IFFI 50: Homage to Bernardo Bertolucci Bertolucci, who was born in 1941, passed away at last year at the age of 77. He has been acclaimed for two of his most important films--Last Tango in Paris and The Last Emperor. The former was embroiled in controversy for its explicit sexual content but also won a nomination for Marlon Brando at the Academy Awards, while the latter film, which was an adaptation of the autobiography of China’s last imperial ruler, Pu Yi, won 9 Oscars. Bertolucci bec...

A long lost film starring Polish-born silent film star Pola Negri will be screened in Paris on September 12 at the Balzac Cinema as part of the International Cultural Programme of the current Polish EU Presidency.Produced by the prodigious UFA studios in Germany in 1918 and directed by Hungarian Eugen Illes, the film “Mania: A History of Workers in a Cigarette Factory” (“Die Geschichte einer Zigarettenarbeiterin”) was long thought to be lost. However, in 2006 the Polish National Film Arc...

From cameras and costumes to cahiers and clippings, the Cinémathèque Francaise’s Kubrick season is an insightful exhibition for everyone from cinema novices to devoted followers alike. First things first, let me just say that I am no great expert on Kubrick. I’ve seen his major films (with mixed reactions) and I’ve read articles with a passing interest, but he’s not a director for whom I’ve scrambled though library back catalogues to find first edition copies...

Eyebrows were raised when the Cinémathèque Française announced its October – January exhibition ‘Brune/Blonde’, so Jen Wallace decided to pay a visit to see if hair in Cinema really was the cultural-talking point that the exhibition claimed it to be. Throughout cultural history, hair is something that has always defined an era and played an important role in more richly developing the physical appearance of any female character. Greek tragedies, Pre-Raphaelite ...

Surely the most versatile of Hollywood Directors, and although his name rings no bells, Gordon DOUGLAS - sometimes billed as Gordon M. Douglas, created a remarkable piece of work, his cinematic career spanning over five decades. Indeed, what Hollywood film director could boast having helmed such a spectrum of personalities ranging in the 30's, from a hoofing Al Jolson, through action westerns with Randolph Scott in the '40's, rambling on to culminate in rock sensation Elvis Presley...