Saturday 26 November 2005, 18.30

Jean Eustache, France 1973, 219', subs, cert 18

Regarded by many as the monumental achievement of 1970s French cinema, La maman et la putain is a film like no other. It consists almost entirely of lengthy monologues and dialogues: a quasi-autobiographical meditation on love, sex and the malaise of living. The film is deeply marked by and indebted to its era even as it stands in critical opposition to the cinematic excesses of that period. In his 1982 obituary for Eustache, critic Serge Daney wrote that thanks to La maman et la putain, people would remember exactly what it was like in Paris for the generation that came of age in the wake of the events of May 1968.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£4, booking recommended

    

This event is related to the Jeff Wall: Photographs 1978-2004 exhibition