Directed by Jean Eustache and Jean-Michel Barjol • 1970 • France
Jean Eustache returned to his hometown, the farming community of Pessac, to create this cinema-verité record of the ritual slaughter of a pig, codirected with Jean-Michel Barjol. The documentary captures in unflinching detail—and in beautifully unpolished black-and-white cinematography—the procedural killing, dismembering, and processing of the animal, resulting in a depiction of both the physical gruesomeness and artisanal craft of such work. THE PIG not only builds upon Eustache’s ethnographic representation of working-class customs and traditions in the previous year’s THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC but also develops the tough yet compassionate lens he would soon apply to his narrative features.
Up Next in Directed by Jean Eustache
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A Dirty Story
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1977 • France
Starring Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Noël Picq, Laurie ZimmerDeceptively simple in form and content, Jean Eustache’s A DIRTY STORY is a fascinatingly complex investigation of the relationship between fiction and documentary, verbal and visual storytelling, a...
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The Virgin of Pessac 79
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1979 • France
A decade after making THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC, Jean Eustache filmed another documentary about his hometown’s annual coronation of a young woman of moral integrity. The differences between the two portraits of the same ritual are subtle yet telling: The sele...
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Alix’s Pictures
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1980 • France
Starring Alix Clio-Roubaud, Boris EustacheWinner of the 1982 César Award for Best Short Film, ALIX’S PICTURES is Jean Eustache’s playful meditation on the ambiguity of images and the elusiveness of interpretation. In a room, a young woman (Alix Cléo Rou...
