Author Bérénice Reynaud

As many had expected, Benh Zeitlin’s first feature, Beasts of the Southern Wild, won The Grand Jury Prize, as well The Excellence in Cinematography Award (for Ben Richardson’s magic-realist imagery) in the US D...

Your fearless film critic, Alice, was getting ready to cover the new edition of the AFI Fest which, this year again, was Presented by Audi and offering free tickets to the audiences – the former explaining the ...

The Dragons and Tigers Award for Young Cinema went to the first digital film of a young Tibetan director, Sonthar Gyal’s Dbus Lam Gyi Nyi Ma (The Sun-Beaten Path), that had already received a Special Mention in...

Framed as an introduction to her translation of Serge Toubiana’s tribute, Bérénice Reynaud pays homage to Claudine Paquot, long time head-of-publications at Cahiers.

Two important figures of the cinephilic landscape left Los Angeles in 2010. One was Rose Kuo, who since 2007 had assumed the direction of the AFI Film Festival; the other was Scott Foundas, film editor of The L...

It’s at Sundance that independent queer cinema was launched in the US media. Since Todd Haynes’ Poison (1991) (1) and Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992), the notion of queer cinema has evolved, but Araki is st...

It was a vintage year in Vancouver, as the organisers had secured a series of programming “coups”. Two “special events” introduced audiences to epic-length narrative films, Raúl Ruiz’s Os Mistérios de Lisboa (T...

Handsome Men and Narrative Holes – Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl (US Dramatic Competition) The best thing you could say about the Opening Night film Howl, was that it gave you the desire to (re)rea...

Odd Man Out With the plurality of choices it offers, a film festival constitutes a meta-text – and what you write about, ultimately, is your own journey within the grid of the published schedule, like a Baud...

I New wine in an old bottle? Such was the challenge faced by Rose Kuo, when she became AFI Fest’s artistic director in 2007. Now it seems that wine has spilled out and flown in a different direction. In other ...

Sundance: 15-29 January 2009 Pan African: 5-16 February 2009 Of Mormons and Men Never was the paradox of Sundance felt so profoundly, and, I will add, so creatively, as this year. The entire country was reel...

  AFI: 30 October–9 November 2008 AFM: 5–12 November 2008 Sprawlin’ thru Do cities have the film festivals they deserve? Or rather, what happens to the classical notion of cinéphilie in a sprawling...

17–27 January 2008 Market The shadow of the seemingly never-ending writers strike was looming over Sundance this year (we didn’t yet know it would end just on time for the Oscars!), and, when we were turn...

An insightful analysis of Nina Menkes’ films and the many distinctive virtues they possess.

27 September-12 October 2007 The renewal of cinema sometimes comes from unexpected places. Who would have believed, a few years ago, in a Romanian cinema Renaissance? And yet, since Cristi Puíu’s Moartea...

It is now a done deal: at the beginning of November, the American Film Institute Festival (1-11 November) and the American Film Market (31 October-7 November) are held quasi-simultaneously – one in a ...

January 18-28, 2007 In spite of a creeping feeling that Sundance 2007 was not a great vintage, there were some really good films – albeit sprinkled in different sections. The inaugural edition of “New Fr...

November 1-12, 2006 The American Film Institute Festival (AFI), now with its twin shadow, the American Film Market (AFM), is a double-entry affair. On the one hand, it serves as a testing ground for soon...

28 September–13 October 2006 The jury is still out whether cinema is a “window to the world” – yet “masking” it rather than “framing” it (André Bazin) – or if it is made of “fragments extracted from the ...

January 19–29, 2006 One of the coldest festivals in recent memory, the 2006 edition left most of us with a bittersweet taste. There were some nice films, but nothing truly exceptional in the Dramatic Com...

AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival November 3–13, 2005 American Film Market (AFM) November 2–9, 2005 Berlin and Cannes have markets unfolding concurrently with the official selection; in 19...

September 29–October 14, 2005 Cinema is still a young art compared to the first six – yet it is not exempt from a certain lassitude. There is no image that hasn’t been shown already, no sunset captured, ...

January 20–30, 2005 It is nobody's secret. Sundance 2005 was an honest year, but not a great one. The most salient feature was the decision to organise a competition for international features and docume...

September 23–October 8, 2004 A few years ago, one of my then-colleagues at Cahiers du cinéma, Marc Chevry, launched a stimulating series of articles reflecting on the nature of cinema, titled “Le ciném...

November 4–14, 2004 In spite of making “an effort” in the direction of world cinema, the American Film Institute (AFI) Festival still remains a middlebrow festival, a testing ground for the distribution ...

La Captive (2000 France 112 mins) Source: Gemini Films Prod: Paulo Branco Dir: Chantal Akerman Scr: Chantal Akerman, Eric de Kuyper, inspired by Marcel Proust's La Prisonnière Phot: Sabine Lancelin Ed: C...

There is a seductive cliche that runs through “cultural circles”: writing about dance makes about as much sense as dancing about architecture. What is implied here is not only a suspicion at the “folly” of ...

I might have been the only accredited journalist who did not see a single American film at the latest American Film Institute (AFI) Film Festival last November (6-16) in Los Angeles. A mainstream filmmaking...

Lasting a solid two-week stretch (September 25 – October 10), the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) has come to play an increasingly complex role in the international exhibition of non-mainstream...

A sweeping analysis of the rise and history of documentary filmmaking in China, its significance as a formally innovative medium and a voice for the marginalised.

An examination into the martial arts genre that reveals the extent of its ambivalence and complexity toward questions of gender, femininity and the submissiveness of 'woman'.

Sundance is festive, vulgar, commercial, unexpected, challenging. It is indeed popular and successful, but is it true, as some people keep complaining, that it has “sold out”? Some of my friends wonder why ...

Interweaving interview and autobiographical material with wide-ranging analysis, this is a pioneering study of a woman who sought to find a room of her own.

Though supportive of the film during its fight with the censors, Bérénice's disapproval is here established as she uncovers the subtle ideological workings behind the film.

An introduction to the first film made in Hong Kong directed by a woman about women in love with each other.

Perceptive and informed analysis of this program of shorts currently travelling the festival circuit.