Anna Karina Celebrates ‘Band of Outsiders’ Restoration With Rare Visit to NYC & LA
Anna Karina is going on tour. At 75, the famed French New Wave actress will be making a rare visit to Los Angeles and New York City on the occasion of the theatrical release of a new restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders. Her first stop is Los Angeles’ Cinefamily on April 29, followed by an appearance at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. She then heads back east to our neck of the woods to participate in three-borough junket.
An actress, director, model, and singer, Karina is best known for her work with Godard in the 1960s. The Danish-born beauty met the director while he was casting for Breathless. He had seen some of her commercial work and requested a meeting. The role didn’t end up panning out, mostly due to it involving a nude scene, but he later cast her in Le Petit Soldat. Karina went on to become Godard’s muse. Married from 1961 to 1965, the pair worked on a total of seven films together, including A Woman is a Woman, Vivre Sa Vie, Alphaville, Pierrot Le Fou, Made In U.S.A., and the newly restored Band.
Band will enjoy a week-long run in New York at Film Forum from May 6-12. The couple’s fourth collaboration, the film is an offbeat crime comedy that finds Karina cast as Odile, an English language student who gets mixed up with two men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) who want her to help them commit a robbery in her own home. Seemingly a simple job, things don’t go exactly to plan. Karina will be at Film Forum on May 6 for a Q&A following the 7:30pm screening. As a sidebar to the Band run, Film Forum will present “Anna & Jean-Luc,” a one-week festival of Karina and Godard’s films together. You can visit Film Forum’s website for more details.
Prior to Film Forum, Karina makes stops at BAM and the Museum of the Moving Image. On May 3, she’s at BAM for a member-only screening of Godard’s tribute to American musical comedy, A Woman Is a Woman. The film, which will be screened in 35mm, is followed by a Q&A with Karina moderated by The Village Voice‘s Melissa Anderson. The event is currently sold out, but there will be a standby line. The next night she is at MoMI for an airing of a digitally restored print of Pierrot le Fou and conversation with Molly Haskell. Tickets are still available and can be purchased here.
The trailer for Band of Outsiders can be found below. The film is distributed in the US by Rialto Pictures.