Jean Eustache (November 30, 1938 – November 3, 1981) is best known today for his acclaimed masterpiece La Maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore, 1973), one of only two features he made in a short career which also included a number of shorts and documentaries. A fiercely independent director, he absorbed the principles of the New Wave but reworked them into his own very personal cinematic oeuvre.