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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...

The last time I saw Bertrand Tavernier, who died yesterday in Paris at 79, was at the Cannes Film Festival nearly two years ago after the world premiere of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It was after 1 a.m. and my son Nick and I, who had been elated by the film, were walking down a largely empty Rue d’Antibes when I saw Bertrand’s unmistakable bulky frame approaching us. He was with his wife Sarah and I had seen them just a few evenings before in Paris at a gathering of friends of the late Pierre Rissient, cinema champion extraordinaire, who had worked with Bertrand championing films in the 1960s.

With just about anyone else, this would have remained just a brief nocturnal encounter. But talks with Bertrand were seldom short. To the contrary, because Bertrand was almost always a lava flow of opinion, information, insight and, for the most part,...

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...

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...

Bertrand Tavernier, the filmmaker, cineaste and critic who emerged in the wake of the French New Wave with such classics as The Clockmaker of St. Paul, A Sunday in the Country and ‘Round Midnight, died Thursday. He was 79.

Tavernier died in Sainte-Maxime in the Var region of southeastern France, relatives told the newspaper La Croix.

Renowned for the movies he made with actor Philippe Noiret, including The Clockmaker of St. Paul (1974), Coup de Torchon (1981) and Life and Nothing But (1989), Tavernier directed nearly 30 features and documentaries in a prolific career that began in the early 1960s and continued for the next 50-odd years.

A five-time César Award ...

Bertrand Tavernier, the filmmaker, cineaste and critic who emerged in the wake of the French New Wave with such classics as The Clockmaker of St. Paul, A Sunday in the Country and ‘Round Midnight, died Thursday. He was 79.

Tavernier died in Sainte-Maxime in the Var region of southeastern France, relatives told the newspaper La Croix.

Renowned for the movies he made with actor Philippe Noiret, including The Clockmaker of St. Paul (1974), Coup de Torchon (1981) and Life and Nothing But (1989), Tavernier directed nearly 30 features and documentaries in a prolific career that began in the early 1960s and continued for the next 50-odd years.

A five-time César Award ...

Bertrand Tavernier has been intrigued by cinema all his life and knew at a very young age that he wanted to be a filmmaker. He directed his first film, “The Clockmaker,” in 1974, which won him the Prix Louis Delluc and the Silver Bear – Special Jury Prize award at the 24th Berlin International Film Festival. After a long and successful career, his passion for French cinema inspired him to create the documentary “A Journey Through French Cinema.”

The film premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and is now part of New York Film Festival’s Retrospective section. A new trailer for it has just been released, which you can take a look at below.

Read More: Nyff Announces Retrospective Selections Inspired By Bertrand Tavernier’s ‘My Journey Through French Cinema’ – Exclusive

The 190-minute doc focuses on French cinema from the 1930s to the 1970s, honors key directors and...

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...

Edited by Adam Cook

First up: the summer issue of Cinema Scope has arrived, and aside from Mark Persanson's annual biting take on Cannes (this year's is particularly inspired), there are several pieces available online to read. For the rest (including my review of Abel Ferrara's Welcome to New York!), you'll have to pick up the print issue. The latest edition of La Furia Umana is also now available online. Check out Toni D'Angela's editor's note, "The 'Film' of the Visible". From Interview Magazine, Harmony Korine talks to Kenneth Anger!! Interesting takes on Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction are few and far between (hopefully our forthcoming piece on the film will suffice...), but Richard Brody has two measured, insightful articles: one on the film itself, and one on its cultural impact. In Film Comment, Graham Fuller chats with British filmmaker Joanna Hogg:

"Fc: Why did you choose,...

The Minister of Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni will present the Lifetime Achievement Award to French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier at the inauguration of the 42nd International Film Festival of India on November 23 in Goa. It was announced at the curtain raiser press conference held in Goa on Tuesday. The Lifetime Achievement Award carries an amount of Rs. 10 lakh.

Bertrand Tavernier is best known for his films Prix Louis Delluc, The Clockmaker, Life and Nothing But and The Princess of Montpensier.

The festival will pay homage to seven stalwarts of the film–Sidney Lumet, Raul Ruiz, Claude Chabrol, Adolfas Meekas, Richard Leacock, Elizabeth Taylor and Tareque Masood.

Iffi 2011 will open with The Consul of Bordeax directed by Manuel Gonzales.

The festival will showcase ‘Festivals Kaleidoscope’, a package which includes top award winners in film festivals like Cannes, Locarno, Montreal and Busan.

The ‘Retrospective’ section which screens films of French director Luc Besson...

Filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier.

Bertrand Tavernier: Taking Rabbits Out Of Hats

By Alex Simon

Bertrand Tavernier was bitten by the cinema bug at a tender age, falling in love with a diverse slate of films and filmmakers like Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang and Buster Keaton. Born in Lyon in 1941, Tavernier abandoned his law studies to write for the now-legendary French cinema magazine Cahiers du Cinema, which also launched auteurs like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Making his directing debut with The Clockmaker of Saint-Paul in 1974, Tavernier’s career has been a prolific one, with 35 films to his credit, and dozens of awards, including the Best Director prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival for A Sunday in the Country.

Tavernier’s latest film is the sweeping epic The Princess of Montpensier, an adaptation of a 1662 novel which was published anonymously, but later credited to French noblewoman Madame de La Fayette. Set...