Born in 1938, Johan van der Keuken started photography with his father at the age of 12. He was only 17 at the time his first book was published. As an IDHEC student (former Fémis -French national school of cinema), he made his first films in Paris and simultaneously published chronicles, critics and texts about photography in Dutch magazines.

Many photographs but mostly films: Johan van der keuken made nearly 60 films of all lengths (from a few minutes to four hours), for which, travelling from Netherlands to Palestine, from Bolivia to Sarajevo, from New York to India, he always carried the camera alone. Essential indication, of course: not because it implies one individual’s point of view but rather a body’s weight and tension. There is not a work less centered than Van der Keuken’s one: often qualified as a citizen of the world, he doesn’t take the pose of a typical documentary moralism supposing the research of a fair point of view over things, nor the subjectivism of the artist whose task would be to deform the illusion of a cohesive world. Van der Keuken has a passion for the material –that can the one of painting, music or literature– which allows him to create the possibility of “an other experience of the reality”.

Johan van der Keuken has travelled on all the continents, made films from the point of view of political, economical, ecological or ideological struggles, depicted men and artists’ lives (poet and painter Lucebert, saxophonist Ben Webster, photographer Ed van der Elsken…). Even when he pretended to be sedentary in order to make The Filmmaker’s holidays, he chronicled life in a French village in the summer of 1974 more than his own, in order to say how much conscience is entertained by the outside, how it can’t be anything but permeable to the world. He always filmed ideas though (opposition between North and South, Dollar, life, death, exploitation) but these ideas can only appear as pieces: it’s a way to submit perception to different schemes, to dissipate the signification, to perpetually stay in movement. Above all, a way to defy the “cinema-vérité” that believes that there is in front of us a reality that is only waiting us to be picked, that there is only one language able to create links between people and things. On the contrary, for Van der Keuken, everything has to be reinvented and each film has to create his own language. Then, at the end of Herman Slobbe – Blind Child 2, second part of a work about blindness, the filmmaker can say simply “farewell, my great little form.”

Bastien Hader

Climates (2006) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
“It’s so odd that Nuri Bilge and Ebru Ceylan, his wife, have achieved together this film about what is left unsaid, about lies and brutality in a couple. Obviously, Ceylan has watched Antonioni carefully, particularly The Red Desert. Besides, Antonioni was at that time with Monica Vitti, which was not a less difficult situation. Like Antonioni, Ceylan is very conscient of the landscapes or the fog. He’s very attentive to hesitations, which forms the bigger part of his actors’ interpretation. For exemple, the woman who knocks at the door of her former husband’s hotel room and ends up leaving because he doesn’t wake up quickly enough. We see her disappear in the corridor’s darkness and then slowly come back to him when he opens the door. This kind of sequences are numerous in Antonioni’s films. And there are so many more details that recall the Italian master in the mise en scène or the cinematography. For example the way he begins a sequence, very close from the ground, or how he cuts sublime frames with the lighting. Or the way he makes close shots on hair, playing with neatness and fuzzyness in the same frame: particularly in the nightmare scene on the beach, which is again in The Red Desert with the sequence of the dream with the little girl and the boat. It’s an extremely precise film about feelings as much as about modern Turkey.”

By Bastien Hader on January 27, 2008 in Paris.

Photographer born in 1941, from Antwerp in Belgium, Harry Gruyaert joined Magnum Photos in 1981 and became a full member in 1986.
From 1959 to 1962, he studied at Brussels School of photography and cinema then left Belgium and went to Paris working as a freelance fashion and advertising photographer as well as a director of photography for Flemish television. It’s for his work on color that H.G. is famous: color of different continents that he’s been seeking while travelling in Egypt, South Korea or India ; his pictures of Morocco earned him in 1976 the Kodak prize.
1972 is an important year: he covered the Olympic Games in Munich but also, living in London, took pictures of the indistinct forms and saturated colors transmitted by a faulty television, at a comparable rhythm to a reporter in front of a scoop. The TV Shots, aesthetically near to the work Nam June Paik was doing on video at the same time, earned his author a lasting recognition. Still exhibited this year in New York, it has just been reissued in a book by prestigious German publisher Steidl.
Besides the Rivages exhibition at the Bon Marché in Paris until February 16, he showed his images by the sides of Antonioni’s ones, a very important influence for him, all along with other Magnum photographers at la Cinémathèque Française in the exhibition L’Image d’après.

Films re-releases play a crucial part. They usually give to forgotten movies a new perspective and help highlight living or dead filmmakers and get some masterpieces out of the attic! Without them, many people wouldn’t have been able to discover Alfred Hitchcock’s or Fritz Lang’s movies in good conditions.

Re-releases play a part in heritage cinema management and perception. Often initiated by cinema owners and distributors, who are eager to give a second breath to films that have been weakened by tired prints, a re-release gives to the viewer the opportunity to discover or rediscover a film as it was originally shown. New prints help get a film out of a purely heritage aspect status that can mostly be aggravated by scratches, delayed colours or low contrasts. Cleaning is a way to remove an aura (which is a burden unless your name is Tarantino); re-releasing is a way to highlight an ancient film.

At some point, one could think the DVD would overshadow those re-releasing initiatives. On the contrary, the DVD is likely to have increased the re-releases frequency but it has also made the choices more complex: a new type of movie buff can discover a filmmaker’s work through DVDs and choose to see the same films then in theatres. That new type of film lover may be more demanding in technical terms than the previous generation of movie addicts. To learn more, we have interviewed with Jean-Max Causse, founder of the legendary Action theatres in Paris (Grand Action, Action Ecoles, Action Christine) and now owner of the Quartier Latin theatre located in rue Champollion. We have also interviewed with Vincent Paul-Boncour from Carlotta Films, an established French theatrical and video distribution company specialized in heritage cinema.

The landscape is now much more complex than in the fifties. The film critic is of course no more responsible for all the discoveries and choices of re-releases: on the contrary, it feeds him a lot. In his interview, Vincent Paul-Boncour depicts how Carlotta handled its first re-release in France -that of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, ten years ago. Beyond the traditional press reviews, it aroused at that time the publishing of critical apparatus and exclusive archives, giving a taste of what would be later the company’s policy in terms of DVD releases. Furthermore, DVDs have become a new place for critics, as many journalists and writers would pursue and reformulate their work with them. Far from killing each other, the different media have found a common path, allowing cinephilie, distribution and critic to begin their mutation.

Each year in France, the National Center of Cinematography (CNC) grants money to annual re-releases programs and examines their quality as much as the quality of the distributor’s work from past years. Films that are eligible must be at least twenty years old –that’s why cinema of the seventies has been specifically highlighted in France over the last fifteen years. By giving subsidies, the CNC regulates the relationship between distributors and cinema owners: it encourages theatres to back up these releases and to make the films available for educational programs.

Each country has obviously its specificity and every cinematography doesn’t have the same attitude toward its heritage. In some Asian countries for instance, where theatres don’t prevail anymore over home cinema and where illegal discs proliferate. But if France distinguishes from some countries by its constant and numerous re-releases, other countries also do, like the United Kingdom or the USA where, apart from museums initiatives, young companies like Rialto Pictures restorates, makes subtitles and relaunches ancient movies.

Francis Chérasse & Bastien Hader

Sunrise (1927) by F.W. Murnau.
“This is the first silent film you can actually hear. And there is no sound. It is edited in such a modern way ! When you see the city, you see the tramway and you can hear it. For me, Murnau really is the inventor of modern cinema. Before him, people made pictures, invented visual effects, Méliès, Lumière or Edison brought things, but he understood first modern cinema. He created it. There you see this man who makes the perfect symbiosis between image, editing and sound. More than Eisenstein or Griffith, for me, he invented everything. He understood everything of the editing of talking pictures. Everyone should see Sunrise once in his lifetime.”

Le franc-tireur (1972) by Jean-Max Causse

How did you start out in cinema?
J.-M. C.: I did all my studies in Clermont. I was already reading a review called La cinématographie française, a professional magazine, which a movie house director would give me – I took care of a movie club when I was in the Sup de Co business school. I did an internship in directing with Claude Chabrol and an internship with Pathé. In short, I was immersed in cinema.
Then I did my military service and found a job in an insurance company. In the morning we were in the offices and the afternoon we thought about what we’d done in the morning. It was gruesome. There was a movie theater not far away, the Lafayette, managed by a pied-noir who bought it when he got back to France. Jean-Marie – my partner – and I took over the theater in the beginning of ’67 and from the start, business was pretty good. Our clients weren’t around anymore in ’68 and we closed down to join them at the roadblocks. Afterwards, we bought the République, split the Lafayette in two, and then moved to the Left Bank with the Grand Action, Les Ecoles.

Did you show current films or were you immediately in the sector of “heritage cinema”?
J.-M. C.: I consider current films a sort of “necessary evil.” For example, when they release the latest movie by the Coen brothers, four of us have it in the Latin Quarter: two around Odéon, the Grand Action and us. As soon as a movie is a bit “auteur”, everyone wants it. So financially, it’s not very profitable. What’s interesting is the professional statement: we’re saying that we don’t just show old movies. There aren’t thousands of different kinds of films; there’s just one kind: good films. Contemporary films are the logical result of heritage cinema. The idea is not to say we only show old movies, but instead to make people understand there aren’t old movies and recent movies: there are just good movies and the others. So you have exclusive releases of certain titles, retrospectives either by filmmaker or by genre, and re-releases with a new copy. These are the three areas of our program. I bought this movie theater, which we’re trying to get back on its feet. My accountant and my lawyer only gave it six months to live, but it ended up with a 60% increase last year. The theater is coming out of a rut and I’ll be able to go back to my other projects by the end of the year.

You’re especially a fan of American cinema. Where does that come from?
J.-M. C.: It’s the basis of it all. All the great movements in cinema hark back to America. For me, the history of cinema is a bit like a tent, with different pegs: the first peg is Murnau’s Sunrise. The second is Rio Bravo, a fabulous classical drama set as a Western – it sums up all progress in cinema and points out an opening towards a glorious future. The third peg is Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, with the arrival of doubt. Cinema is always linked to the sociopolitical context – here, it’s the Americans in Vietnam, and Peckinpah’s characters defend a set of values that are no longer valid and only interest them. And the last peg for me is probably the greatest film of all times, Martin Scorsese’s Casino, because it’s the collapse of everything. It’s a magnificent film that groups together a little of everything that’s been done, with the use of slow motion and complicated editing. It’s sort of the end of cinema, which rises from the ashes. It turns a page. Of course, these aren’t the only important films, but for me, they’re the pillars. The current generation of filmmakers, like David Lynch, assume they’re not working for television and that they have a captive audience. You’re there and they’re going to use you. It’s a wonderful idea, which goes against a certain idea TV has that they need to constantly repeat things so you can understand, even if you go out and walk your dog during the movie. We like showing a little of all that. And the advantage of American cinema is that over there, rebellion that’s necessary against the system must come from the artists – it can’t be in the streets or in Congress – and that’s very important for the filmmakers’ freedom.

When did the phenomenon of re-releases begin? When did it start happening in parallel with current releases?
J.-M. C.: At the end of the ’70s, the American studios formed a group. It’s expensive to keep reels on the shelves, and so they made large cuts. When we started the Action movie theaters in the ’70s, there was a huge selection, because we kept at least the copies that were in the original language, and we ended up with a lot of movies that had disappeared. The only solution was to re-release them. First we did it with the companies, guaranteeing the cost of the new copies. Everyone insulted us, saying it wasn’t up to movie theaters to do this, but it was that or nothing. If we didn’t give them guarantees, they wouldn’t do it. Then came the idea of distributing films, and therefore buying the rights for a certain number of years, often five years, and distributing them in theaters. Once we’d come up with this policy of re-releases, the second idea was to re-release them in their entirety, by making a director’s cut. One of our successes was Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. The original credits told the plot of the whole film, including the end, which obviously wasn’t possible for MGM; it’s all edited with flashbacks, etc.
They thought the audience will never understand it so they reedited the movie chronologically and twenty five minutes were cut. So when we took the rights, a friend of ours had found the main editor of Peckinpah and told us he had his editing notes. So we went to meet Ted Turner and we told him we wanted to make a director’s cut. He told us to go meeting Pekinpah’s daughter who was suing him for years, we met her and she was very happy with our idea to follow her father’s will. So we went back to Ted Turner who announced us a big price. In Paris we met Patrick Brion who paid three times the price he was used to pay to show the movie on TV, we put some of our own money, Japanese put money, and thanks to us, US students can now discover Pat Garrett the way Peckinpah wanted it.

Is it as easy nowadays as it was before to get movies from the distributors for your theater?
F. C.: Stocks have melt. If you want a movie now, without buying the rights, without being its distributor, you have to talk to majors, which don’t care about their catalogs. So what can you do? You have to get the rights, for three or five years, make new prints -it costs about 15,000 euros. You cannot take that many risks. Without a big casting or a very famous director, even a very good film is risky.
J.-M. C.: Contracts are tough. You have to pay a warranty, 8,000 to 10,000 dollars, then you pay for the prints, you pay everything. You start to show the picture when you have already paid for everything, it’s a real funding problem. Then you have to make it profitable for years. And when you manage to do it, you have to share the profits with the major! They can’t ‘afford’ losing anything.

Did the DVD change the look of the majors towards their catalogues?
J.-M. C.: We benefit from the restorations financed for the DVD. The restoration of Barry Lyndon for example enabled us to show it in Dolby SR whereas it was never shown in that format. We often benefit from what was done for TV or DVD, not for us.
F. C.: This is how digital technology can be interesting for us, it can lower the costs by enabling us not to have to make new prints. With digitalized movies, saved as digital files, storage and transportation costs are largely played down and you can imagine renting costs for a week or even a single day. Then we could take more risks and show rarer movies we cannot afford right now.
J.-M. C.: In the future, Mister Warner will just have to press one button to show a movie on fifty screens. But there’s something more important. Currently, there’s one film for prints, Eastman. Every movie is printed on the same film but they are not shot with the same medium. The result is a single tone of colors, with the loss you can imagine. In the United States, major studios often give the printing job to small independent labs so as not have to care with specific baths. We had prints from the UCLA labs where they can take the time to prepare baths, to correct calibrations… With an electronic work we will be more easily able to get close to what the films were. Currently we’re stuck between 300 prints of something and 400 of another movie, they don’t make specific baths.
F. C.: It is not in the majors’ interests, it doesn’t make enough money, they don’t even care about it. They block their catalogues because they simply have more important things to do. They have to make money. Cinema history is not their business. There are catalogues that are blocked just because the new executive is not interested in taking care of it. We have to wait for a new person who will accept to look at it.

How do you expect things to evolve?
F. C.: Twenty years ago, a reprint could sell 10, 15 or even 20,000 tickets. Nowadays it’s extremely rare. And it’s more difficult in smaller cities than in Paris. Currently, we consider 5,000 admissions as a success, it has been divided by three or four. In theatres that show both new films and classics, the ratio of back catalog films has been lowered. In smaller cities, cinematheques take care of classics catalog, they have less pressure on profitability. The DVD played a role too. Why would you do 50 kilometers to go and see a movie when you can watch it at home? But we also see people who, thanks to the DVD, come and rediscover the films in theatres. They come to experience something else. That is why we are still optimistic, you can have a 15,000 euro-home-cinema, you’ll never get the theater feeling, the crowd.

What were you doing before you founded Carlotta?
I was only 23 when I founded Carlotta. My first experience in cinema was at the Mac-Mahon movie theater, where I worked for a year and a half, along with Axel Brucker from the company Générique, organizing the movie program and private parties. We went into movie distribution based broadly on the Mac-Mahon’s programming, with musical comedies – Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, etc. – and the release of Ben-Hur. I naturally went on to creating Carlotta, a distribution company specialized from the outset in cinema heritage, first with theatrical releases and later with DVDs. Before that, I was studying economics at Assas, with, like a lot of young people fascinated by cinema, the idea of doing a two-year degree and then taking the entrance exam for the FEMIS. Since you don’t generally get in, either you continue your studies or you get a job. I tried the FEMIS once, then got the chance to work at the Mac-Mahon and create Carlotta.

Have you been a movie fan since you were a child?
Yes, since I was eight or ten years old, especially thanks to my mother. I watched movies by Hitchcock and Lang, which gave me a particular point of view, and then I’d go by myself to see popular movies, as well as films that were a little bit different from the ones my friends saw.

DVDs weren’t the basis for creating Carlotta?
Ten years ago, at the very beginning, we weren’t even thinking about that. Our first real business was to re-release films in the theaters: the first one was Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, a new copy of a restored version, with promotional means usually only available for new movies: a release in Paris and elsewhere in France, and a theatrical distribution organized with movie theaters. That was our approach from the beginning, with classics like North by Northwest, as well as movies from the 1970’s and 80’s, which gave us a specific niche on the market. These movies had been watched on TV or on video, dubbed and under bad conditions, and the idea was to have a new opportunity to see them on the big screen with the original language and format.

At the time, what was the network for re-releases like?
It hasn’t changed much. At the time I was a very young distributor and there were a lot of others in Paris: Action Gitanes Vieille du Temple, along with the Action movie theaters and Acacias, and there have been small, new companies since. There are about ten in Paris and in the rest of France who – distributors and theaters alike – make a vague attempt at screening movies with heritage value throughout the year and not only during certain periods. The hub, or nerve center, is still the same: the Latin Quarter, with the Action movie theaters, the Champo, etc., even if it’s harder for them today. And then there are institutional venues like the Pompidou Center, the Forum des Images, and the Cinémathèque, which was already an important outlet for cinema heritage. It’s still going on, and has never stopped in Paris, because outside of Paris, a lot of theater networks still exist in small, medium-sized and large cities that include programs of cinematic heritage and urge theaters to show them via our different releases throughout the year. At the time, people were already interested in getting involved in that, and in doing it with a slightly different selection of cinematic heritage, which spoke more to people of my generation, a new generation of movie buffs who didn’t necessarily have the same notion reference points for great cinema. We all agree on certain directors, from Hitchcock to Lang, who are masters in the field, but my personal canon goes more up though the 1970s than in the 1940s and ’50s, as opposed to the older generations. It’s normal: things evolve, and that’s what we worked on when we re-released films by De Palma, Coppola and Scorsese. I’m not saying we were the only ones, but there weren’t many of us who would repeatedly focus on these filmmakers and their movies, re-releasing them in theaters with new copies, and we realized certain viewers, especially a newer and younger group of movie buffs, could relate to them.

Why North by Northwest, for example?
Because we all grew up with Hitchcock, who is still considered a leading filmmaker by all movie buffs. We chose North by Northwest because we thought we could stir up new interest in the movie, seeing it again in the theater, since it had become hackneyed – it was shown annually on FR3 at 8:30 pm or watched on video –, but it hadn’t actually been seen that often, or not seen on the big screen for a long time ago, especially by our generation. It’s an undeniable classic, but it hadn’t been seen much in theaters. So we wanted to revive this desire by re-releasing the movie in theaters, with a big communication and promotional campaign to bring in viewers.

In retrospect, that seems like the ideal choice.
Yes, considering everything we’ve done since. At the time, we were able to distribute it because the rights were available in France and distributors like the Action cinemas had plenty of Hitchcocks, but not North by Northwest, because, for some reason or other, they hadn’t renewed the contract. In the mind of other distributors specialized in cinema heritage, the movie had been seen too often and had been overdone; otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to get it. Not to mention that no one believed it could be done; a lot of professionals at the time were a bit skeptical. So, ideal? Yes and no. The film came at a cost, but it wasn’t astronomical, and the movie wasn’t more complicated to get than others. Then we invested to make it work, but like all companies that are just starting out, there was no room for error. This film could keep us going if it did well; and if it didn’t, it could make us reconsider everything to follow. In this way, it was a cornerstone for Carlotta’s future.

How did you come up with the promotion for this film? It was extensive, with a lot of support, since the Cahiers du Cinéma published a special edition when it came out.
That’s easy: since it was our first film and we didn’t have several releases to manage. We only had this one title to work on. The idea was to support it as long as possible – this is still the case today, but we did it at a more intense pace –, give it every possible chance to succeed and develop activities that distributors in Paris had been doing less often for decades, because we were no longer using the same approach and the same pace. So it was really a question of developing anything we could for the project, in terms of partnerships, visibility, promotion… The idea was to go further than a mere article, for example, in the Cahiers du Cinéma and to have a special supplement, which was rarely done for re-releases. We did it in partnership with the Cahiers and Antoine de Baecque, who was editor-in-chief at the time. We also had a partnership with Agnès B., who printed up postcards, had a partnership with the now-defunct TPS, which broadcast the movie on their channel Cinétoile. So the movie was shown on cable at the same time, which allowed us to coordinate the TV broadcast and the theatrical release, because we’ve always worked together – and even more so with DVDs – with theaters and TV, and haven’t kept to ourselves, which I feel is counterproductive. Today, there are so many images that it’s better to branch out as much as possible and reach different audiences. And this collective effort, with the Cahiers, Agnès B., TPS and the press coverage, allowed us to release the film a little differently from traditional releases, here and there on a smaller scale, and made it more important, put it in a new light, gave it more visibility than the umpteenth release of North by Northwest in the past. That’s what interested us: building ties. But you can’t do it for everything, the movie still determines from the outset what you’re going to do, but so does the desire at the time, which has to match what the audience, the industry and the press want. But we felt it could do well and that all that was left was to develop it as far as possible.

How do you approach theatrical and DVD releases today? Ideally, do you always prefer that they happen jointly?
We have no fixed method. We try to do it as often as possible when we think it’s relevant, when we can create a real cinematic event for the theaters and for the DVD, simultaneously or several weeks or months apart, handling all of the rights and, for certain titles the audience can relate to, giving it new life with a theatrical release or a retrospective. We did it for example with Pasolini, Fassbinder and Ozu. So first, we initiate a re-release in the theaters, and then bring the film out afterwards on DVD, in a collector’s edition or a box set, and focus on the filmmaker – not necessarily on his entire work, because that’s actually difficult to do, but on his recurring work with several films or several box sets. Thus, each time, we do our utmost. But there are some films for which we only obtain the DVD rights or the rights for a theatrical release, and for other films, we may decide that a theatrical release won’t be easy and would take a lot of time and investment. But as often as possible, we stay true to our first love: getting films into theaters if we’re going to release them on DVD. But there are a lot of deciding factors. First, there’s the contractual side: you have to have all the rights, and decide whether the timing’s right in terms of a potential audience. It’s important for us to get movies by Pasolini – like Salo – or by Fassbinder – like The Marriage of Maria Braun – re-released in the theaters, with an actual audience that’s eager to see them, and at the same time, get them out on DVD. We often work simultaneously in different media or spaces.

Do some movies that particularly need to be released in theaters?
As a cinephile, I’d say all of them do, but it’s a privilege to re-release a film in 35mm, even when you’re going to put it out on a digital medium rather quickly. Releasing a new 35mm copy on the big screen – even though I’m an avid watcher of DVDs – is still unique, and it’s not a cliché to say so. When Serpico comes out at the Max Linder, I go and see it again. It’s different than watching it at your place, even if you have a nice home cinema system. If you love movies, you’d like everything to be re-released. But then there’s the economic reality, and for certain costs or certain films, we conclude, rightly or wrongly, that releasing them in theaters is too difficult and not necessarily a wise decision. But we’re not unaccustomed to giving into a whim. When we re-released Berlin Alexanderplatz, which we didn’t have to release in the theaters because it’s a huge risk, and it’s very expensive to make a new 35mm subtitled copy for a movie that long, we felt it was important to go beyond the DVD and get it out in theaters, with respect to an audience that would want to see it. In terms of our “mission” as movie enthusiasts and our work with cinematic heritage, and even though it’s not always really profitable, that’s not our only concern. Otherwise, there are a lot of things we’d never do. It’s our job to get these films into theaters.

Are movie theaters always in the market for this kind of event and re-release?
Yes, even though you always have to elicit their requests. It’s part of the daily grind for any distributor, whether he’s specialized in movie heritage or not. And there’s also the question of habit – theaters are really into that. You have to create events around movie heritage, repeat them regularly, and develop loyalty in a young audience. I’m especially thinking of people living outside of Paris. It’s middle- or long-term work. You have to help young viewers discover a film by Anthony Mann or Ford – it can happen either in a theater or with a DVD. DVDs also get people into theaters; I’m absolutely convinced of this. We may never know the percentages, but DVDs have done a lot – even if it’s only in terms of the press – to get people talking about cinematic heritage and to shake off that dusty image it still had fifteen years ago.

How have DVDs changed movie buffs’ enthusiasm for cinema?
“Changed” may not be the right term. It’s made it evolve. A different relationship has developed thanks to DVDs, especially in terms of movie heritage, watching a movie at home with better images and sound, and with bonuses that make the movie into an “edition”, like a book, which is fascinating for movie buffs. The DVD has become a noble medium for movies. This wasn’t the case with VHS, which was really a merchandising format essentially for new films. Suddenly, thanks to the medium and its possibilities, the DVD has become interesting for a certain audience, who weren’t drawn to videotapes, who wouldn’t buy a videotape of a Sirk film, but who’ll buy it on DVD with a completely different approach stemming from the medium, psychologically and in addition to its qualities, which are unrivaled by videotape on all levels. We don’t call them “editions” for nothing: our relationship with cinema is one of an edition, like a book, owning an object, collecting it, in relationship with the packaging. Owning a DVD box set isn’t the same thing as having a videocassette box. All these aspects opened up new horizons for movie buffs and for films from cinematic heritage which wouldn’t have been possible with VHS. Of course, it’s also generational.

When did DVDs become a new work space for critics? I’m thinking especially of certain critics who work mainly with that medium.
Right away. There were relatively few of us in the sector at the beginning – besides Carlotta, in France there were Arte, MK2 and Wild Side, who were leaders in cinematic heritage and had the same ambition of working with critics, historians and film experts, with interviews and analyzing sequences. The whole movement occurred naturally, and was started about five or six years ago. It’s a natural movement in the French territory, and unless I’m mistaken, the Americans came to it afterwards. There was immediately a growing desire for commenting the film.

Is it specifically French?
No, obviously, there’s Criterion, but the major studios didn’t care. Warner Bros. has only been providing extensive support for certain releases for maybe three years. There are the new films and those at the low end of the catalog. At the low end of the catalog is international cinema, with the trailer as a bonus and a set of subtitles, the cheapest possible. New films make up the main market, and the desire to add bonuses came from the independent film industry, and more specifically from France. Even now, in the rest of the world, France is one of the few countries to care so much about the releases and the packaging. Look at what comes out in Spain, Portugal and Italy – in cinematic heritage, a niche market, we make the biggest effort here, along with Japan, perhaps, which produces mind-blowing editions with another approach. France is one of the few countries to value DVD content and form.

When were Carlotta’s parent companies created?
Carlotta came first, and several totally independent entities were created afterwards with no link to Carlotta in terms of capital – but which I’m a partner in – with the idea of working more broadly in cinema and in the different professions. There’s a distribution company called Bodega Films, which is a logical result of Carlotta, but which distributes movies on general release and recent films, since Carlotta is established as, and is seen as, a company specialized in cinematic heritage. Bodega handles recent Indian movies, a Mexican movie, a Romanian movie… The company is complementary to Carlotta and helps clarify things, since a new film released by Carlotta might be perceived as being of dubious quality. The two companies work hand in hand. The other companies work on packaging and bonuses, and include Carlotta among their clients, but not exclusively: we simply strive to share our know-how. The common feature among all these companies is that their work in cinema is as broad as possible. Allerton, which designs bonuses, works for several clients: they’re really completely separate from Carlotta, even though they do all our bonuses. I’m one of the partners, in my own name and not as Carlotta. Allerton’s day-to-day work – designing films and organizing manufacturing – is handled by people other than me.

What about unreleased movies?
That’s Carlotta’s sector, which has released, in particular, Ozu’s There Was a Father, Japanese films that couldn’t be released in France, and unabridged and unreleased versions like Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, which is coming out in theaters and on DVD. It’s just part of the work we do all year long: we don’t specifically tell ourselves we need to put out unreleased films.

Is it the same job to re-release a movie as it is to release a previously unreleased film?
Yes, except that there’s less material available in the latter case, since it’s less well-known, which can be as much an advantage as a disadvantage. When the movie’s really very good, nobody’s seen it and it’s received critical acclaim, we feel it can reach a broader audience than if they’ve already seen the film and wish to see it again.

How did you choose There Was a Father?
People told me about it and I’d heard a lot of good things. We’d bought a lot of Japanese films from Shochiku, the leading Japanese studio, where Ozu shot nearly all his movies. We’d bought a certain number of titles by Ozu and by other filmmakers, and among them we had well-known titles like Good Morning, I Was Born, But… and A Story of Floating Weeds, and also rarer films, some of which were released in France, and others not at all. And there are plenty of Ozu movies that haven’t been released yet, or that came out directly on DVD and have never been shown in France. We weren’t wrong about the film’s success. We concentrate more on the filmmakers’ work as a whole, releasing box sets, etc. The focus is more on the work as a whole than on a single title.

When you bring Fassbinder back into the news, is it because it’s going to happen elsewhere or do you create the phenomenon from scratch?
That depends. There might be current events we’re not aware of because the films have been sold throughout the world without us knowing it. Berlin Alexanderplatz is a little bit different, because the restoration was initiated by the Fassbinder Foundation in conjunction with Bavaria, with the idea of selling it throughout the world. So as the year goes by, it’s becoming topical in the different territories that have obtained the rights. And then the film was projected in Berlin last year with a lot of pomp and circumstance. For both the seller and the distributors, it was handled in a way usually reserved for first runs, and even more so since the movie, which doesn’t fit into any category, hadn’t been seen at all or had been seen very little. In April, we’ll be doing focusing heavily on Japanese cinema with a little-known but fascinating filmmaker from the New Wave named Kiju Yoshida, who’s alive and well and will thus be with us this year. The Pompidou Center will be doing a retrospective of his complete works; we’re releasing a majority of them on DVD in April and two of them in the theaters. The project was more or less brought to me by the Pompidou Center, which was planning to do the Yoshida retrospective, and since we’d done very intelligent work together on Fassbinder, they wanted to continue our relationship with Yoshida, a filmmaker I was relatively unfamiliar with. The event is really very specific to France, which doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done in Japan. But it was their initiative and I don’t believe other countries have released his complete works – we’ll thus be the second to do so. The idea was really to work hand in hand to create an event around this filmmaker. We have the rights to all his films; so the whole adventure will be fun, but a bit crazy. We’re releasing two movies in the theaters, Eros + Massacre and Akitsu Springs, and so we wanted to focus on these two very different movies. Akitsu is a grand, Sirk-like melodrama in color, and the other one, Eros + Massacre, is perhaps his best-known movie, if only by name. The Pompidou Center is showing his complete works and we’re simultaneously releasing two box sets covering two periods, plus Eros + Massacre in a collector’s edition. About a dozen films, the rest will be released later. We’ve gotten Allerton in putting together a 52-minute documentary on him, his wife and the people he’s worked with. It’s a fascinating project, and one really worth discovering.

Do you have the impression there are still a lot of gaps to fill in the DVD sector?
Plenty, yes. I’m not saying it’ll get done, because you have to obtain the rights, but there are plenty of major filmmakers, plenty of Americans similar to Sirk, for whom no real editorial work’s been done on DVD. I’m thinking of Minnelli; even though there are a lot of things out there, nothing specific’s been done on the filmmaker. A Minnelli box set like what we did for Sirk would be a nice project. Even though we manage to work with major studios, which gives us a lot of opportunities, they’re more interested in releasing the films little by little, although they may put them together in a box set at the end of the year. It’s not the same economic or editorial approach as Carlotta. The market’s forever changing, films that people didn’t like ten or fifteen years ago may be successful today, there are a lot of filmmakers who haven’t benefited from sufficient visibility… There are still a lot of things to do, by us and by others.

What with a full retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris and at Cinémathèque Française in Toulouse (not to mention Angers Film Festival), the DVD release of the delirious Je t’aime je t’aime and the publishing of The Harry Dickson Adventures screenplay -which never was adapted on-screen but became legendary instead (Henri Langlois used to say the existence of this movie would have changed the course of French cinema), 2008 appears to be the year of Alain Resnais.
While there is no doubt Alain Resnais’s works are essential in cinema history, it seems he has few ‘inheriters’. By comparison, those of Renoir, Pialat or Truffaut are numerous. Maybe because Resnais has always confronted cinema to other worlds, science, history of art, structuralism, comics or pop music. The publishing of a screenplay by Frédéric de Towarnicki -who just died at the age of 87-, Harry Dickson’s Adventures, an ambitious three-hour movie project that Resnais has never been able to shoot even though it kept him busy for almost a decade, shows the filmmaker’s interest for popular forms like serials -Resnais has always been very attentive to cinema and television. If Resnais has few inheriters, it’s maybe also because of his very personal way to submit those popular forms to experimentation. Let’s hope the retrospective organized at Centre Pompidou from January 16 to March 3, at Toulouse Cinémathèque and at Angers’ Premiers Plans Film Festival until January 31 will enable Alain Resnais’ cinema to shine and contaminate future cinema.

The retrospective at Centre Pompidou

The retrospective at Angers Premiers Plans Film Festival
The retrospective at Toulouse French Cinematheque

Golden Eighties (1986) by Chantal Akerman.
“It’s a great injustice. Not enough people saw the film in the theaters, and it was twenty years ahead of its time. The film offered an extraordinary reflection on musical comedies, with marvelous actors. Our young friends should rediscover it and be inspired by it.”

“A musical
About love and business
A tender, zany burlesque.
It all begins in a shopping center.
The space makes each one the spectator of all the others and each one is an actor in spite of himself: the ideal place for a musical comedy. The show is everywhere.
Long marble alleys, silent staircases, the gently warm air, seemingly beyond time, history and bad weather, but nearby…
Behind the window-panes of the shops, painted faces can be seen, sometimes you catch a glimpse, usually it is of a woman.
Women who did not always choose to find themselves behind a window-pane, where there are almost exposed as what they are supposed to be selling, at times as well lit up. Like actresses, but without the pleasure of the stage, like women who sell their bodies, while theirs, only serves to sell.
And they seem to be the last of the stars under their bright lights, untouchable, and yet so near, only separated from the public by an ever open glass door.” Chantal Akerman

Read the interview with Martine Marignac

How did you start out in cinema and what made you want to make a career of it?
I’d been interested in cinema since the age of 14 or 15. At that time, and given my background, people were hoping I’d go into typing and shorthand. I happened to be a good student, I went to high school, graduated, did higher studies, got a degree in philosophy and began working in the national education system, but wasn’t tenured. I’d never forgotten the idea of cinema and so I took the exam to get into the IDHEC film school, didn’t make the cut and began a career kind of as an “intellectual in cinema,” wrote for the Cahiers du cinema and occasionally freelanced. Then 1968 happened. I’d finished my philosophy degree and the Sorbonne opened a masters program in cinema; so I was able to do a Masters in cinema esthetics, since that was one of the fields they recognized. Classes in cinema were created throughout France without having any real teachers, and I got a job at the Université de Besonçon right after my Masters, with a certain Jean Rouch as head of my department, who chaired the Ethnology Department at the Université de Besonçon and was obviously one of the first to have a cinema course in ethnology. I stayed there for two years. Being an intellectual wasn’t satisfying enough for me. I started telling all my friends I wanted to get out of teaching and go into cinema, no matter what the job was. I started interning on films in whatever capacity I could. It was a little out of place: I was older than the others, my level of studies didn’t correspond to what I was doing, but I did that work for two years, was paid more or less under the table to do whatever was available, which didn’t really satisfy me either, but at least it got me out in the field. And then I met someone crucial to my life, thanks to a friend named of mine Andréa Ferréol, who’d just finished La Grande bouffe. I was on the jury for the Festival of Hyères, which was at Toulon that year, and there was a section called Different Cinema. It was a rather magical year because Chantal Akerman and Werner Schroeter were there, and the president of the jury was Jean Douchet, whom I’d had as a teacher. And when I got home, Andréa Ferréol called me to say, “I have a friend named Simon Mizrahi, who was press agent on La Grande bouffe. He’s looking for an assistant and I think it would be great for you.” I thought press agent just meant petit-fours and cocktail parties, and I didn’t see at all what I could get out of it. However, I went to see what it was about and I met the guy and, sure, he was a press agent, but one who did work similar to Pierre Rissient, except his field of combat was Italian cinema: he’s the one who got people to rediscover Italian cinema in France. I worked with him for seven years. After three or four years, we were nearly partners. He hated all French cinema, and hated the Nouvelle Vague, among things. He was on the side of the magazine Positif. So I took Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer. After a while, he started a production company, but didn’t want me as a partner; so I started my own. Over the seven years, first as an assistant, then as an associate, I managed to see everything, and that’s how things began. At that time, Margaret Menegoz had just started at Films du Losange as a production assistant. We’d met on Perceval le Gallois, I believe. And I also knew Barbet Schroeder, and that’s when, after being out of the circuit for four years, Barbet decided it was time to get Jacques Rivette back in the saddle. Rohmer agreed; at the time, Losange was still mostly owned by Barbet and Rohmer. Margaret was very afraid of Rivette and she had a Rohmer movie under way; so Barbet asked me, “You want to be a producer? You’ve started a production company? Then here you go: Le Pont du Nord and Jacques Rivette.” It was my first film. Then I did Godard’s Passion.

Who were the great filmmakers for you as a student?
I’m truly a child of the Nouvelle Vague. What first hit home with me as a movie-goer was Les 400 Coups. I identified with it for obvious reasons: age, the situation, the divorced parents… I had older friends; I was born just after the war and went to Victor Hugo high school, which was in the middle of the Jewish quarter at the time. My girlfriends had brothers born right before the war, who were therefore in 12th grade or in a college prep course when we were in 8th grade, and we went to the movies with the big brothers. There were high school film clubs that were open to us, even when the schools weren’t co-ed, there was the cinematheque, and you could read the Cahiers du cinema. Since we couldn’t afford to buy the Cahiers, we went to the basement at Maspero’s bookstore, read it there and bought one copy for several of us. All of Godard’s first movies were rated R, but at Saint Germain Village, the emergency exit was on the street behind the theater; so friends would go in, we’d wait at the emergency exit, they’d open the door and we’d sneak into the theater when the lights went out. And of course, the Cahiers was the leading guide for films, and there was the cinematheque, where we’d go watch all of Hitchcock and Fritz Lang and all the American movies you had to see.

What was the attitude of the Nouvelle Vague – critics turned filmmakers – towards the press and producers?
They were all producers. It was completely logical. Their idea was that anyone could make movies, that money shouldn’t be an obstacle, that you had to break the system and shoot films with total freedom, with the money you had, and not turn money into an obstacle or a taboo. Even someone like Rivette, who never wanted to have his own production company, has a real sense of production. He always knows how to adapt to constraints: if you can’t afford to do one thing, you find another idea and do it differently. Out of that came Films du Losange, and Le Carosse with François Truffaut. Chabrol’s case is a little more complicated, with supervising agents who accompanied him in his work, like Braumberger. Naturally, my approach fit in with theirs; they never would’ve told me not to go ahead, that I was nuts. In fact, it totally followed their logic and was absolutely normal. So not only did they not discourage me, but they actually did the opposite, like Barbet suggesting Rivette to me, or Godard telling me a year later that he needed a producer for Passion. They realized my approach fit in with theirs and they completely understood where I was coming from. I remember Jean-Luc telling me, when we started Passion, “I don’t know how all this will end up – I’m sure it’ll end poorly, since it always does – but at least one thing’s for sure: you’ll learn a lot.” And his promise came true beyond my wildest dreams. Every day, I learned a new production lesson with Jean-Luc, who’s a great, great producer. And it also meant seeing Jean Pierre Rassamm every three days; it was more fun, and more energetic, than it is today. And at the same time, with Mizrahi, I met Bertolucci, who tied in completely with the Nouvelle Vague; Bellochio; Ferreri for four films; and great Italian comedy. And instead of thinking, “Who does she think she is?” – but without taking it easy on me, and still being rigorous and showing extreme violence in their professional demands – these people were extraordinarily generous.

Was this freedom in production a typically French movement they joined, or was it international?
It was generational. An Italian magazine was created immediately after the Cahiers, which was the Italian equivalent. Bellochio, Bertoluccio, Ferreri… they all became producers. Bertolucci gave Comolli the subject for his first movie, and Comolli was Bellochio’s co-screenwriter for his first movie. At the time, Jean Louis was editor in chief of the Cahiers and I created my first production company with him. All of Bernardo’s generation is a “half generation”, on the cusp of the Nouvelle Vague generation, and they’re a bit older than me. There was an intellectual movement of cinematic reflection going on between Italy and France at the time.

In the U.S. as well, the big-studio system was falling apart and production was opening up.
That came later, when Coppola and the others started using the Nouvelle Vague as a model. It was more at the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s. But, indeed, it didn’t come out of the blue: it happened because the Nouvelle Vague was being shown in all the colleges, the movies fascinated them, and all of a sudden they discovered all these guys made films on a shoestring budget and were self-produced. When Spielberg and the others started doing it, they do it on an American scale, but intellectually, of course, one came from the other. The whole American independent film movement, with Cassavetes, etc., is a result of the French Nouvelle Vague, which, seen from that point of view, was clearly broader than its immediate success and impact.

In addition to the solutions these filmmakers came up with for themselves and the people who helped them out, did the new production methods profoundly change the way movies were produced in general?
It’s a bit like the legacy of May ’68: it depends on whether you see the glass as half full or half empty. Among the determining factors was André Malraux, a key character at the national level, who came up with the idea of an advance on box office receipts, etc., and I’m sure that in a certain way, he was motivated by the fact this movement existed. Esthetically, and since he was an intelligent man, he realized it was an important movement, that something had changed in the film industry, and that it was therefore important to support this independent movement, and that it was the role of the Minister of Culture and of the State. Considering the times and the setting – there was actually a strong rightwing government – De Gaulle’s genius was in naming Malraux as Minister of Culture: he was rightwing at the time, but it took a certain talent to appoint him, since he had a rather strong history of being on the left and no experience in the political sphere, and made proposals that left everyone speechless. And yet De Gaulle was smart enough to let it happen, and we still live on that today. Those measures saved creative French filmmaking, which is really quite something.

And did the collapse in European cinema come from a lack of State support, as opposed to French cinema, which managed to maintain a certain level of creativity?
It was due to several factors. First, the system was on its last legs. State aid was a crucial factor, but wasn’t enough. We really saw something happen there, and we didn’t have André Malraux: we had Jack Lang, who did a lot to maintain the system and adapt it. But he was just following up on what already existed, not coming up with something new. The big blow was TV. And Lang’s idea saved us, as opposed to in Italy, where the State didn’t implement any measures. Lang was smart enough to say, “Watch out, television equals a danger cinema; so they’re going to pay.” And thanks to that, French cinema survived twenty years. Today, we’re actually victims of this very system. The negative side effect is that suddenly, because they pay, TV stations in general say, “OK, we pay, but you’re going to make products that are first and foremost for us, that interest us,” and what interests them is what interests their sponsors. What Patrick Le Lay so cynically said about how much brain time is available for Coca Cola, a public TV station would never say, but it’s the same problem. What does primetime mean? What’s a housewife over or under fifty? It’s all a question of format, which means the films you offer them are or aren’t seen as “primetime”. And coincidentally, films that are a bit interesting are not primetime according to these criteria – which, no matter how they’re presented, are the sponsors’ criteria, or those of commercials. And so today, we have a situation on its last legs, with the best subsidies in Europe, one everyone wants to put into place, but at the same, you have this negative side effect, which is the fact it’s being bankrolled by TV. Auteur films, first films, second films, non-primetime subject matter, non-“bankable” actors… when you add it all up, out of 120 movies, the most marginal ones fall by the wayside, and two thirds don’t really match these criteria. Clearly, for any decision maker from TV, if there were 50 movies a year in France, and these fifty were precisely the ones they’re interested in, they’d be very happy. Obviously, since they’re not all complete idiots, they know that to find these fifty, you have to make a hundred. But a hundred fifty? No, that’d be a waste.

When did we go from TV as a backer to TV as a decider? Did the transition happen at a specific time?
Yes, when stations started creating subsidiary co-production companies, which were also in response to the creation of Canal Plus in the mid 80s. They’re forced to invest, which pisses them off. It was easier for them to go buy films already made, but with Lang’s laws, they had to invest, and suddenly they thought, since we have to invest, we might as well produce. And indeed, all the stations set up a means to produce, which was a way for them to better control the artistic side of movies and get films that suited them better. When TF1 invested in co-production, broadcasting, first broadcasts, second broadcasts, etc., it wasn’t enough for them; so they also created distribution companies and thus controlled the whole line. The so-called independent producer became a simple middle man who was told, “You want to do this film with X? If you want my cash, put Y in instead. And your screenplay needs work: we can’t show that at 8:30 pm…” And there you have it: the turning point. Since they have to spend their money, they spend it the way they want. It’s simple logic. Obviously, it’s all done in a thousand different ways. And yet, the system allowed French cinema to grow and survive for twenty years, but the logic’s come to an end…

Is there less and less space for movies that don’t match TV criteria?
We used to be on the outskirts, then in the ghetto, and now we’re in the gutter. That’s what they’re pushing us towards. I’m nearing the end of my career, and so I hope those who are thirty years younger will find ways of reacting. It’s become crucial. It’ll happen, but how many will die along the way? If nothing happens quickly, then what’s happened in Germany, in Italy or in England might happen to us too: i.e., when the means for production are stifled or paralyzed, a whole generation just packs up and goes. It might seem as though I’m saying everything’s bad in television, but it isn’t. For a while, it worked perfectly, but it doesn’t work anymore today. And there are so many stations, and so much competition between them, that their criteria have become more extreme. It has the potential to lead to more innovation, but they all charge in the same direction. When you have a reality show, there’s another one around the corner, and they’ve got to make French comedies, with the five stars who bring in the crowds. You end up with ten comedies that are nearly identical; three of them make money, but no one ever knows which ones beforehand, and after a while the audience has the odd impression they’re always watching the same thing.

And what about producing without being backed by TV stations?
A movie made without backing from TV – even if it has all the public funding possible and imaginable – can only get about 1 to 1.2 million euros at the very most. Given that the average budget, as indicated by the CNC, is around 3.5 million, it’s difficult. That’s where an artistic solution needs to be found. You can’t make a 2-million euro film with only 1 million euros. You can make a 1.5-million euro film with 1.3 million, or a 2.5-million euro film with 1.8 million, but if you cut the budget by 50%, you’re heading for artistic disaster. So the result is what the Nouvelle Vague did: since they couldn’t pay for a studio, or afford this or that, because certain doors were closed to them, or they wanted Belmondo and not Gérard Philippe, but Belmondo wasn’t known by the masses, he was just a friend…, they took cinema to the streets, left the studios and came up with direct sound recording because dubbing was expensive. They came up with solutions.

Jacques Rivette’s Ne touchez pas la hache was very well received by the critics and made fairly good money at the box office. Was it difficult to finance?
Nowadays, everything’s pigeon-holed. Jacques Rivette can get around 2 million euros. Iosseliani the same: 2 million. Rohmer: 2 million. They can do want they want with it. Whether they film in costume, or in subsidized housing units, no one cares. A Rivette film for Canal Plus is worth 400,000 – they’ll make the sacrifice and take it because, after all, it’s of cultural interest. At Arte, it’s worth 400,000 euros, at France 3, the same price. With the advance on box office receipts, subsidies…, you come up with a total of about 2 million. You can get it whether the total production costs 1.2 million or 3 million. Today, television has divorced the idea of investment from the cost of the film. It all depends on what time slot it can be shown in. The rest is our problem. So we produce films at a loss. Sometimes, little miracles like Lady Chatterley can happen. If the producer hadn’t gone bankrupt, he might be solvent today. That’s why you need to have a catalog, to have other projects on the table, so you can say, “OK, I’m risking 200,000 to 300,000 here, but in four or five years, I can make it up by selling this or that.” But what if there are no other projects, or you’re going it alone, or you’re not able to wait it out? Also, you can do it once or twice, but the third time is a recipe for disaster. And afterwards, they tell me, “French cinema is too intimate” – well, we do what we can.

Do you see new possibilities opening up, economic alternatives, with digital perhaps?
We’re now in a system of globalization, which means we’re no longer in control of the game. The French film industry doesn’t even make such the decision. Who’s going to decide whether we move to digital? Three multinational companies, Sony, some other one, American cinema owners… The day we move completely over to digital, the decision will come from somewhere between Hollywood, New York and Tokyo, or even Beijing or Shanghai, and what will happen? Prices will go down to a fiftieth of what they are now. Or not. Once they’ve made their decision, who’s going to set the prices? They will. So I don’t know.

How do you survive today when you combine art and economics?
“Survival” is the right term. You survive. For how long, I don’t know. And who survives? You need to ask young producers who are starting companies today and who want to defend this type of cinema, why they’re going into it. How do we survive? We survive on our catalogs… But for people starting their companies today… Obviously, you’ve got to open things up internationally, go get money anywhere you can, and fight to show the films in as many countries as possible. You can no longer think only in terms of French production: it’s got to be at least European. And indeed, you need to rely on new technological means of distribution, but today, its economic value is pretty much zero. It represents hope for the future, but has no economic value for the time being. Yes, maybe in five or ten years, but how do you stay the course that long? Clearly, we’re in a pivotal period. I’m convinced that economics and art are always closely linked in cinema; some artistic sectors are more independent from economics because production costs are lower. To paraphrase Malraux – yes, him again –, you mustn’t forget that cinema is both an industry and an art. I don’t know… I know we’re in big shit, but I think, as always, a solution will come along. But I don’t know where it’ll come from or what it’ll be.

The new edition you shouldn’t miss in France is A Bigger Splash one, Jack Hazan’s film about and with David Hockney. Appropriate release, soon followed by a DVD, at the time of the biopics reign : not academic nor falsely virtuoso, not documentary nor fiction, the film is as much biographical as it is reflexive, and confronts the hyper-realism of Hockney’s paintings to a skillful production in 35 mm.

Jack Hazan has only made a few films (five between 1969 and 1998) but at least two masterpieces. In 1980, Rude Boy, story of a young proletarian lad who becomes a Clash roadie, which achieve the exploit to be a gripping fiction and an absolutely true documentary about punk era and about Joe Strummer’s musical audacity and political greatness. But also six years before, in 1974, A Bigger Splash, same kind of movie which never tries to identify his nature : it recounts a short period of the life and art of David Hockney, at the time he paints his Portrait of an artist (a man standing in front of a swimming pool and contemplating a swimmer) and gets over a painful breaking-off with his former student, and soon an artist by himself, John Schlesinger.
Screened in 1974 in Cannes and Locarno (where it won the Silver Leopard), A Bigger Splash (by the name of Hockney’s most famous painting) is a success similar to Rude Boy : to be at the same time the best document ever about Hockney, a crucial artist who put himself deliberately at the heart of the aesthetical problems and fashions of his century (as Strummer did with even more fame), and an essay : an attempt to play, like Hockney in his pictures, with the relation between material and structures, between surface and space, bodies and images, representation and abstraction ; between the film and the world. Much more than a tribute : a film which works and put his subject back to work.

Bastien Hader

MK2 Beaubourg - Paris January 16th 2008
CNP - Lyon January 16th 2008
Majestic - Lille January 16th 2008
Odysée - Strasbourg January 30th 2008
Le César - Marseille February 6th 2008
Le Mazarin - Aix-en-Provence February 20th 2008
Café des Images - Hérouville February 20th 2008
Utopia - Toulouse February 27th 2008
Utopia - Avignon March 19th 2008
Magic Cinéma - Bobigny March 26th 2008
Utopia - Bordeaux April 2nd 2008
Le France - St-Etienne April 23rd 2008