Jean-Luc Godard’s impressive filmmaking career has seen many phases, from his early short films to his more politically minded works in the ’70s to his more mainstream flicks the following decade. The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center’s “Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s” retrospective, however, focuses on what is arguably the director’s most important period: the decade in which he helped found the French New Wave. Opening with Godard’s 1960 feature-length debut, Breathless, and closing with his 1968 drama, Weekend, the AFI’s 14-film series is packed with the kind of cinematic experimentation that would become the hallmark of French New Wave—not to mention the heavy use of film references, a practice that Godard would later tone down after rejecting the history of film as too bourgeois. The series runs to Thursday, July 3, at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $9.75. (301) 495-6700; see afi.com/silver/new/ for a complete schedule.