50 Years of Collectif Jeune Cinéma - Where is your Body ?

“Founded in Paris in 1971, Collectif Jeune Cinéma (CJC) is a French filmmakers cooperative dedicated to the distribution, promotion, and exhibition of experimental and independent cinema. The CJC was influenced by the example of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in New York (which had been founded in 1961), and was the first Coop of this kind in France. Like any collective that lasts for so many years, CJC has managed to change and adapt to new situations, while always keeping in mind that experimentation is not a genre or a style, but rather a spirit of freedom, an openness to singular forms of expression, by amateurs and recognized artists alike, from countries big or small, and from filmmakers young or old.

Apart from distributing experimental and independent cinema, CJC has always organized screenings, mostly in Paris, and more prominently a festival, known as ‘Festival des cinémas différents et expérimentaux de Paris’, created in 1998.

In addition to the contemporary films added to our catalog through the Festival, the CJC’s collection includes several historical films of French experimental cinema, many of them still under-recognized and rarely shown since the 1980s (such as, in this program, CYGNE 1 by the artist Absis).

The films selected for this screening at Anthology demonstrate the aesthetic, geographical, and temporal diversity of our catalog. Of course, from the 1,700 titles we hold in our archive, we decided to focus on lesser-known films, mostly made by non-canonical filmmakers, with the possible exception of Marguerite Duras, who was one of the few renowned filmmakers (and writers) to support Collectif Jeune Cinéma from the start.

The program also reflects an informal theme revolving around a focus on the human body in experimental cinema. This theme has always been, unconsciously, a favored one at the CJC, illustrated in particular through the notion of the École du Corps, a group of artists identified and written about by Dominique Noguez in the late 1970s in France, and whose influence is still apparent today.” –Théo Deliyannis & Judit Naranjo Ribó, COLLECTIF JEUNE CINÉMA