The Calgary Cinematheque presents the second in a series of screenings celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the French New Wave. Bursting onto the scene in 1959, young filmmakers like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard changed the landscape of cinema immediately and indelibly. Even five decades later, independent films still reverberate with their influence. Our series of films will screen on the first Tuesday of each month, with a repeat screening and lecture the following Saturday. This series is presented in collaboration with the Alliance Française of Calgary and the French Embassy.

In conjunction with our French New Wave series, we present a monthly series of short lectures by film experts. These lectures will take place on Saturday afternoons and be followed by a film screening and discussion. The series continues on Saturday Nov. 7 at Noon with "François Truffaut and the French New Wave" presented by Dominique Perron (Associate Professor of French, University of Calgary) and a screening of Truffaut's landmark 1959 film The 400 Blows.

François Truffaut's first feature is also his most personal. The 400 Blows (whose French title comes from the idiom, faire les quatre cents coups—"to raise hell") is rooted in Truffaut's own biography. The 400 Blows sensitively re-creates the trials of Truffaut's difficult childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, petty crime, and a friendship that would last a lifetime. The film marks Truffaut's passage from leading critic of the French New Wave to his emergence as one of Europe's most brilliant auteurs. Released to immediate acclaim at the 1959 Cannes film festival, The 400 Blows marked the exciting arrival of a new era of filmmaking in France.

Truffaut was born in 1932 into a working-class home. After a troubled childhood, Truffaut joined the French army, deserted and was sentenced to a prison term. Critic Andre Bazin helped secure his release and encouraged his interest in film. In Bazin's influential journal, Cahiers du Cinema, Truffaut published "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinema Francais" ("A Certain Tendency in French Cinema") in 1954, proposing what came to be known as the auteur theory. Truffaut made his first short film in 1957, and won the Cannes Prize for best film direction in 1959 for his first feature, The 400 Blows. Considered one of the founding directors of the French New Wave, Truffaut went on to a prolific and successful career as a filmmaker, writer, and sometimes-actor throughout the 1960s and 70s. Truffaut died in 1984.