La Chinoise December 10, 2004

Five Parisian university students, members of the Maoist international movement, converse about China's cultural revolution and the likelihood that terrorism might effect a similar cataclysm in the West. Less than a year after La Chinoise was filmed, students at the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris (the setting for Godard's film) were involved in starting the rebellion that led to the events of May 1968. "Although its politics is vague, for Godard during this period politics was always the subject matter--just as confusing as the rest of everyday life," wrote James Monaco. Suitably, a slogan on the wall of the students' communal apartment reads, "we must oppose vague thoughts with clear images" (1967, 90 minutes).

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