The Cultural Services of the French Embassy is pleased to announce a selection of French cultural events that will be presented in Washington, DC and its consular district this month.

Paris 1967. Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel), the leading filmmaker of his generation, is shooting La Chinoise with the woman he loves, Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin), 20 years his junior. They are happy, attractive, in love. They marry. But the film’s reception unleashes a profound self-examination in Jean-Luc. The events of May ’68 will amplify this process, and the crisis that shakes the filmmaker. Deep-rooted conflicts and misunderstandings will change him irrevocably. Revolutionary, off-the-wall, destructive, brilliant, he will pursue his choices and his beliefs to the breaking point… As he did with The Artist, Academy Award® winning director Michel Hazanavicius delivers another tribute to classic cinema, both wildly funny and deeply moving. In French with English subtitles.

In the months after the exhilarating weeks of May ’68, a group of young people search for a way to continue the revolution. For Gilles (newcomer Clément Mettayer), this means having to balance his political commitments with his desire to explore painting and filmmaking; for his girlfriend Christine (Goodbye, First Love star Lola Créton), this means throwing herself wholeheartedly into the task of organizing. Olivier Assayas (Carlos, Summer Hours) here describes the sentimental education of a generation that was too young to have been on the barricades, conveying the sense of history as lived experience. In French with English subtitles.

During the volatile late 1960s in Paris, the filmmaking collective known as Zanzibar began creating outsider underground movies, many of which are now lost or neglected. The group (consisting of Philippe Garrel, Jackie Raynal, Serge Bard, Daniel Pommereulle, Olivier Mosset, Frédéric Pardo, Patrick Deval, Caroline de Bendern, Zouzou) resembled a clique of Warhol Factoryesque characters. Though all were cinephiles, jointly they had only modest movie-making experience. Yet the Zanzibar films, with their refreshing lack of regard for revenue, are infused with the countercultural energy and restlessness of May '68.

In this musical from Bruno Dumont, the young Jeannette, at the still tender age of 8, looks after her sheep in the small village of Domremy in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War.

One day, she tells her friend Hauviette how she cannot bear to see the suffering caused by the English. Madame Gervaise, a nun, tries to reason with the young girl, but Jeannette is ready to take up arms for the salvation of souls and the liberation of the Kingdom of France. Carried by her faith, she will become Joan of Arc.

French artist Joanathan Bessaci works with old Michelin maps dating from roughly 1920 to 1970. He prefers these vintage French maps because of their color and texture and because they symbolize the roads that various family members have taken to get to France. His maternal grandmother immigrated to France from Vietnam and his paternal grandmother emigrated there from Kabylia (Northern Algeria). Bessaci's current work consists of cutting portraits and other images from several different old maps. The maps are chosen very carefully. Certain visual elements of the finished images are highlighted by integrating the map's geography, including lakes, rivers, oceans, roads, highways, parks and city centers. Each of his pieces uses multiple layers of the cut maps. Each layer is individually placed between sheets of glass to create depth and texture.

Women Artists deconstruct domesticity in Women House exhibition at the NMWA. The exhibition presents work by 36 global artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Mona Hatoum, Zanele Muholi, Leticia Parente, Martha Rosler, Miriam Schapiro, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Rachel Whiteread, and Francesca Woodman. Continuing the dialogue with their artistic foremothers of the 1970s, the contemporary artists in Women House recast conventional ideas about women through painting, photography, sculpture, installation, and video. NMWA is the only U.S. venue for the exhibition, which is organized by La Monnaie de Paris and curated by Camille Morineau and Lucia Pesapane.