Today Mia, Antía and I did our presentation for cinema studies on Jean-Luc Goddard’s 1960’s film ‘Vivre Sa Vie’  or ‘My Life to Live’.  I was pretty nervous as I always am when people’s attention is focused on me but I think we went pretty well considering we only met up twice to discuss the assignment.

I had heard/read feedback for other people who had done the presentation and so I learnt that besides talking about the mise-en-scene, aspects of the shot and the meaning behind each scene it was also important to contextualise the extract we were given within the entire film and also the historical/political/social time in which the film was produced. This was extremely easy for me to do as I had studied and written a thesis on Novelle Vague (French New Wave) cinema and knew that it was all about defying studio conventions, experimentation and portraying realistic and uncensored characters and situations. I also made note to discuss the huge feminist movement going on during the 1960’s and how that connected to the protagonist, Nana’s, fight for autonomy and the right to have control over her own life. I mean the film’s title is literally translated to English as ‘My Life To Live’ so it’s clear that independence and the right to be selfish as a woman was a huge theme within the film.

I think we spoke well and went back to cover points that others may have missed. Stuart mentioned that while he liked the casual, conversational method of our presentation, at times our language would slip and we would say things like “kind of”, he also said that at times it seemed like we were thinking on the spot which we kinda were…and finally, that we needed a fleshed out introduction like an essay would have.

We spoke for 42 mins, 2 mins over the 30-40 range, I have no idea if he marked us down for that but we thought we would be under time so we were pretty happy when we found out that we spoke for that long.

We got a distinction which is pretty great, I think Stuart may be a pretty hard marker though from the criticism he gave and for a past essay he marked for me.