In the recent documentary "Laika Cinema" (2023), we discover Aki Kaurismäki's dream of opening a movie theater in an abandoned factory in the countryside, a dream that he pursued and realized. In Karkkila, the "club of idlers" (a gang of kind unemployed resignees) would meet factory workers at the "La Moderne" bar next door, in a post-punk Wurlitzer atmosphere. This setting echoes scenes from Kaurismäki's films (the neon sign is recycled from the sets of Le Havre and the counter…

"A free and pure film." These are the words with which André Bazin welcomed Agnès Varda's La Pointe Courte in 1956. With her two-tone punk haircut showcased in The Beaches of Agnès, this "grandmother of the New Wave" left a lasting mark on imaginations. However, audiences remember more the incessant chatter of "a round and talkative old lady" than the power of her images, which nevertheless blew a fresh breeze of freedom into cinema.

"Who is Barbet Schroeder really? It would be a bit exaggerated to say that the question has haunted everyone for a long time and that hypotheses abound, but judging by the lack of comprehensive studies and publications about him, the absence of a detailed and precise biography, it's a question worth asking. The man has the elegance of revealing little about himself, rejects the notion of authorship for himself, and regularly manages to set records for brevity when receiving an…

David W. Griffith was a man of the 19th century who encountered an art of the 20th century. In other words, he introduced the modernity of the machine into the garden of an America that was still largely pastoral but divided. He attempted to ensure the transition from a lost world, the South of his childhood, from one century to another, and the renewal of forms he cherished so much, those of melodrama, in a word. He undoubtedly failed, a…

Previously unseen footage of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Agnès Varda strolling along 42nd Street in New York in 1966.

On February 22, 1986, Bette Davis received an honorary César award – and presented one to the Cinémathèque française, which was then celebrating its 50th anniversary. Two days later, Costa-Gavras, president of the Cinémathèque, in turn welcomed the actress for a press conference at which she vividly recounted the heyday of old Hollywood.

The list of Cocteau's feature films is not the most extensive (six films): it must be supplemented with short and medium-length films, commentaries, dialogues, and film scripts made by others than him. Only then does Cocteau allow himself to be glimpsed in the maze of winks that he enjoys setting up, and that others address back to him after him. Cocteau, the jester, the charmer, the one who argued that cinema is a phantom language, reveals himself in all his…