Le plaisir cimentien !

For listeners of Projection privée the weekly radio show offers bountiful pleasures. Obviously some weeks are better than others with certain topics being more interesting and familiar, which is something that also applies to its guest. But when it’s great there’s nothing like it. The knowledge and thoughtfulness of the speakers have no comparison. For example in the last two weeks of Michel Ciment’s show the guests included: the MacMahonien Michel Mourlet (with his warmth and old age lisp), the Noël Herpe (one of the greatest film critics on Marcel Carné. Ciné-reporter 1929-1934), my favorite Pierre Berthomieu, Christian Viviani, Bertrand Benoliel and N.T. Binh. The knowledge, debates, opinions, stories, charisma, casualness, arguments, counter-arguments, music, references (and the list goes on!) makes one envious since the Anglo-Saxon film culture has no equivalent. These one hour podcast offer a simple yet fulfilling pleasure: cinema matters, there’s still lots to know, and let’s have fun while we’re at it. Follow the link embedded titles for a listen: Spécial John Huston and Michel Mourlet.

Oh! And to not totally go over to the Positif side, here is a great recent (four-part) interview with Stéphane Delorme and Joachim Lepastier on the subject of Cahiers du Cinéma today.

It’s a tie game between the two of them right now. Let’s see which one takes the lead with their upcoming July/August double-issue feature.

Projection privée : Pierre Berthomieu

This week, one of TFR's favorite film-critics, the great Pierre Berthomieu, is featured for an entire episode of Michel Ciment's France Culture podcast, Projection privée! This is a reason to rejoice!

Dans les pas du Petit Timonier and Projection privée: Yasujiro Ozu

“Fuir la clarté, chercher l’obscurité,” Adrien Gombeaud begins his travelogue-biography Dans les pas du Petit Timonier (Éditions du Seuil) on the historical leader of the People's Republic of China, Deng Xiaoping. But as it turns this mythical Xiaoping quote turned out to not even be by him. This unveiling of myths will be the general approach of the book as it attempts to go beyond mere surface realities and instead to find the truths about Xiaoping and his influence on China in its obscurities. This is just like how one person he meets on his trip says, “Everything that you will see in this country isn’t the reality, it’s actually a surface that hides the reality.”

Gombeaud, who is a regular contributor to Positif, is a specialist on Asian culture and has already written books on the Tiananmen Square protests, a dictionary on Asian cinema as well as a book on Marilyn Monroe. In this newest book Dans les pas du Petit Timonier, Gombeaud traces both Xiaoping’s original childhood journey to his eventual political position along with his final trip in life to the south of the country. Xiaoping who was the designated le Petit Timonier (the Grand Timonier was his predecessor Mao Zedong) is described as, “representing at once the ultimate incarnation of the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution and the father of reformation that would bring the triumph of the country into the global market.”

Xiaoping was born in 1920 in the small village of Sichaun (the “celestial country”), which would later be integrated within Guang’an. This would be the first stop in Gombeaud’s trip and through it he would describe in intimate details the places that he visits and the people that he meets. Just like the great Asian filmmakers Jia Zhang-ke or Hou Hsiao-hsien, Gombeaud’s description of contemporary China, Xiaoping and his legacy, and the country’s complex history stand out through its poetic approach.

In other news it’s a pleasure to discover Gombeaud on this week’s episode of Projection Privée, which is one of the great French film podcasts along with Pendant les Travaux and Hors Champ, who along with Michel Ciment, Diane Arnaud, Mathieu Capel, and Mathias Lavin discuss Yasujiro Ozu who is now receiving a major retrospective and DVD releases in France. For more on Gombeaud you can also read a great recent review by him in Positif (N.637) of Spike Jonze’s Her where in a trademark Positif tradition of cinephilia and of cultivated references he discusses it in relation to to Shame, 2001, Joaquin Phoenix’s acting career, the painter Cy Twombly, and the cultural critic Roland Barthes.

Projection privée: Special Cecil B. DeMille

To correspond with Jean-Loup Bourget's new book Cecil B. DeMille - Le gladiateur de Dieu, Michel Ciment's exceptional podcast Projection privée invited Bourget, the great Pierre Berthomieu, and Jean A. Gili for an episode dedicated entirely to DeMille. If you speak French it is well worth the listen. It is probably the most enjoyable and delirious Projection privée episode in a while, along with the Billy Wilder episode that included both Dominique Païni and another one of the greats - Stanislas Bouvier.