The Ministry of Motion Pictures Podcast

We're going to do something a little different in this episode. We're going to get a practical crash course on The French New Wave. I know some of you are asking why. But the reason is simple. The French New Wave, in my opinion, offers a near-perfect role model for advancing the art of Christian film. Christian filmmakers have always felt themselves to be on the margins of cinema, and so did most of the French New Wave filmmakers. Christian filmmakers feel unsupported and believe they face an impossible task with impossible limitations. So did the French New Wave filmmakers. But guess what? The filmmakers of the French New Wave revolutionized cinema. They told their stories their way with little intervention. Their stories and methods were completely unorthodox and scandalous. And they did so with meager budgets, industry resistance, and limited options for distribution -- and to top it off, their films were made in the french language. And they created the most single most significant revolution in the history of cinema.

My guest in this episode has written one of the most lively, insightful and readable books on the French New Wave, titled A History of the French New Wave. He's the Wheatley Professor of the Arts at the University of Georgia, teaching film history and theory. His name is Professor Richard Neupert.