Placebo - Protège-moi

Controversial director Gaspar Noe created this homage to the orgy scene from Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) for a single from Placebo’s greatest hits album. In one fluid take the camera follows a pair of young girls through various sexual pairings before having sex in a corner.

Noé later stated in an interview that this video was the only short film where he had been given complete creative control. Not surprisingly the video was never officially released as it was too sexually explicit to be shown.

Eva (Gaspar Noe, 2005)

3 Short films made by Gaspar Noe starring Eva Herzigova and created for le Grand Journal de Canal + at Cannes Filmfestival 2005.

Tribute to Eric Rohmer by Jean-Luc Godard

Tribute to Éric Rohmer (French: Hommage à Éric Rohmer) is a short 2010 video commissioned by Les Films du Losange as a tribute to Éric Rohmer by his friend and former colleague Jean-Luc Godard. It was first presented at the Soirée en hommage à Éric Rohmer on February 8, 2010 at the Cinémathèque Française.

The short film consists of various titles of articles that Rohmer wrote for Cahiers du Cinema appearing on a black background as Godard's narration muses about brief, fragmented memories of Rohmer. It ends with a shot of Godard looking directly into the camera, the 16:9 image's aspect ratio suddenly squished into 4:3, as he finishes his monologue.

Meetin' Woody Allen (Jean-Luc Godard, 1986)

Meetin’ Woody Allen is a 1986 short film by Jean-Luc Godard. In the film, he interviews his “old friend” Woody Allen. Throughout the film there are cuts in the interviews featuring photographs and film clips from Woody Allen’s films. The two of them talk about movies, life, relationships to other directors and actors and Woody’s past. The segments of the interview are separated by title cards, black cards and white type, a Woody Allen trademark. It runs for 26 minutes. The video can be seen below...

Foutaises (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1989, France)

Foutaises a.k.a. Things I Like, Things I Don't Like (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1989, France)

Dominique Pinon talks to the camera describing his likes and dislikes, ranging from the simple such as "I hate men with a beard but no moustache" to the more touching, "I like to think that after death can't be worse than before birth." Each of his examples is accompanied by a visual demonstration.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet reused this technique in his 2001 flim Amélie when introducing the characters.

Fantasmagorie (Émile Cohl, 1908, France)

Fantasmagorie, the very first animated film in the history of the cinema, by the french animator Emile Cohl, otherwise known as “The Father of the Animated Cartoon.” Produced by Gaumont, France, in 1908,  the film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look.

Cohl made over 250 films between 1908 and 1923, of which 37 survive in film archives. And several – Le cauchemar de Fantoche (1908) and The Hasher’s Delirium (1910) – appear right here on YouTube.