Abstract
“Despite the decline of the Hollywood studio system, in the late 1960s Los Angeles was becoming increasingly known as a city of global importance. Among its many visitors, French filmmakers and philosophers provided some of the most interesting commentaries on its condition. Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, Jacques Deray, Edgar Morin, Louis Marin, and Jean-François Lyotard all resided in Southern California and produced films or books from their experience. This essay zooms in on Varda’s film Lions Love… and Lies (1969) and Morin’s book Journal de Californie (1970). These profit from a reading side by side because of their instructive similarities and differences, notably in their responses to LA’s distinctive landscapes, built environment, social heterogeneity, counterculture, and media spectacle.”
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Filmography
Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
Black Panther (Agnès Varda, 1968)
Chronique d’un été (Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1961)
Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnès Varda, 1963)
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
In Paris Parks (Shirley Clarke, 1954)
L’Opéra Mouffe (Agnès Varda, 1958)
La Pointe courte (Agnès Varda, 1954)
Le bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965)
Les créatures (Agnès Varda, 1966)
Lions Love… and Lies (Agnès Varda, 1969)
Lonesome Cowboys (Andy Warhol, Paul Morrisey, 1968)
L’Une chante, l’autre pas (Agnès Varda, 1977)
Model Shop (Jacques Demy, 1969)
Nude Restaurant (Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey, 1967)
Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967)
Salut les Cubains (Agnès Varda, 1963)
Skyscraper (Shirley Clarke and Willard van Dyke, 1959)
Smog (Franco Rossi, 1962)
Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968)
The Connection (Shirley Clarke, 1961)
The Cool World (Shirley Clarke, 1963)
The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
The Wild Angels (Roger Corman, 1966)
Un homme est mort (Jacques Deray, 1972)
Un homme qui me plaît (Claude Lelouch, 1969)
Uncle Yanco (Agnès Varda, 1967)
Walkabout (Nicholas Roeg, 1970)
Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970)
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Shiel, M. (2017). ‘Los Angeles and Hollywood in Film and French Theory: Agnès Varda’s Lions Love… and Lies (1969) and Edgar Morin’s Journal de Californie (1970)’. In: Penz, F., Koeck, R. (eds) Cinematic Urban Geographies. Screening Spaces. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46084-4_13
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