Thesis paper in zine format. Available for buy and trade at Get Lost.

Abstract:

To discuss the Left Bank group, of French New Wave cinema, is to take a leap into obscurity, but when the topic is approached, it should not be as further off as it currently is, to talk about Henri Colpi and his 1961 film Une aussi longue absence (The Long Absence). Though Colpi’s film won the Prix Louis-Delluc and, alongside Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana, the Palm d’Or, it has become largely forgotten and unobtainable in the U.S. (while Buñuel’s film is praised as one of the director’s best and is continually republished). This essay summarizes and examines Absence and compares the film to Viridiana and to better known Left Bank productions, in order to both understand the reasons for the popular neglect of the film and to argue that it be reconsidered. Further, that Colpi’s filmography as editor boasts work on Alain Resnais’ three earliest and most important films, shorts by every other Left Bank director, and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s innovative The Mystery of Picasso, delineates a more substantial relevance than he is currently accorded. Therefore, a discussion of Colpi’s contributions to editing matures into a conversation on his authority there and as director, and, while the briefness of his directorial catalog distances him from consideration as an auteur, how the content of his biography and of Absence defend his inclusion as a director of the New Wave, Left Bank group.

- 36 pages in b&w
- Numbered edition of 50
- Half-letter
- Fold-out poster, b&w, 11x17”