the
most part it resembles a zany collage of humanity that vividly evokes the
essence of the May 68 protests and the hippy movement...
In the 1910s, French cinema led the way with a new industry which actively encouraged innovation. From the serials of Louis Feuillade to the first auteur pieces of Abel Gance, this decade is rich in cinematic marvels.
Franz Kafka's letters to his fiancée Felice Bauer not only reveal a soul in torment; they also give us a harrowing self-portrait of a man appalled by his own existence.