s part of their Melbourne Cinémathèque series, ACMI will be screening a season by Resnais. Always elegant and often elegiac, Resnais’ films are slow, measured and passionate. Marked by long takes, tracking shots and abstract close ups, they are made with a haunting stillness, strange silences and little dialogue.

A key member of the Left Bank Group of filmmakers, whose interests lay in left-wing politics and modernism, Resnais sat alongside filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy and Chris Marker. Part of the French New Wave (nouvelle vague), their films were contemporary and often used unconventional narrative techniques – and it was for this style that Resnais become an unforgettable master in the French landscape and an unquestionable doyen of modern cinema.

The Melbourne Cinémathèque will screen six features in a retrospective tribute to Alain Resnais, including his first feature, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). Other films include Je t’aime, Je t’aime (1968), Stavisky… (1974), La Guerre Est Finie (1966), Last Year At Marienbad (1961) and Muriel (1963).

The Garden of Forking Paths: The Films of Alain Resnais will screen each Wednesday from April 27, at ACMI.

melbournecinematheque.org