Cinémathèque Française
Encyclopedia
History
The collection emerged from the efforts of Henri LangloisHenri Langlois
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema...
in the 1930s to collect and preserve films. Langlois had acquired one of the largest collections in the world by the beginning of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, only to have it nearly wiped out by the German authorities in occupied France, who ordered the destruction of all films made prior to 1937. He and his friends smuggled huge numbers of documents and films to unoccupied France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
to protect them until the end of the war.
After the war, the French government provided a small screening room, staff and subsidy for the collection, which was first relocated to the Avenue de Messine. Significant French filmmakers of the 1940s and 1950s, including Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
, René Clément, Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, which are critically recognized to be among the greatest films from the 1950s...
and Jacques Becker
Jacques Becker
Jacques Becker was a French screenwriter and film director.Becker was born in Paris, in an upper class background. During the 1930s he worked as an assistant to director Jean Renoir during his peak period, which produced such cinematic masterpieces as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game...
frequented screenings at the Cinémathèque. Directors of the New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
(la Nouvelle Vague) school — Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
, Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
, François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
, Roger Vadim
Roger Vadim
Roger Vadim was a French screenwriter, director, and producer as well as a journalist, author and actor, who launched Brigitte Bardot's career in the film And God Created Woman.-Early life:...
, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director...
, and Pierre Kast
Pierre Kast
Pierre Kast was a French screenwriter and film and television director.Kast died from a heart attack on board an aircraft on 20 October 1984, aged 64.- Director :...
— also received much of their film education by attending the collection's screenings.
Location
After numerous incidents — including multiple relocations from one small screening room to another through the 1950s and after, the "Langlois affair" in 1968 (his firing led to protests which eventually closed the Cinémathèque for a short period), and a fire in its last premises — the Cinémathèque Française moved to 51, rue de Bercy in the 12th arrondissement of ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and reopened its doors in a postmodern building designed by Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
, an American architect. A restaurant on the lower level is open to the public.
The Bibliothèque du Film, which was created in 1992 to show the history of cinema, its production, impact and artistic strength, has recently merged with the Cinémathèque Française.
President Director & Secretary
President: Costa-GavrasCosta-Gavras
Costa-Gavras, is a Greek filmmaker, who lives and works in France, best known for films with overt political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller, Z...
, Oscar-nominated director of Z, "State of Siege", Berlin Golden Bear
Golden Bear
According to legend, the Golden Bear was a large golden Ursus arctos. Members of the Ursus arctos species can reach masses of . The Grizzly Bear and the Kodiak Bear are North American subspecies of the Brown Bear....
-winning director of Music Box
Music Box (film)
Music Box is a 1989 film that tells the story of a Hungarian-American immigrant who is accused of having been a war criminal. The plot revolves around his daughter, an attorney, who defends him, and her struggle to uncover the truth....
and Cannes Golden Palm-winning director of Missing
Missing (film)
Missing is a 1982 American drama film directed by Costa Gavras, and starring Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea, Charles Cioffi and Janice Rule...
Director: Serge Toubiana, former editor-in-chief of Les Cahiers du cinéma
General Secretary: Jean-Michel Arnold
Jean-Michel Arnold
Jean-Michel Arnold, General Secretary of the Cinémathèque Française, vice President of UNESCO’s IFTC , founder of the Cinéma du Réel, Director of CNRS Image/Media, General Secretary of RIAVS, and President of CAMERA. Without being a filmmaker, Mr...
, the spiritual successor of Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema...
and consistently re-elected as General Secretary since 1981
Honorary Presidents:
- Claude BerriClaude BerriClaude Berri , born Claude Berel Langmann, was one of the great all-rounders of French cinema: an actor, writer, producer, director and distributor. "Out of my failure as an actor was born my desire to direct. Then my relative failure as a director forced me to become a producer. In order to get my...
- Jean-Charles TacchellaJean-Charles TacchellaJean-Charles Tacchella is a French screenwriter and film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his film Cousin, Cousine , which was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and which was later remade in a US version starring...
- Jean RouchJean RouchJean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.He is considered to be one of the founders of the cinéma vérité in France, which shared the aesthetics of the direct cinema spearheaded by Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert and David Maysles...