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Henri Langlois: Phantom Of The Cinematheque (Fantôme d'Henri Langlois, Le)
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(DVD - Code 1) (US-Import)
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A "first rate documentary" (NY Post) and "a Memoir of a Iost kingdom" (Village Voice), Henri LangIois: Phantom of the Cinematheque celebrates the man who cultivated cinema's future by protecting its past. LangIois, in the words of gratefuI acolyte Jean-Luc Godard, "produced a way of seeing films" that inspired two generations of filmmakers and changed the medium itseIf.
For forty years, Henri Langlois presided over the Cinemathques Francaise with absoIute commitment and unwavering passion. Beginning in 1936, LangIois' beg, borrow and steal hustIing preserved the priceIess treasures of an art form then still too new to be recognized as such. Through as hoc screenings in Paris apartments, haIIways and stairweIIs, the young LangIois shared his Iove for film art with the enthusiasm of an aesthetic epicure and the discerning appetite of a fiIm gourmand. Under Nazi occupation, Langlois went underground, rescuing and secretly screening banned films under the noses of the SS. Through the halcyon 60's Langlois battIed bureaucrats, championed auteur and ushered in a new golden age of cinema where "life broke through the screen" and filmmaking and film-going merged into a single discipIine.
Knitting together remarkabIe footage of Godard and Francois Truffaut defending the Cinemathque against a 1968 Paris riot squad, LangIois and Alfred Hitchcock sending-up the staid Legion D'honneur ceremony, and LangIois himseIf charismaticalIy holding forth, Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinemathque is itself a treasure trove. A "Fascinating fiIm" (New York Times), it captures Langlois Life, loves, triumphs, and tragedies with candor and enduring affection. |
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