The current theatrical releases of Eye in the sky and Triangle place January under the sign of Hong Kong. More precisely: under Johnnie To’s sign -he co-directed Triangle with two other famous directors of the city and he produced Eye in the sky, first feature of his writer, Yau Hai-no, with his studio Milkyway. Here’s the story of a new reign, which includes pictures of the shooting.
A name has long prevailed on Hong Kong’s heights: that of the Shaw Brothers, heads of a mythical studio that has produced the most beautiful films of the island, from King Hu’s (Come Drink With Me) to Chang Cheh’s (The New One Armed Swordman) or Liu Chia-Liang’s (The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin).
Bu the time of HK retrocession to China in 1997, those glories had more or less worn out and the new generation of big filmmakers such as Tsui Hark and John Woo gone to Hollywood. If the Shaw’s empire has become a visited museum, it is nevertheless non longer the emblem of the city. Another name has taken over: Johnnie To’s -a filmmaker that started as a TV film director in the 70s and made more than 50 films. Milkyway, his Kowloon-established studio, does not lavish on appearances: the entrance looks like that of NYC firefighters barracks! The custom is to celebrate every first day of shooting by praying and lighting incense sticks. On the first floor, the filmmaker’s office faces his assistants’ and screenwriters’. The second floor shelters high-tech post-production studios.
If Milkyway enables To to benefit from a full artistic autonomy, it also helps launch new filmmakers and form a group. Almost at the same time, Triangle, film project that gathers Johnnie To, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam in a mesmerizing plot, and Eye in the sky are released in French theaters. The latter is a ‘Big Brother’ story directed by To’s screenwriter, Yau Hai-no. Eye in the sky mostly enables to see how HK cinema has reappropriated the city by leaving behind the mythical genres that have contributed to its international reputation (kung fu etc). More outstandingly than in Johnnie To’s Breaking News (2003), streets have become a playground where it is pointless to block the trafficl: a few cameras at the top of buildings are enough and movie stars, roughly shaved and wearing casual jerseys, can act without making themselves conspicuous.
It’s maybe what’s new about that cinema previously so anchored in Italian fashion and French watches styles: no more show off. Secretly, in an underlying way, cinema has taken over the city.

Bastien Hader

Death Proof(2007) by Quentin Tarantino.

“In Tarantino’s movies, I’m less interested by his instinctive relation with cinema than by his idea of considering characters as movie characters above all. Passion for going to the movies raises one question only: do we still have a relationship with life? Tarantino answers that question by stating that he has not and by considering characters as movie figures: it’s his way to come little by little to life. Furthermore, Death Proof is one of the most beautiful ‘girl’ movies ever. A guy like Tarantino, who has a totally instinctive relationship with cinema, knows perfectly how to film girls, as well as Bergman in my opinion. Death Proof is a bit like Monika in the years 2000. Coppola also tried to make an experimental movie this year but with less pleasure and more awareness of his subject. And Death Proof is much more accomplished than Planet Terror where visual effects looked a bit like teenage acne. The one in Death Proof is more similar to scratches or rips. And besides it’s beautiful enough to take your breath away.”

Read the interview about Cedric Anger’s first feature film

You worked as a critic for Cahiers du cinema. How did you start?
When I was in High School, I started a magazine I sent to Jean Douchet, Serge Daney and Alain Bergala. Douchet and Daney answered to me. On a day he was introducing Pickpocket (by Robert Bresson) in a theater, Douchet advised me to write in Cahiers. I went to Paris on the year of my graduation, he introduced me to Thierry Jousse and I started to work for the magazine by the end of 1993. I left them six months later to work as the assistant director of André Téchiné on Thieves and on other movies and I went back to Cahiers at the beginning of 1995 when a new staff was taking charge of the magazine.
I wrote there till 2001 when I directed my short film Novela.
One of my last texts was about Kubrick when he died. Or something about cardboards in silent movies. At this time, one could quite write what he wanted in the magazine. I was writing about the dead and of course about some American directors like Brian De Palma for Mission To Mars or European ones like Fassbinder. It became harder to write when I started to work on scripts for Xavier Beauvois on To Mathieu and Bad Faith (Le petit Lieutenant in French).
I came to cinema thanks to American cinema, precisely through Once Upon A Time In America and Taxi Driver. And even more precisely through its actors, De Niro and Pacino. Through Once Upon A Time In America or Raging Bull, which are very stylished, you can be aware of the direction at the age of 13 or 14. What is funny is that you don’t see it at first sight.
And it’s through these directors that I came to French cinema, through the French New Wave Scorsese talks constantly about in his interviews. Then the French made me discover another American cinema, the one of Nicholas Ray. You start by reading and then you see the movies.
The playful way the French New Wave makes films -and that I have always enjoyed- is also in American cinema. Even in minor directors like Soderbergh, the pleasure is there. It’s a way to make cinema you could find in the New Wave -in Shoot the Piano Player as well as in Band of Outsiders. In a way, in Fassbinder’s cinema too, in that desire to make Hollywood movies in Europe. Not Hollywood in the historical way but in today’s way: work on the representation above all. At Cahiers, I loved Coppola for that and Kubrick too, who was not liked very much. In the seventies, even in minor directors’ works, you feel the desire for fascination like in the silent era. We try to fascinate again.

How does your relationship to Hollywood differ from others French directors that are inspired by that model?
I don’t really know, we have the same taste. But I don’t try to copy, to make American films in France. Americans make a cinema prevailed by accepted biases in their scripts, through mise-en-scène, lighting or music. It’s a cinema that is not afraid to emphasize its choices but that can play them down for balance purpose. Naturalism is maybe too overwhelming in French cinema -or not well-thought enough, even in good movies. It can sometimes be as brilliant as extreme stylisation. The direction in Pialat’s Van Gogh is quite like Fritz Lang’s or Mizoguchi’s. Naturalism is a strength that can also suffocate French cinema. Directors often kept from this naturalism the TV aspect only -a simplicity that masks the formal system. But in Renoir’s cinema there was a system, nowadays it’s not always the case. French cinema lives through under Pialat’s influence but only for his way to catch the instant whereas the art of Pialat is rather mainly the frame.
To me the main legacy of American cinema is in the writing. The New Wave understood it. The American screenplay is in the break-up, it doesn’t seek unity. I don’t mean to go against the French model. Something I like in Melville for instance is his love for American cinema and the way he manages to save its biases in his own films. I would like to re-use his way to resort to characters as ghosts. The Red Circle has a Murnau side: characters are dead, they must be buried. You can definitely find those biases in French cinema but the naturalistic tradition often suffocates them. I became aware of this when working on the English version of The Killer: translators told me there were twice or three times as less words as in the average French film. It’s very important not to make a screenwriter’s film when you started, like me, as a screenwriter. What I’m interested in is mise-en-scène. I want to be able to do without dialogs in an entire shot. That kind of experience is more frequent in American cinema than in French cinema.

When they shoot in the US or when they aim at the US model, French filmmakers often seem to be one step behind, as if all they had learnt was about Seven by David Fincher whereas Fincher has already moved to something else…Yes, Fincher seems to have become an unavoidable reference. But more because of the screenplay twists than for his work on the surface and the lines –which is the reason why I personally think Zodiac is his most accomplished film. This said, it is nevertheless normal to refer to the previous decades. Today’s French cinema refers to 70s American cinema the same way the New Wave referred to 50s cinema -and not 60s cinema-, to Aldrich and not Frankenheimer. Look at Kiss Me Deadly and Shoot On The Piano Player: the two films are very close. There’s an hallucinatory side, a desire to tell stories through fascination, by keeping up with a pace. For The Killer, one of my own desires was to slow down. We had few acknowledged references: for the caresses and the spirals, Vertigo. Flor the slowness and the hypnosis, Taxi Driver…

What about Ferrara’s influence?
Not consciously. I like Ferrara a lot, especially Christmas because of the work on the cross-fades. That’s what I like a lot in the American cinema that does not seek a naturalistic description of the city but an attempt to describe it from the sensations it brings about. What does one remember from a ballad in Paris? It was important that the killer of the film, Kopas, doesn’t come from Paris. He visits Montparnasse like Disneyland.

When did you start writing with Xavier Beauvois?
When I was still working for Cahiers, we met on holiday in Italy. By chatting, the idea of To Mathieu came to us. He had just completed two very personal projects -North and Don’t Forget You’re Going To Die- that had to do with a time of his life. He told me he didn’t really know what to tell next. He had children by then and was bound to lead a bourgeois life. He had the impression he made it through -which he could never have imagined five years before. I told him to tell that story: that of a guy who’s going to discover comfort, a bourgeois life, luxury and who will enjoy it. It’s also the framework for Lorenzaccio: a guy that has a vengeance in mind and when he meets a woman the vengeance gets impacted. To Mathieu has thus become a personal story, which also depicts his relationship with his father. Xavier doesn’t like writing very much, so I did but I had no idea I was going to be his screenwriter.
As far as Le Petit Lieutenant is concerned, we met together a policeman and attended questioning sessions and arrests. But at the end, the same thing happened as for To Mathieu. Rather than seeking a murder plot, he decided to tell what we saw: the story of someone that joins the police and discovers his colleagues’ everyday lives with also alcoholism and dependence as underlying subjects. He really needs to start from that kind of autobiographical or documentary material. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t really need to exorcise things. I have thousands of questions about cinema. There are obviously personal things but that I don’t need to translate into autobiographical material.

Was that precisely a problem to you? Isn’t exorcising a youth or a past part of the New Wave mythology?
The origin of the New Wave is mostly middle-class anyways apart from Truffaut. People mixed up things afterwards: they didn’t see that Jean Eustache’s films for instance were genre films. Same with Desplechin’s films. People from the New Wave or who inherited from it did not generally need to exorcise things so much.
Before I got the story, I had scenes ideas -that of the Chinese gallery or of the opium den. I remembered that Ernest Lehman told about his screenplay of North by Northwest that before he wrote the story Hitchcock wanted something that would connect the United Nations, the plane in the corn fields and the guy hanging on Lincoln’s nose on Mount Rushmore. I kind of followed the same process: connecting a Chinese gallery, snow and the arrival of a killer in Paris. Then you have to find a story to show all that.
Having lived between the 12th and the 13th district of Paris impacted the film a lot. It’s a neighbourhood where I enjoy walking around. We wanted to avoid above all the Parisian stereotypes -Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Montmartre, les Champs-Elysées. I wanted a bind with a newer architecture, which would provide me with lines rather than walls. Next to the ‘Grande Bibliothèque’ neighbourhood, there are places where there is just nobody. It’s pretty fascinating, you wonder what it hides. I saw a genuine opium den in the basement of a building in the 13th district. It was interesting to show it wasn’t the killer that was going to such place but the target, the bourgeois character. It’s the killer who eventually gets into the movement of his target. The idea of the film was not to highlight the action and the suspense but the spiral of a killer that ends up possessed by his target. Those are things I like in 70s American cinema, like in Apocalypse Now: a man, vampirized by another, becomes that other. Of course we had a subject but in France we are precisely generally too conscious of our subject…

By Bastien Hader on January 3, 2008 in Paris.

Happy New Year to all our readers! May 2008 be filled with discoveries and beautiful suprises such as the opening in September 2008 of a new place dedicated to international art in Paris: The ‘104′ built on the former foundations of Paris funerals that will include exhibits, artists’ residencies, an impressive concert hall, a bookstore and other surprises as well over more than 52,000 square feet. The 104 is run by stage directors Robert Cantarella and Frédéric Fisbach while the logo and graphic identity has been designed by Experimental Jetset -a team of three Dutch graphic designers. Over the last weekend of the year, the 104 opened its doors to give a sneak preview of the place and style: Dissidenz was on the spot by night to give to its readers an exclusive flavor of 2008…

Voir la vidéo

The Birds (1963) by Alfred Hitchcock.

“When I came across a DVD of The Birds, thanks to the interview with Evan Hunt (Editor’s note: the film’s screenwriter), you discover in particular that they didn’t finish shooting the planned ending, which forced Hitchcock to improvise. In fact, when the movie was released, I remember seeing photos where the heroes were walking around the city with a lot of dead birds. I tried to figure out what that was connected to and couldn’t find an answer. Now I have one: it’s from the unfinished sequence. That allowed me to understand how the movie was made and learn things about the legendary relationship between Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren during the shooting. It’s been said that he threw birds in her face for a week, out of pure sadism. That’s stupid. The real problem he must’ve had was that, once he couldn’t finish his movie they way he’d planned to, the intensity no longer existed. The last intense moment in the film was actually to be the car attacked by the birds. Since he could no longer shoot it, he had to find another one and the only one left was in the attic, which he had to make dramatic. Initially, they planned to send mechanical birds into her face, but it’s clear that it didn’t work for this sequence, the highpoint of the movie. It’s true that she was ill: at one point, she was so sick they sent her to the hospital for a week. When Rod Taylor carries her down in a sofa, it’s not her, but a mannequin. If Hitchcock had been as cynical as they say, he would have thrown in the sequence at the end of the film as is, no matter what happened to the heroine: the film was already in the can. However, what he did was a real risk. I read that Hitchcock was terrified.”

Read the interview

How was The Exterminating Angels received by audiences?
That depends. I was pleasantly surprised when, at Cannes, the audience gave me a ten-minute standing ovation. I wasn’t expecting it. There was a bit of a change of heart when it came out in September, but there was much better feedback from abroad, especially from the U.S., where I heard the nicest things. On the other hand, I also had some negative feedback, particularly from others in the business. I’m thinking particularly of a young woman at the FEMIS film school, whom I showed everything to, and who little by little became my assistant and was really a good worker. From what I understand, when the movie was released, someone involved in the movie in New York sent an e-mail to all of the students at the FEMIS saying that this woman had behaved “like a whore” by acting in a “porno flick”. And when she was giving a class, one of the organizers also said, in public, that she was a whore for accepting to work on this film. I’ve seen a puritanical attitude re-emerge in the last couple of years, which was already around in certain areas – with the critics and especially in universities – in that emotion, and especially sex, are tacit and violent taboos. My goal was very clearly to put these elements, which are a part of life, back into cinema. I realize that it sparked some violent reactions.

That proves how accurately you make your point and that there’s a real problem in representing these themes.
Maybe. People have the right to think what they want about my film. I’m rather pleased about that, but I don’t have to be right. Time, and other people’s opinions, will decide. I hope the comparison I’m about to make won’t seem pretentious: I’m astounded that Freud caused such an uproar when he stated that children had a sexuality before puberty, while the scientific community, including doctors, were claiming the opposite. Doctors were fathers, everybody had the chance to see children in their lives, and children haven’t changed over the last century. It’s obvious that boys and girls have a sexuality. There was an adamant refusal to see this. And I have the impression that it hasn’t changed, particularly for critics. I told a newspaper a while ago: addressing the way people handle emotions, and particularly emotions linked to sex, is looked down upon by some critics, and yet it’s a part of life. Other critics have told me certain colleagues of theirs thought that you have to mistrust emotions in cinema, under the pretext that you may be conned. I think that if people in academia are so hostile to the handling of emotions, it’s fundamentally because they have to seem more intelligent than everyone else and they have to make up something, even if it has no bearing on the construction of a film or on the way emotions are handled, which are in fact the essence of a film. Not everyone’s like that, but I think this attitude has harmed cinema a lot. Of course, I’m not criticizing Brecht, who said that as soon as emotion takes precedence over thought in a show, the show has failed. But what Brecht wanted was for people to become aware of a number of things. For him, awareness was a major element; he sparked another sort of emotion, a revolutionary feeling. Everyone who followed Brecht, including filmmakers like Losey, tried to get the audience interested. You can say what you like, but I still think that The Servant, one of Losey’s best films, sparked a real interest, even if it’s not the same interest sparked by Hitchcock’s films.

You watch DVDs. Do you think this format has changed something in the life a film after its theatrical release, compared to VHS?
I’m absolutely positive. When VHS came out, I knew it would drastically change cinema. First, in terms of education, you had the equivalent of a collection of classical literature: for the first time you could see films, freeze on an image, and reverse. On the other hand, it had an immediate impact on theaters, for two reasons: movie piracy on the one side, and on the other, some collectors thinking that watching a film on DVD is pointless. But it’s important to discover films in different versions, with subtitles in several languages, and why not on big screens, on home cinema? For relatively little money, you don’t have 35mm, but almost, and that’s going to change things. I, for example, don’t see why I’d spend 10 euros in a theater when I can rent the DVD for 2 or 3 euros, watch it when I want, and under better conditions than in some theaters. Concerning piracy and downloading, you can’t fight against it. Recently, I had a conversation with a famous director and an actress who were defending piracy. I’m not casting any stones: it’s obvious that young people, for example, don’t see why they should pay when they’ve gotten used to seeing a movie for free and with excellent quality. Movies are originally made for theaters, but that’s not going to last. Theatrical distribution is becoming an ad for video distribution.

What’s a successful DVD release for you? Are there DVDs that you find exemplary?
The DVDs I’ve most liked are those where the bonuses taught me how the film was made. I’m thinking in particular of the Laserdisc Criterion release of The Splendor of the Ambersons. They explain – by showing you – what was cut in Welles’s version, what was re-shot, and include the storyboard, picture by picture, of the entire film. It’s one of the most interesting things I’ve seen. There weren’t any long philosophical commentaries. You saw the parallel between the fall of one social class and the rise of a new one represented by Joseph Cotton and his car. Originally, the movie was 2 hours and 20 minutes long. It was later cut, but it’s not certain that the short version isn’t better. It’s Welles’s film that I prefer, even if the end is silly.
I’ve always regretted that most DVD bonuses are not about how the movie was made. True, it’s easier with films that are twenty, thirty or forty years old than with new releases. With new releases, they usually only make ads, especially since there are a certain number of things you can’t necessarily say. While with films that are twenty, thirty or forty years old, if things come out, it’s because they’ve already become a part of overall movie culture and everybody knows about them. The movie has created its own advertising. It’s easier to do. There are several like that which I’ve enjoyed.
There are sometimes films that I’ve been able to see in their full version. I hadn’t seen Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and I managed to catch it on DVD and project it onto a screen. I didn’t like the movie; I watched it again and liked it better. And when I saw the long version, I changed my mind. A string of important things had been cut from the film, only keeping in the fights and what explained them, while the rest is much more interesting. It’s true that being able to show several versions is of interest to movie-lovers. On the other hand, I’ve found that the long version has worked against certain movies. I’ll give you an example of a DVD that I found fascinating: My Darling Clementine. There are two versions, John Ford’s and the producer’s. In the sequences that were cut, the producer, Zanuck, explains his choices very well. And I have to tell you, for me, Zanuck was right. It’s fascinating to see the real work that went into putting together a movie. It’s what has always interested me as a movie-lover, rather than having commentaries that, for me, are worthless. I also confess that, since I’ve been giving classes more often, at the FEMIS among other places, I’ve realized that there’s an enormous lack of teaching material in terms of basic problems of construction and dramatization.

Could you say that for some young movie-lovers, classic American cinema – arguably the standard in terms of dramatic construction – is a bit looked down upon and that, for them, nothing counts before the French New Wave?
That’s somewhat true. I was born in ’44, we used to go see everything with my mother, and when I bought the Cahiers du Cinéma in high school, I kept going to see everything, especially movies from the New Wave. And then things evolved: the more boring and intellectual the film, the more I liked it, for one simple reason: in conversations in public, I was able to give the impression that I was more important than the masses who understood nothing. Problems of construction didn’t interest me at all. It all came down on me when I wanted to make my first little amateur 8mm film. I was all happy, thought it was brilliant and that everyone would love it, but the audience around me was bored out of their minds. That’s when I wondered how movies are constructed. I must have gone see Psycho 50 times to truly understand how movies are constructed. It interested me so much that I completely forgot about the notion of auteur. My criterion was: I sit down, I watch the movie and I see whether it interests me or not.
But I have to say, American cinema today is rather disappointing. They’ve dropped everything to do with space. The movies are all done in close-ups, and special effects have become the star. The notion of space is, in my opinion, very important. Take an American film called Distant Drums, which I saw when I was seven and which was crystal clear for me: I understood everything. At one point you see Gary Cooper climb over the walls of a fort with his men to open a door so that others can get in. With little things that seem like nothing, there’s a real dramatic effort. There’s a moment when Gary Cooper and two or three of his men are hidden behind a wall, where they risk being discovered. In order for you to understand and to feel the emotion, you have to comprehend the space. It’s handled in such a way that you can say: they’re there or they’re here, but maybe there’s a bad guy hidden in the corner over there. The information has to be laid out: the audience has to systematically understand the space in order for there to be a dramatic effect. Unfortunately, all of that has disappeared in cinema and been replaced by emotion linked to the music, to the special effects, and to screenplays that are generally just slapped together. When I was in Hollywood, I got to see the end that was cut from The Abyss. I asked why it was cut and was told that the end didn’t do well in preview. I saw the film in its full version, which for me is clearly better than the edited version. I told them there are mistakes in the screenplay and asked how they could have made these mistakes. The producers answered, “Simple: we start with a script, the star is the special effects, but we tell ourselves we’ll improve the script as we go along.” But with special effects what they are, you’re limited and have to build everything around them, figuring that the screenplay will be modified, but it isn’t. As a result, you have to shoot because you can no longer do otherwise, and you sometimes try to fix it in the editing room or with the soundtrack. Constructing a movie based on special effects has blocked a lot of things for screenplays.

Did you miss an issue? Don’t panic! All the newsletters are saved here:

#1 Newsletter, 12/07/2007
Calle Santa Fe by Carmen Castillo, The Pick of the Week by Jacques Bidou

#2 Newsletter, 12/13/2007
Pierre Carles’ films on DVD, The Pick of the Week by Alain Guiraudie

#3 Newsletter, 12/24/2007
Featuring social climbing, The Pick of the Week by Luc Moullet, Interview with Annie Gonzalez, producer of Pierre Carles’ films

#4 Newsletter, 12/30/2007
XXY by Lucia Puenzo, The Pick of the Week by Fernando Solanas, Interview with Jan Harlan, Stanley Kubrick’s films producer

#5 Newsletter, 01/03/2008
The 104 in Paris, The Pick of the Week by Jean-Claude Brisseau

#6 Newsletter, 01/12/2008
Hong Kong: Portrait of a City, The Pick of the Week by Cédric Anger, Tribute to Pierre Zucca (video)

#7 Newsletter, 01/19/2008
Alain Resnais at large in Paris, The Pick of the Week by Martine Marignac, producer of films by Rivette, Iosseliani, Straub & Huillet…

#8 Newsletter, 01/26/2008
Re-releases: youth without youth, The Pick of the Week by Jean-Max Causse, arthouse cinema manager and owner, Alain Resnais full retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris (video)

#9 Newsletter, 02/02/2008
Johan Van der Keuken, The Pick of the Week by Harry Gruyaert, photographer, Presentation of the project My New Picture by director Bertrand Bonello and actress Sabrina Seyvecou (video)

#10 Newsletter, 02/07/2008
Eija-Liisa Ahtila, The Pick of the Week by Lisa Heredia, editor, set decorator, actress and long-time collaborator of Jean-Claude Brisseau

#11 Newsletter, 02/16/2008
Colossal Youth by Pedro Costa, The Pick of the Week by Gerard Mordillat, writer and director

#12 Newsletter, 02/23/2008
State of the World, The Pick of the Week by Koji Wakamatsu, director, The art of storyboarding according to Otar Iosseliani (video)

#13 Newsletter, 02/29/2008
Foster Child by Brillante Mendoza, The Pick of the Week by Nuno Sena, co-director of Indie Lisboa Film Festival

#14 Newsletter, 03/07/2008
Art/War: State Britain by Mark Wallinger, The Pick of the Week by Pip Chodorov, director, composer, distributor, Her Name is Sabine (video), The Aerial (video)

#15 Newsletter, 03/15/2008
Julia by Erick Zonca, The Pick of the Week by Erick Zonca, director, Eldorado: Preljocaj / Assayas

#16 Newsletter, 03/20/2008
Feature: French filmmakers abroad, interviews with Bruno Dumont, Erick Zonca, Jean-Pierre Limosin and producer François Marquis, The Pick of the Week by Bruno Dumont, director

#17 Newsletter, 03/27/2008
Opera Jawa by Garin Nugroho, Pierre Carle’s films on VOD, The Pick of the Week by Garin Nugroho, director

#18 Newsletter, 04/06/2008
Kijû Yoshida, Land 250, an exhibition by Patti Smith, The Pick of the Week by Kijû Yoshida, director

#19 Newsletter, 04/12/2008
Young Yakuza by Jean-Pierre Limoson, The Pick of the Week by François Marquis, producter, Manhunt (La Traque) by Laurent Jaoui (trailer)

#20 Newsletter, 04/18/2008
Ploy by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, The Pick of the Week by Jean-Pierre Limosin, director

#21 Newsletter, 04/25/2008
Cannes 2008, The Pick of the Week by André S. Labarthe, director, producer, actor, About Jean-Claude Brisseau’s cinema (teaser)

#22 Newsletter, 05/03/2008
May 68 through images, The Pick of the Week by Johnnie To, director, The State of the World by Pedro Costa, Chantal Akerman, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Wang Bing… (video)

#23 Newsletter, 05/10/2008
4 films by Jean-Claude Brisseau, The Pick of the Week by Bernard Queysanne, director, ACID in Cannes

#24 Newsletter, 05/17/2008
Joseph Morder: shooting the instant, The Pick of the Week by Joseph Morder, director, Thriller: teasers (videos)

#25 Newsletter, 05/24/2008
Rithy Panh: filming words and memory, The Pick of the Week by Adélaide Leroux, actress, Cannes 2008: last turn

#26 Newsletter, 05/30/2008
Soap et Caetera, The Pick of the Week by Yann Coridian, casting director, Discussion about biopics with Stephen Frears, Sandrine Bonnaire and Bernd Eichinger (video)

#27 Newsletter, 06/06/2008
Sparrow by Johnnie To, The Pick of the Week by Emmanuelle Cuau, director, Thriller: trailer (video)

#28 Newsletter, 06/13/2008
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Vittorio de Sica, The Pick of the Week by Jerome Prieur, director, Bamboo Blues by Pina Bausch

#29 Newsletter, 06/20/2008
Barry Purves, The Pick of the Week by Sandrine Pillon, producer, Coming soon: Cinéditions at Cinémathèque française

#30 Newsletter, 06/27/2008
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#31 Newsletter, July Issue
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#32 Newsletter, August Issue
Gomorra by Matteo Garrone, The Pick of the Month by Hany Tamba, director, Back Soon: interview with director Solveig Anspach

#33 Newsletter, 09/05/2008
Mitchell Leisen, an esthete in Hollywood, The Pick of the Month by Arta Dobroshi, actress, About Hyenas by Djibril Diop Mambety: discussion with Wasis Diop, Brice Ahounou and Charles Tesson (video)

#34 Newsletter, 09/12/2008
Jar City by Baltasar Kormakur, The Pick of the Month by Wasis Diop, composer, School Law: trailer and blog

#35 Newsletter, 09/19/2008
Back to school: The Class and School Law, The Pick of the Month by Baltasar Kormakur, director, School Law: view the first episode for free (video)

#36 Newsletter, 09/26/2008
Brand Upon the Brain! by Guy Maddin, The Pick of the Month by Jose Luis Guerin, director, Frownland: discussion with director Ronald Bronstein (video)

#37 Newsletter, 10/03/2008
Afterschool by Antonio Campos, The Pick of the Month by Guy Maddin, director, The Man From London: discussion with director Béla Tarr (video)

#38 Newsletter, 10/10/2008
Legal and alternative VOD, The Pick of the Month by Damien Odoul, director, Coming soon: BFI 52nd London Film Festival