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38-595: It was established by Jan Bucquoy in 2009 in Brussels , and it was initially atop the café De Dolle Mol, in the City of Brussels municipality. Bucquoy stated that the end of hierarchy among humans was his motive for starting the museum. He explained, "If you are scared of someone, just imagine them in their underpants. The hierarchy will fall and you will see that this is a guy like any other. We are all equal, all brothers." In 2014 Bruno Waterfield of The Telegraph stated that when

76-509: A quality " and in December 1962 published a list of 162 film directors who had made their feature film debut since 1959. Many of these directors, such as Edmond Agabra and Henri Zaphiratos, were not as successful or enduring as the well-known members of the New Wave and today would not be considered part of it. Shortly after Truffaut's published list appeared, Godard publicly declared that the New Wave

114-472: A commercial release until 2008. Truffaut, with The 400 Blows (1959), and Godard, with Breathless (1960) had unexpected international successes, both critical and financial, that turned the world's attention to the activities of the New Wave and enabled the movement to flourish. Part of their technique was to portray characters not readily labeled as protagonists in the classic sense of audience identification. The auteurs of this era owe their popularity to

152-491: A dictatorial plot-line . They were especially against the French "cinema of quality", the type of high-minded, literary period films held in esteem at French film festivals, often regarded as "untouchable" by criticism. New Wave critics and directors studied the work of Western classics and applied new avant-garde stylistic direction. The low-budget approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what was, to them,

190-521: A fresh look to the cinema with improvised dialogue, rapid changes of scene, and shots that broke the common 180° axis of camera movement . In many films of the French New Wave, the camera was used not to mesmerize the audience with elaborate narrative and illusory images, but rather to play with audience expectations. Godard was arguably the movement's most influential figure; his method of filmmaking, often used to shock and awe audiences out of passivity,

228-400: A much more comfortable and contemporary form of production. Charlie Chaplin , Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks , John Ford, Sam Fuller and Don Siegel were held up in admiration. French New Wave is influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema . In a 1961 interview, Truffaut said that "the 'New Wave' is neither a movement, nor a school, nor a group, it's

266-522: A new means of expression on the same level as painting and the novel ... a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel. This is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the age of the caméra-stylo. " Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut , Jean-Luc Godard , Éric Rohmer , Claude Chabrol , and Jacques Rivette , began as critics for

304-449: A post-World War II France, filmmakers sought low-budget alternatives to the usual production methods, and were inspired by the generation of Italian Neorealists before them. Half necessity and half vision, New Wave directors used all that they had available to channel their artistic visions directly to the theatre. Finally, the French New Wave, as the European modern Cinema , is focused on

342-537: Is a Belgian anarchist who has worked in various media (film, comics writing, painting, sculptures, museums). He gained fame for his controversial anti-establishment works and media stunts, which caused many court cases, including for lèse-majesté , copyright infringement and defamation . Between 2005 and 2010 he staged five attempts to attack the Belgian Royal Palace in Brussels and conquer it. Internationally he

380-623: Is best known as a film director, with La Vie sexuelle des Belges 1950–1978 (1994) and the cult film Camping Cosmos (1996) being his most famous films. A recurring theme in his work is Belgitude . After his studies in Strassburg (theatre) and Brussels (Insas) he started his career as an author of about 50 comics: ((Daniel) Jaunes , Le Bal du Rat Mort (1986), Retour au pays noir , Alain Moreau , etc...). With his producer Francis De Smet he made his much acclaimed series of The Sexual Life of

418-481: Is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema . The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles associated with the magazine Cahiers du cinéma in the late 1950s and 1960s. These critics rejected the Tradition de qualité ("Tradition of Quality") of mainstream French cinema, which emphasized craft over innovation and old works over experimentation. This

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456-551: The Cinémathèque Française , were the dual father figures of the movement. These men of cinema valued the expression of the director's personal vision in both the film's style and script. Truffaut also credits the American film Little Fugitive (1953) by Ruth Orkin , Ray Ashley and Morris Engel with helping to start the French New Wave, when he said: "Our New Wave would never have come into being, if it hadn't been for

494-524: The French New Wave , is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm . New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing , visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave

532-594: The humanism of Rainer Werner Fassbinder ( Satansbraten (1976), The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979); Bucquoy directed some theatrical plays by Fassbinder during his university studies at Strassburg ( The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant ). He is influenced by the Situationist book Society of the Spectacle (1967) by Guy Debord . French New Wave The New Wave ( French : Nouvelle Vague , French pronunciation: [nuvɛl vaɡ] ), also called

570-468: The " new sincerity " subculture within the U.S. that involve deliberately defying certain critical expectations in filmmaking. Alexandre Astruc 's manifesto "The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Stylo", published in L'Écran on 30 March 1948, outlined some of the ideas that were later expanded upon by François Truffaut and the Cahiers du cinéma . It argues that "cinema was in the process of becoming

608-458: The 21st century. The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as long tracking shots (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film Weekend ). Also, these movies featured existential themes, often stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity of human existence. Filled with irony and sarcasm, the films also tend to reference other films. Many of

646-455: The Belgians (with the famous trilogy ) which includes 10 movies and documentaries about the whereabouts of Belgian people from the period after the war until now: the surrealist Camping Cosmos (1996) with Lolo Ferrari and Jan Decleir , and with a parody ( détournement ) of Tintin and Snowy and of the play Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht ; The Closing down of

684-525: The French New Wave films were produced on tight budgets, often shot in a friend's apartment or yard, using the director's friends as the cast and crew. Directors were also forced to improvise with equipment (for example, using a shopping cart for tracking shots. ) The cost of film was also a major concern; thus, efforts to save film turned into stylistic innovations. For example, in Jean-Luc Godard 's Breathless ( À bout de souffle ), after being told

722-644: The Left Bank filmmakers). Roud described a distinctive "fondness for a kind of Bohemian life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the plastic arts , and a consequent interest in experimental filmmaking ", as well as an identification with the political left . The filmmakers tended to collaborate with one another. Jean-Pierre Melville , Alain Robbe-Grillet , and Marguerite Duras are also associated with

760-456: The New Wave directors in that they practiced cinematic modernism . Their emergence also came in the 1950s and they also benefited from the youthful audience. The two groups, however, were not in opposition; Cahiers du cinéma advocated for Left Bank cinema. Left Bank directors include Chris Marker , Alain Resnais , and Agnès Varda (Varda's husband, Jacques Demy , is sometimes grouped with

798-469: The New Wave was to some extent an exercise by the Cahiers writers in applying this philosophy to the world by directing movies themselves. Apart from the role that films by Jean Rouch have played in the movement, Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958) is traditionally (but debatably) credited as the first New Wave feature. Agnès Varda 's La Pointe Courte (1955) was chronologically the first, but did not have

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836-458: The New Wave way of filmmaking often presented a documentary style. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of realism, subjectivity, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end. Although naturally associated with Francophone countries,

874-679: The Renault Factory at Vilvoorde Belgium (1998) as a Belgian version of Roger & Me (1989) by Michael Moore ; Les Vacances de Noël with Noël Godin and Yolande Moreau (2005) etc... He opened the Underwear Museum in Brussels in 2009; in 2016 it moved to its current location in Lessines , Hainaut . His movies are a mixture of French avant-garde cinema in the manner of Jean-Luc Godard ( La Chinoise (1967), Tout va bien (1972), Italian neo-realism ( Roberto Rossellini ) and

912-431: The audience directly , were radically innovative at the time. Classic French cinema adhered to the principles of strong narrative, creating what Godard described as an oppressive and deterministic aesthetic of plot. In contrast, New Wave filmmakers made no attempts to suspend the viewer's disbelief; in fact, they took steps to constantly remind the viewer that a film is just a sequence of moving images, no matter how clever

950-495: The famous film magazine Cahiers du cinéma . Cahiers co-founder and theorist André Bazin was a prominent source of influence for the movement. By means of criticism and editorialization, they laid the groundwork for a set of concepts, revolutionary at the time, which the American film critic Andrew Sarris called auteur theory . (The original French La politique des auteurs , translated literally as "The policy of authors".) Bazin and Henri Langlois , founder and curator of

988-409: The film was too long and he must cut it down to one hour and a half he decided (on the suggestion of Jean-Pierre Melville ) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cuts , as they were filmed in one long take. Parts that did not work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision, and also a purposeful stylistic one. The cinematic stylings of the French New Wave brought

1026-506: The film-maker passes "the essay attitude, thinking – in a novelist way – on his own way to do essays." The corresponding "right bank" group is constituted of the more famous and financially successful New Wave directors associated with Cahiers du cinéma ( Claude Chabrol , François Truffaut , and Jean-Luc Godard ). Unlike the Cahiers group, Left Bank directors were older and less movie-crazed. They tended to see cinema akin to other arts, such as literature. However, they were similar to

1064-468: The movement has had a continual influence within various other cinephile cultures over the past several decades inside of many other nations. The United Kingdom and the United States , both of them being primarily English-speaking , are of note. " Kitchen sink realism " as an artistic approach intellectually challenging social conventions and traditions in the U.K. is an example, as are some elements of

1102-421: The movement. Politically and financially drained, France tended to fall back on the old popular pre-war traditions. One such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical French film. The movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms (often adapted from traditional novelistic structures), criticizing, in particular, the way these forms could force the audience to submit to

1140-480: The museum was in Brussels it was "a well-known drinking spot for Belgium's bohemian far-Left." Robyn Boyle of The Bulletin stated that the museum had become a household name in Brussels". In 2014, the underwear of Yvan Mayeur was stolen from the museum. In 2015, the lease on the café expired, and at one point the Flemish Community canceled its subsidy for the museum, causing Bucquoy to move it. The museum

1178-522: The support they received from their youthful audience. Most of these directors were born in the 1930s and grew up in Paris, relating to how their viewers might be experiencing life. With a high concentration on fashion, urban professional life, and all-night parties, the life of France's youth was exquisitely captured. The French New Wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1962. The socio-economic forces at play shortly after World War II strongly influenced

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1216-412: The technique as style itself. A French New Wave film-maker is first of all an author who shows in its film their own eye on the world. On the other hand, the film as the object of knowledge challenges the usual transitivity on which all the other cinema was based, "undoing its cornerstones: space and time continuity, narrative and grammatical logics, the self-evidence of the represented worlds." In this way

1254-429: The use of light and shadow. The result is a set of oddly disjointed scenes without an attempt at unity; or an actor whose character changes from one scene to the next; or sets in which onlookers accidentally make their way onto camera along with extras, who in fact were hired to do just the same. At the heart of New Wave technique is the issue of money and production value. In the context of social and economic troubles of

1292-485: The young American Morris Engel who showed us the way to independent production with [this] fine movie." The auteur theory holds that the director is the "author" of their movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film. They praised movies by Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo , and made then-radical cases for the artistic distinction and greatness of Hollywood studio directors such as Orson Welles , John Ford , Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Ray . The beginning of

1330-407: Was abnormally bold and direct. Godard's stylistic approach can be seen as a desperate struggle against the mainstream cinema of the time, or a degrading attack on the viewer's supposed naivety. Either way, the challenging awareness represented by this movement remains in cinema today. Effects that now seem either trite or commonplace, such as a character stepping out of their role in order to address

1368-592: Was apparent in a manifesto-like 1954 essay by François Truffaut , Une certaine tendance du cinéma français , where he denounced the adaptation of safe literary works into unimaginative films. Along with Truffaut, a number of writers for Cahiers du cinéma became leading New Wave filmmakers, including Jean-Luc Godard , Éric Rohmer , Jacques Rivette , and Claude Chabrol . The associated Left Bank film community included directors such as Alain Resnais , Agnès Varda , Jacques Demy and Chris Marker . Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time,

1406-601: Was housed in Chez Claude for a period before it moved to Lessines permanently in 2016. Prior to the relocation Mayeur donated a pair of underwear to the museum. The museum has underwear belonging to or attributed to belonging to Brigitte Lahaie , Mayeur, Michel Preud'homme , Didier Reynders , and Axelle Red . French: 50°50′42″N 4°21′12″E  /  50.845111°N 4.353224°E  / 50.845111; 4.353224 Jan Bucquoy Jan Bucquoy ( French: [bykwa] ; Harelbeke , 16 November 1945)

1444-427: Was more exclusive and included only Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, Rohmer, and himself, stating that " Cahiers was the nucleus" of the movement. Godard also acknowledged filmmakers such as Resnais, Astruc, Varda, and Demy as esteemed contemporaries, but said that they represented "their own fund of culture" and were separate from the New Wave. Many of the directors associated with the New Wave continued to make films into

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