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Wherever you call home, it’s hard to be invested in cinephile culture without a mind towards its health. It was hardly some casual choice when Sean Baker took time during an Oscar-acceptance speech to plea for greater attendance––with each year every purchase at an Anthology, Spectacle, or Maysles feels more and more like an investment in the future, or perhaps a protest vote against our present. And few fight so valiantly as La Clef Revival Collective, a Parisian group who’ve earned praise from Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter, Justine Triet, Leos Carax, Adèle Haenel, and Céline Sciamma (the latter of whom sits on their board).

When La Clef, a Parisian theater initially open since 1973, faced severe risk of closure in 2019, the Revival Collective and aforementioned filmmakers joined forces to save the space. They are seeking $400,000 between now and April to fund renovations,...

Paris’ La Clef cinema is heading to New York.

Organizers behind the popular venue, one of Paris’ most enduring rep houses, are heading to New York this week to host a series of film screenings at cinemas across the city to connect with fellow cinephiles and raise funds for their ongoing redevelopment project back in Paris.

La Clef has been officially shut since 2019. The cinema was saved from permanent closure last year after Cinéma Revival, a group of local volunteers and longtime patrons of the cinema, purchased the building, which had been put on the market by its previous owner. The campaign to save La Clef was an almost five-year battle and began with a bold community occupation of the building, which grew into an international movement involving film industry figures, lawyers, activists, and government officials.

The group bought the building with €2 million raised through an online fundraising campaign. €400.000 was...

The Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series starts this Friday, March 2nd. — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema. This year’s fest kicks off with a screening of Bertrand Tavernier’s acclaimed documentary My Journey Through French Cinema, the director’s personal reflections on key films and filmmakers. Several of the works he highlights — such as Jacques Becker’s “Casque d’or” and Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï” — are screened at this year’s fest.

Tickets: $13 General Admission. Cinema St. Louis Members: $10. Students: $10. Webster. U students: Free. Tickets for My Journey Through French Cinema can be purchased Here

All films are screened at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).

Friday,...

The 10th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the 1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

This year’s fest kicks off with a screening of Bertrand Tavernier’s acclaimed documentary “My Journey Through French Cinema,” the director’s personal reflections on key films and filmmakers. Several of the works he highlights — such as Jacques Becker’s “Casque d’or” and Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï” — are screened at this year’s fest.

The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features New Wave master Jacques Rivette’s visually sumptuous “La belle noiseuse.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with Jean Renoir...

If you’re looking for a film course this summer, one might be able to accomplish such a thing in the span of one sitting thanks to a new film. A new trailer has landed for My Journey Through French Cinema (Voyage à travers le cinéma français), a documentary which follows Bertrand Tavernier‘s trek through the annals of French Cinema (if you couldn’t guess from the title) from when he was a young chap through to his own career.

Charting 50 years of cinema in France, the film has been hailed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, and looks to be a touching and detailed inquiry into a specific brand of cinematic language, as well as the idea of going to the movies as a whole. See the trailer below, along with a poster and synopsis, and if you’re in NYC, head to Quad Cinema, where they will...

Jean-Luc Godard. Robert Bresson. Éric Rohmer. Jacques Demy. Agnès Varda. Alain Resnais. Jacques Tati. François Truffaut. Louis Malle. Jean-Pierre Melville. Jacques Rivette. Claude Chabrol. Jean Vigo. Jean Cocteau. Jean Renoir. Chris Marker. Marcel Carné. Has any other country produced as many great directors a France? Knowing this full well, one of its top directors has helmed a comprehensive documentary.

Premiering at Cannes earlier this year and soon stopping by Nyff, Bertrand Tavernier‘s Journey Through French Cinema is a 190-minute trip through the history of the cinematic medium in his country. While we’re still awaiting a U.S. release date, the first trailer has now arrived hailing from — you guessed it — France, thankfully with some English subtitles, and it looks to be a delectable treat for anyone with even a passing interest in film.

Check out the trailer below, along with the trailer for a George Méliès exhibit running...

The already-incredible line-up for the 2016 New York Film Festival just got even more promising. Ang Lee‘s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk will hold its world premiere at the festival on October 14th, the NY Times confirmed today. The adaptation of Ben Fountain‘s Iraq War novel, with a script by Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire), follows a teenage soldier who survives a battle in Iraq and then is brought home for a victory lap before returning.

Lee has shot the film at 120 frames per second in 4K and native 3D, giving it unprecedented clarity for a feature film, which also means the screening will be held in a relatively small 300-seat theater at AMC Lincoln Square, one of the few with the technology to present it that way. While it’s expected that this Lincoln Square theater will play the film when it arrives in theaters, it may be...

A primer on and an interview with Jean-Marie Straub and the late Danièle Huillet, both from the early 80s, top today's round of news and views. Also: Three takes on Orson Welles, an excerpt from a new book on Terence Davies, a review of a new biography of John Gielgud, remembering Austrian filmmaker Florian Flicker, appreciations of two little-known 30s-era actresses, Glenda Farrell and Marjorie Rambeau, Guy Gilles Day at DC's, the trailer for Erol Minta's debut, Song of My Mother, the big winner at the Sarajevo Film Festival—and more. » - David Hudson...

A primer on and an interview with Jean-Marie Straub and the late Danièle Huillet, both from the early 80s, top today's round of news and views. Also: Three takes on Orson Welles, an excerpt from a new book on Terence Davies, a review of a new biography of John Gielgud, remembering Austrian filmmaker Florian Flicker, appreciations of two little-known 30s-era actresses, Glenda Farrell and Marjorie Rambeau, Guy Gilles Day at DC's, the trailer for Erol Minta's debut, Song of My Mother, the big winner at the Sarajevo Film Festival—and more. » - David Hudson...