Even if the beginning of the French New Wave and its first film has been much disputed, there has never been any doubt about the filmmakers who set out on their career paths in the late 1950s and early 1960s being contemporaries and kindred spirits They directed, edited, wrote scripts together; they watched each other’s work and played minor roles in each other’s films.

In the 1965 short-film anthology Six in Paris, six very different authors meet – the pioneer Jean-Luc Godard, the baguette‑gangster‑film virtuoso Claude Chabrol, the documentary maestro Jean Rusch; the prosaic philosopher Éric Rohmer, and others – guiding us through the people, places and things of Paris. A quintessential collection of shorts, this selection won’t induce the so‑called Paris syndrome – disappointment in the commercialised romanticisation of the metropolis –, but it doesn’t shy away from its mythology either.

The concept of the anthology is simple – six miniatures capturing the insights of six contemporaries in six urban locations – and, through today’s eyes, it is a unique record of New Wave energy, defiance and invention. It vibrates, it makes you laugh on various decibel levels, and it invites you to see the city as a canvas, a fount, or a point of psychogeography.

Foreword by the programme curator: Fantasies, encounters ordained by fate, side‑streets, lovers, enemies, relatives, and a single umbrella that could have changed lives. The French New‑Wavers shed their signature skin, recording Paris and its variations in six chapters.