Rivette\u2019s films blur structure and spontaneity, inviting circulating meanings, unfinished forms, and ever-evolving interpretations. In his final decades, he ventures boldly into new genres \u2014 from medieval epics to musical fantasies \u2014 while staying true to his core themes of performance, mystery, and freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Far from a quiet \u201clate style,\u201d these films are daring, playful, and deeply alive \u2014 a testament to a filmmaker who never stopped experimenting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Supported by the France Chicago Center at the University of Chicago<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Up, Down, Fragile (Haut bas fragile)<\/strong> directed by Jacques Rivette, 1995, 169m, DCP Who Knows (Va savoir)<\/strong> directed by Jacques Rivette, 2001, 154m, 35mm The Story of Marie and Julien (Histoire de Marie et Julien)<\/strong> directed by <\/em>Jacques Rivette, 2003, 150m, 35mm Love on the Ground (L’amour par terre)<\/strong> directed by Jacques Rivette, 1984, 177m, DCP<\/em> Joan the Maid: The Battles (Jeanne la Pucelle: Les batailles)<\/strong> directed by Jacques Rivette, 1994, 160m, DCP<\/em> Joan the Maid: The Prisons (Jeanne la Pucelle: Les prisons)<\/strong> directed by Jacques Rivette, 1994, 176m, DCP<\/em> Secret Defense<\/strong> directed by Jacques Rivette, 1998, 174m, DCP<\/em> Jacques Rivette, the Watcher (Jacques Rivette, le veilleur)<\/strong> directed by Claire Denis & Serge Daney, 1990, 125m, DCP<\/em> The Duchess of Langeais (Ne touchez pas la hache)<\/strong> directed by Jacques Rivette, 2007, 133m, 35mm<\/em> Around a Small Mountain (36 vues du pic Saint-Loup)<\/strong> directed by Jacques Rivette, 2009, 84m, 35mm<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8703963,"menu_order":0,"template":"","app_discipline":[219],"app_city_tax":[223],"app_event_type":[237],"class_list":["post-8703698","app_event","type-app_event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","app_discipline-cinema","app_city_tax-chi","app_event_type-festival"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nProgram<\/h2>\n\n\n
Tuesday, March 24 7:00 PM<\/em>
Three women \u2014 a librarian, a petty thief, and a woman who just came out of a coma \u2014 forge new identities in a conspiracy-ridden, maze-like summertime Paris. Rivette\u2019s ode to 50s MGM musicals, Up, Down, Fragile<\/em> is a musical of the everyday, a euphoric explosion of bodies in motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday, March 31 7:00 PM<\/em>
An actress touring with an Italian production of a Pirandello play returns to Paris, drifting back into the arms of a former lover. In the meantime, her director (and husband) becomes obsessed with tracking down a long-lost Goldoni script with the help of a student and her brother, a jewel thief. Rehearsals, flirtations, and coincidences intertwine in this freewheeling screwball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday, April 7 7:00 PM<\/em>
Clockmaker Juliens scheme to blackmail a rich woman leads him to the enigmatic Marie, who may or may not be a ghost. Rivette originally started shooting in 1975 as part of a tetralogy with Duelle<\/em>, Noro\u00eet<\/em>, and an unrealized film with Anna Karina, and resumed work on The Story of Marie and Julien<\/em> 27 years later with pieced-together notes from his then-assistant Claire Denis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday, April 14 7:00 PM<\/em>
Two actresses (Jane Birkin and Geraldine Chaplin) are invited by a playwright to rehearse a new unfinished work. Boundaries between scripted drama and real life begin to blur as rehearsals progress in his extravagant mansion and as a magician and a mysterious other woman are added to the mix. Seen by critics at the time as an overly derivative revision of C\u00e9line and Julie Go Boating<\/em>, the film nevertheless shows a maturation of Rivette\u2019s characteristic explorations of theatricality, female friendship, and self-reflexivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday, April 21 7:00 PM<\/em>
Rivette\u2019s epic treatment of the rise of Joan of Arc is, at first glance, something of an outlier in his filmography. Joan the Maid<\/em> nevertheless shows signs of Rivette\u2019s hand; quiet, observant, and interested in the choreography of the body, Rivette\u2019s film refuses to see Joan through any mythic or spectacularized lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunday, April 26 1:00 PM<\/em>
Part two of Joan the Maid<\/em> traces Joan\u2019s capture and imprisonment (but leaves out her famed trial), becoming a patient meditation on language and doubt, lingering on small gestures of faith and exhaustion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday, April 28 7:00 PM<\/em>
Rivette\u2019s take on the revenge thriller follows a reserved scientist (Sandrine Bonnaire) as she sets out to confront the man she suspects of her father\u2019s murder (Jerzy Radziwi\u0142owicz). The result is less like an old Hollywood suspense film than it initially appears. Rivette\u2019s interest in routines and journeys heightens the mystery in a subtler, measured way, always circling around secrets rather than resolving them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday, May 5 7:00 PM<\/em>
In this documentary commissioned for ARTE\u2019s Cin\u00e9ma pour notre temps<\/em> series, Claire Denis follows her former mentor Jacques Rivette as he wanders Paris with Serge Daney. Over a day and a night, Daney and Rivette discuss not only the latter\u2019s filmmaking but also film history at large (Daney and Rivette both worked together as critics for Cahiers du cin\u00e9ma<\/em>). Framed by the careful hand of Agn\u00e8s Godard, the film is a moving portrait of Rivette as fl\u00e2neur<\/em>, veilleur<\/em>, and solitary genius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday, May 12 7:00 PM<\/em>
A general (Guillaume Depardieu) in 1820s Paris becomes enamored with an unpredictable noblewoman (Jeanne Balibar), whose flirtation turns courtship into theater. Jacques Rivette revisits The Order of the Thirteen<\/em> which previously featured in Out 1<\/em>, adapting its second novella into a hypnotic drama of conspiracy and erotic obsession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday, May 19 7:00 PM<\/em>
In Rivette\u2019s gentle final work, an Italian traveler (Sergio Castellitto) encounters a small traveling circus in the Languedoc-Roussillon countryside and becomes enamored with stoic performer Kate (Jane Birkin). Shot by Irina Lubtchansky, daughter of Rivette\u2019s longtime cinematographer William Lubtchansky and editor Nicole Lubtchansky, the film drew comparisons to the films of Howard Hawks and Jerry Lewis; as a 2010 Film Comment review notes, this film has “pinpointed Hawks\u2019s particular genius succinctly….[it is] a ballet of sly subtle gestures, a silent call-and-response between bodies that seems to get to the heart of what makes pure cinema great.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n