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Catering directly to my interests, the Criterion Channel’s January lineup boasts two of my favorite things: James Gray and cats. In the former case it’s his first five features (itself a terrible reminder he only released five movies in 20 years); the latter shows felines the respect they deserve, from Kuroneko to The Long Goodbye, Tourneur’s Cat People and Mick Garris’ Sleepwalkers. Meanwhile, Ava Gardner, Bertrand Tavernier, Isabel Sandoval, Ken Russell, Juleen Compton, George Harrison’s HandMade Films, and the Sundance Film Festival get retrospectives.

Restorations of Soviet sci-fi trip Ikarie Xb 1, The Unknown, and The Music of Regret stream, as does the recent Plan 75. January’s Criterion Editions are Inside Llewyn Davis, Farewell Amor, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and (most intriguingly) the long-out-of-print The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blu-rays of which go for hundreds of dollars.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

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As a critic committed to maintaining a certain professional distance with those whose work I might review, I don’t often play the fan in the presence of filmmakers. But with French director Bertrand Tavernier — who passed away at the age of 79 on Thursday — I made an exception.

Knowing that Tavernier would be attending the Cannes Film Festival, as always, I once stuffed my suitcase with his “50 Years of American Cinema” — a two-volume, 1,247-page encyclopedia of classic film history — then lugged it to his hotel so that this éminence grise might sign it. The book, like Tavernier’s even heavier but more personable “Amis Américains”, serves as proof that, apart from Martin Scorsese perhaps, the great authority on American cinema is in fact a Frenchman.

Like Scorsese, Tavernier’s “day job” was as a director. He worked for decades, but the best among them are arguably “Coup de Torchon” (1981), about...

Director whose films ranged across genres from period drama to science fiction, and included the acclaimed evocation of the jazz world Round Midnight

The film-maker Bertrand Tavernier, who has died aged 79, invested his movies with a scrupulous and humane curiosity, no matter what the theme, genre or setting. He was catholic in his enthusiasms, moving easily from period drama to policier, swashbuckler to science-fiction, wide-ranging documentary to intimate musical elegy. The Observer critic Philip French said in 2002 that the director “combines a powerful intellect with a strong social conscience and has a greater knowledge of, and feeling for, the history of cinema than any moviemaker alive”.

Tavernier enjoyed international success with A Sunday in the Country (1984), his portrait of an ageing artist and his family at the dawn of the 20th century; it won him the best director prize at the Cannes film festival. Round Midnight (1986) starred the saxophonist Dexter Gordon,...

The news of beloved and revered French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier’s death has struck a chord in France and around the world with a flurry of cinephiles, filmmakers, critics, industry figures and talents remembering him on social media on Thursday.

Aside from his prolific career as filmmaker, Tavernier, was also a driving force behind the Institut Lumiere and its annual heritage film festival in Lyon which he ran alongside Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux. Tavernier brought tremendous support to film preservation and livened up the cultural life of Lyon, his hometown, through his dedicated work at the Institut Lumiere.

“We would have soon celebrated our 40 years of friendship and common work, since he reached out a helping hand when I was a student,” Fremaux told Variety. “And we had many adventures together, including the Lumiere festival and his last documentary [‘Journey Through French Cinema’]. He was a great cinephile, and a great human being,...

The French director’s films include Golden Bear-winner Fresh Bait, Bafta-winner Life And Nothing But and Round Midnight.

French director, screenwriter and producer Bertrand Tavernier has died aged 79, the Institute Lumière has announced.

Tavernier was president of the Lyon-based museum and cinematheque devoted to the legacy of local cinema pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumiere, working alongside its director and Cannes Film Festival delegate general Thierry Frémaux.

Born in Lyon, the son of a writer and resistance fighter, Tavernier studied law before deciding to pursue his dream of making films.

For a time, he combined his filmmaking with working as a...

Bertrand Tavernier, a French director, screenwriter and film critic known for his films “The Clockmaker of St. Paul,” “‘Round Midnight” and “A Sunday in the Country,” has died. He was 79.

Tavernier came up in the wake of the French New Wave in the ’60s and was a BAFTA Award Winner for the film “Life and Nothing But.”

His relatives told the French publication La Croix that he died in Sainte-Maxime in the Var region of southeastern France.

Inspired by filmmakers like Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir and John Ford, Tavernier started his career in the ’60s in France in the height of the French New Wave, writing for the Pen club and aspiring to become a filmmaker, like many of his French New Wave peers. He did early work alongside director Jean-Pierre Melville and then went on to win the Silver Bear from the Berlin Film Festival for “The Clockmaker of St. Paul...

Bertrand Tavernier, the prolific French filmmaker noted for films such as “Coup de Torchon” (1981), “A Sunday in the Country” (1984) and “Round Midnight” (1986), has died. He was 79.

The director’s death was confirmed on Thursday by the Institut Lumière in France and Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux. Tavernier had struggled with a pancreatic infection for some time, but it’s believed his death was abrupt.

Roger Ebert called Tavernier “one of the most gifted and skilled of French directors, the leader of the generation after the New Wave” and asserted that the director’s work represented a quiet repudiation of “the auteur theory that he once supported, since Tavernier never forces himself or a style” upon the viewer.

“If there is a common element in his work, it is his instant sympathy for his fellow humans, his enthusiasm for their triumphs, his sharing of their disappointments,” said Ebert. “To see the...

Iconic French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, known for such award winning works as A Sunday In The Country, Round Midnight, Capitaine Conan, It All Starts Today and Life And Nothing But, has died at the age of 79. The news was confirmed by France’s Lumière Institute in Lyon of which Tavernier was president.

The organization tweeted: “With his wife Sarah, his children Nils and Tiffany and his grandchildren, the Lumière Institute and Thierry Frémaux are saddened and pained to inform you of the disappearance, today, of Bertrand Tavernier.”

Avec son épouse Sarah, ses enfants Nils et Tiffany et ses petits-enfants, l'Institut Lumière et Thierry Frémaux ont la tristesse et la douleur de vous faire part de la disparition, ce jour, de Bertrand Tavernier. pic.twitter.com/apVuXzYgmS

— Institut Lumière (@InstitutLumiere) March 25, 2021

A cause of death has not yet been confirmed, although Tavernier’s friend and fellow filmmaker Claude Lelouch told France...

Author and screenwriter Colo Tavernier O’Hagan has passed away. France’s Institut Lumiére shared the news that the former wife and collaborator of Bertrand Tavernier died of cancer on June 13. A César Award winner for Tavernier’s 1984 drama Un Dimanche A La Campagne, she also worked with such filmmakers as Claude Chabrol and Pierre Granier-Deferre.

Among her credits are the screenplays for her then-husband’s Une Semaine De Vacances (1980), La Passion Béatrice (1987), Dirk Bogarde-starrer Daddy Nostalgia (1990) and L’Appat (1995) — the latter scooping Berlin’s top Golden Bear prize. She also provided the French translation for 1986’s multi award-winning jazz film ‘Round Midnight.

With Chabrol, she collaborated on 1988’s Une Affaire De Femmes and with Granier-Deferre on 1995’s Le Petit Garçon. Of Irish and Franco-Spanish origin, Tavernier O’Hagan also wrote for television and penned the 2013 book about words, Les Maux Des Mots.

Bertrand Tavernier said today, “Life had separated us,...

Colo Tavernier O’Hagan, the revered screenwriter of award-winning films by Bertrand Tavernier and Claude Chabrol, died from cancer on June 13, according to a statement from the Lumière Institute in Lyon.

Throughout her prolific career spanning film and TV, Tavernier O’Hagan was a life-long, inspiring collaborator to her former husband, Bertrand Tavernier, on many of his most successful films, starting in 1980 with “A Week’s Holiday,” which competed at Cannes.

Born Claudine O’Hagan in England, with an Irish father and a French-Spanish mother, the screenwriter first earned critical acclaim with the script of Tavernier’s “A Sunday in the Country,” which earned her the Cesar award in 1985 for best adapted screenplay, and a National Society of Film Critics Award nomination out of the U.S.

She also collaborated with Tavernier on the Dirk Bogarde starrer “Daddy Nostalgia,” which competed at Cannes in 1990, and “Round Midnight,” a jazz-infused drama...

Festival in Wroclaw was due to launch in late July.

The 20th New Horizons International Film Festival has been postponed due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic but plans are underway to keep its industry events on the calendar.

The anniversary edition of the festival was due to run July 23 to August 2 in Wroclaw, Poland. But a city-wide cancellation of all cultural events, imposed by Wroclaw president Jacek Sutryk on April 14 and set to continue through the end of August, has seen festival organisers take the decision to postpone.

It marks the first time since the festival began in 2001 that New Horizons will not take place.

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...

Read More: Cannes 2015: Jake Gyllenhaal, Guillermo Del Toro and More Selected for Competition Jury The Cannes Film Festival has announced that French actress Sabine Azéma will preside over the Caméra d’or jury this year, which honors the best first film at the festival. Azéma won her first César award in 1985 for her role in Bertrand Tavernier’s "Un Dimanche à la Campagne," which screened at Cannes that year. For years she collaborated with Alain Resnais, acting in nine of his films. The rest of the jury includes director Delphine Gleize, actor Melvil Poupaud, Claude Garnier representing the Afc (French Association for Cinematographers), Didier Huck, representing the Ficam (Federation of Cinema, Audiovisual and Multimedia Industries), Yann Gonzalez, representing the Srf (Society of Film Directors) and Bernard Payen, representing the Sfcc (French Union of Cinema Critique). The Caméra d’or prize was created in 1978. All...

French director of award winners Round Midnight and The Clockmaker to receive Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

French director Bertrand Tavernier is to be honoured with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival (Sept 2-12).

The decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, upon recommendation of Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera.

In his recommendation,Barbera described Tavernier as “a complete, instinctively non-conformist, staunchly eclectic auteur”.

The 73 year-old director has previously presented two films in Competition at Venice: Round Midnight in 1986, which won an Oscar for Best Original Score; and detective film L. 627 in 1992.

Tavernier won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for his debut feature The Clockmaker (L’horloger de Saint-Paul) in 1974 and the Golden Bear at the 1995 Berlinale for detective film Fresh Bait (L’Appât).

He won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival...