La Jetée

For cinéphiles all around the world, the movie La Jetée by Chris Marker is a mythical one. 
Defined as photo-roman, since it is made by a very quick sequence of images, this short film (no longer than 28 minutes), has a special place in Nouvelle Vague fans’ hearts.
Why? Well, maybe because in such short time Marker is able to create a world apart, a black & white place where the future and the present has a strange, enigmatic, fascinating connection. 
If you’ve never seen it, I suggest you to do it as soon as you can. 
Many cinéphiles, though, when they think about La Jetée, have something else in mind.
It was 1974 when Tomoyo Kawai, a Japanese woman in love with French cinema, opened in Tokyo, in a Shinjuku area called Golden Gai, a little, a super tiny bar called La Jetée.
The place, I am talking about few square meters, became mythical very quickly.
Tomoyo-san, who lived in Paris and speaks a perfect French, was able to attract all the French cinema lovers passing through Tokyo, as well as many important film-makers (including Chris Marker himself).

Golden Gai - Shinjuku, Tokyo

Both Marker and Tomoyo-san are visible in a short sequence of Tokyo Ga by Wim Wenders, the love declaration (in the form of a documentary) to Tokyo and Ozu cinema that the German director filmed in 1985.
Wenders is an aficionado of this bar, as well as Francis Ford Coppola and his daughter Sofia, Quentin Tarantino and Juliette Binoche, among others. If you love French cinema and Tokyo, La Jetée is simply a must.
Some of Tomoyo’s clients even have their own, personalized bottle of whisky, which will be kept intact until their next visit. Isn’t that lovely?

I wanted to see this place so much, and I was finally able to have a gin and tonic there last April, during my stay in Tokyo. I was astonished by the smallness of the bar (that you can reach through a super tiny flight of stairs): just one table, a little counter and a mini toilet.
I couldn’t believe it! It was actually a place at my scale:

Zazie at La Jetéé - Tokyo, April 2016 (photo by Giorgio Amitrano)

Tomoyo-san is a very quiet and lovely lady who treats her clients in the sweetest way.
The walls are full of cinema pictures and cinema posters; not a single space is left and there are so many things to look at!

Useless to say, this bar immediately became my favourite one in Tokyo, and most probably in the whole world.
When I was about to go away, on the wall just above the door, I saw the poster of a retrospective of François Truffaut movies celebrating the 30th anniversary of his death:

It was the icing on the cake.
This is THE PERFECT PLACE, I swear.
If you are in Tokyo and you don’t go there, don’t even bother the journey.


A special thanks to Giorgio Amitrano, who brought me to La Jetée!

Festa del Cinema di Roma

Dopo quello di Cannes, la vostra Zazie ci ha preso gusto, con i Festival.
E così domani, un po' è lavoro, un po' è svago e voglia di passare qualche giorno in compagnia di amici e di film, me ne vado in Italia per una nuova avventura, quella della FESTA DEL CINEMA DI ROMA.
Tutti i miei auguri ad Antonio Monda, che è il nuovo direttore artistico del Festival.
Io e Antonio in fatto di cinema abbiamo gusti opposti, lui sta a Francis Ford Coppola come io sto a Eric Rohmer, però nel 2009 mi ha fatto conoscere Jeremy Irons (per non parlare di tutti gli altri, l'elenco sarebbe troppo lungo...), e allora gli perdono qualsiasi cosa. 
Perché per me non è un uomo, è un Santo!
Daje, Antonio, vedrai che sarà bellissimo...

As time goes by

Here we are again: the last post of the year.

I have been to the movies 83 times in 2012 (yes, I know, it’s a sickness!) and I have seen many interesting things. I’ll let you know about the ones I liked most next February, as usual, at the time of the Zazie D’Or.

Many cinematographic things happened as well, from the glass of champagne with Meryl Streep in a fancy Paris restaurant, to the dinner in New York with Norah Ephron (few months before she sadly passed away), to the meetings with some great film-makers: the master class of Francis Ford Coppola at the Gaumont Parnasse, the meeting with Emanuele Crialese and Donatella Finocchiaro for the avant-première of Terraferma, the one with Thomas Vinterberg for the avant-première of his Jagten (both in one of my favourite cinema in town, Le Cinéma des Cinéastes). 

And it was nice to bump by chance into French film-maker Christophe Honoré outside a theatre in Abbesses where we just saw Hiroshima, Mon Amour (ah, serendipity!).

I hope 2013 will be plenty of great movies and great things for you all, dear readers.

Let’s wish that all our dreams come true… or, at least, that all our dreams come true… in a movie.  

Happy New Year!!!

Sincerely yours,

Zazie

Talking to Francis

Francis Ford Coppola at the Gaumont Parnasse, Paris, March 15 - Photo by Zazie

I will start with a confession: I'm not a huge fan of Francis Ford Coppola.
I’m not one of those people whose life has been changed by the vision of Apocalypse Now and I don’t consider The Godfather Trilogy the best movie of cinema history, but I think Francis Ford Coppola is a very interesting film-maker and I have loved many (if not all) of his movies.
This is the reason why, when my friends from Pathé invited me to see the avant-première of his last movie, Twixt, followed by a conversation with Coppola himself, I was more than happy to accept.
Arriving at the Gaumont Parnasse there was a first surprise: a pair of 3D glasses near every seat. Due to some strange circumstances, I never had the chance to see a movie in 3D (yes, I’m also one of those people who never saw Avatar), and so I was thrilled that Twixt was that kind of movie. Well, it turned out it wasn’t or, to be more precise, I found out that the movie had only two scenes filmed in 3D. Isn’t that weird? Somebody explained us that an image with a pair of glasses would pop out from the screen to let us know when we will need to put the glasses on.
It was already so much fun!

I don’t know if you have noticed it, but Coppola stopped making films circa 1997.
He was back only in 2007 with the movie Youth without Youth, then he filmed Tetro in 2009 and Twixt in 2011. Coppola conceived these movies as a trilogy and as a new way of making films. He said he was feeling like a student at his first steps in the cinema business. He wanted to experiment, to try new things, to make movies with less money he used to need. I didn’t see Youth without Youth, but judging from Tetro and this last one, it is true that he is experimenting a lot, both from the technical point of view that from the one of themes/genres/inspiration. Tetro, I have to say, was a very bizarre movie. Set in Argentina, filmed in black and white, had a final “à la Almodovar” (Carmen Maura included) that left almost speechless. It is clear, though, that Coppola likes this kind of oddity, because Twixt is another alien object. 

Hall Baltimore (an overweight Val Kilmer) is a mystery books writer which fortune is in decline. During a book tour, he arrives in a lonely, small town, and he gets caught up in a series of strange events involving the ghost of a young girl who’s been killed (Elle Fanning, passing from a movie by Sophia to a movie by her father) and the ghost of… Edgar Allan Poe! (the too rare on screen, in my opinion, Ben Chaplin). These events will lead Hall to the creation of a new and successful story, but he has to pass through some very tough moments (and to remember a terribly sad family event) to go back to life. I'm sure you're wondering which were the two famous scenes that needed the 3D glasses.. well, no, I'm not going to tell you, you'll find out by yourself when you see the movie.

I can't really say I liked Twixt, but I have enjoyed very much watching it.
Anyway, the most enjoyable thing of the evening was the time (more than 90 minutes!) spent with Coppola after the movie. I don’t know why I expected Mr. Coppola being a grumpy old man, while in reality he was a lovely, cheerful, and super interesting guy. I’ve rarely seen somebody so keen on talking to people about his passion for cinema. Coppola was genuinely happy to be there among many cinema students to share his ideas, experiences, and also many funny stories. Seriously, he was a real joy listening to him.
He answered every single question of the audience and when he realized that many fans were asking for an autograph on a DVD or a book, he said: Well, let’s do like this: you, ten or fifteen people, you come down and I sign your stuff while I keep talking, ok? Of course, more than 15 people went to see him, but he didn’t care: he patiently kept signing and talking at the same time. The scene was so funny that I couldn’t resist filming it:

To a young cinema student who was looking for good advice on his future profession, Coppola asked: How old are you? And the guy: 22. Oh boy – Coppola exclaimed – get married! And then he introduced his wife, seated among us, with whom he has been married for 49 years!
To another person who paid a lot of compliments to one of his movies, Coppola replied: Thank you! You know, it is always a pleasure when somebody told you he liked your movie. It is like when you cook a dinner for some friends… If at the end of it they tell you how much they have loved and enjoyed what you have cooked for them, it is such a joy. Don’t you agree?  

We certainly do, Mr. Coppola!