>
> Date:    Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:25:56 +0000
> From:    Nicola Hopkins <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Innovation in film
>
> Who do you think's are the most innovative European filmmaker at work 
> today?

Based on her latest major work, L'INTRUS, I would argue that it's 
Claire Denis.

> Why?

L'INTRUS, whose script is based/inspired on an autobiographical text by 
Jean-Luc Nancy (coincidentally, given the recent posts here on the 
magnificent non-fiction film, THE ISTER, a major on-camera voice in 
that film), cinematically visualizes and expresses displacement. 
Displacement of people across borders, displacement of careers, 
displacement of body parts, displacement of family members from one 
another, displacement of geography and--for the viewer 
especially--displacement of time. With extreme sophistication, Denis 
fractures the story of a man, fouled by a past in Europe, trying in 
various ways to make himself whole again (inside his own body, by 
willing himself into exile, by potential reconciliations). Along the 
way, she has gone far beyond the previous experiments in BEAU TRAVAIL 
and  uncovered a brand new narrative syntax for the cinema---to my 
experience, the only film of the new century to do so. She is on a 
course to replace story, literature, drama and the other arts that have 
served as girders for cinema with cinema itself.

Other innovators have to include Cristi Puiu (DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU), 
Eugene Green, Mercedes Alvarez (EL CIELO GIRA), Bela Tarr (easily the 
most influential!), Alain Guiraudie, Michael Winterbottom and Daniele 
Gaglianone (CHANGING DESTINY). Mind you, Europe is not where most 
cinematic innovation is going right now!

Robert Koehler

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