Jeanne par Jeanne Moreau

“Nothing will replace the anticipation, mouth ajar, when the lights
go out and the white and then black screen dotted with splinters
suddenly becomes pearly, a few seconds before the opening credits.
Cinema! Cinema! We are yours, you are our reflection.”

Jeanne Moreau

Read instead…in print #30

Jeanne par Jeanne Moreau is a visual and written self-portrait of a legend.

Cinema was her passion. “It was forbidden to me for a long time,” Jeanne Moreau writes, revealing that she would hung in the lobby of the small cinema on Rue Blanche, now replaced by a peep show. Looking at the film posters and photos, she tried to imagine the plots and, while she was doing her homework at the kitchen table, she could hear noises from the cinema overlooking the music school courtyard: footsteps, doors, clashing swords, gunshots, the clopping of shoes, the wind blowing, the sound of the sea, the flashes of the storm, and, suddenly, silence, sighs and voices. Invisible films that nourished her imagination (books did that, too) and reveries of love, a mythical world in which she continued to get lost even after she became an actress. One of the great actors of cinema. The mystery remained. The mystery, of her, of her films, of cinema, remains even after reading her book.

”So who are we? Elusive, always in the making,
ephemeral like the butterfly or long-lasting like
the great wines, we create dreams, we provoke
those who look at us, stuck in their solitude.”

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.