Some news

The ‘Spoke Art Gallery’ in San Francisco recently held an exhibition “Tribute to Caro-Jeunet”… 60 artists created illustrations of our films, particularly Amelie…

http://store.spoke-art.com/collections/la-couleur-de-letrangete-jeunet-caro

spoke-art

 

[separator][/separator]

As a sort of “hommage”, a boy named Alexander Gasula has produced a “fitting tribute”… and it’s really something else!

[separator][/separator]

In the same vein, the Hollywood Reporter held a survey:

 

hollywood-reporter-1

hollywood-reporter-2

Nobody in the French media said anything about it… fed up…

[separator][/separator]

“Amazon studio” produces TV series pilots. If Internet users like the pilots, then they produce a first season.

So, the pilot of Casanova, written by Stuart Zicherman, the showrunner, and produced by Ben Silverman, will air in august. I modestly directed the pilot, shot in Budapest, Venice and Versailles. Diego Luna plays Casanova with a formidable cast of essentially British actors. The director of photography was Pierre Gill, who worked on the second unit team for TS Spivet. Anne Seibel was on set design (she worked on the last three Woody Allen films), Madeline Fontaine on costumes (beautiful) and the rest of my usual team, with the exception of a new team for makeup (Mathilde Humeau) and hair and wigs (Mathieu Gueracaque & Miguel Santos) for this period film, reminiscent of Dangerous Liaisons

IMG_2318

IMG_2341

IMG_2382

IMG_3618

IMG_3630

IMG_3640

IMG_3645

IMG_3646

IMG_3716

 

 

 

 

 

 

[separator][/separator]

Otherwise, a large international advertising campaign for “Lavazza” coffee, with, as guest star, the formidable Sergio Castellitto… also filmed in Budapest, this time with Thomas Hardmeyer on photography (TS Spivet) and Benoît Barouh on set design.

 

And now…

Casanova. The rules of the game are fundamentally different. Preparation takes about ten weeks instead of the 8 months for a feature film, and it’s filmed in twenty days instead of twenty… weeks. In short an interesting challenge; scary and exciting.

I’ve always wanted to make something erotic… well, here I go!

All Winter long…

Without needing financers, TV channels, producers… and without critics waiting at the end… I’ve been allowing myself to tinker around with a collection of critters made with debris found in nature. Jephan de Villiers, who I admire and collect from, introduced me to this. Just for pleasure of CREATING.

January 2015. Hollywood again…

This time to receive two awards from the 3D Society, including the prestigious “Harold Lloyd” award, which has been awarded in the past to James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Ang Lee and Jeffrey Katzenberg. And the trophy is magnificent. So this makes three awards because we also won the Independent 3D film awards, as well as those awarded in Liège.

news 3D society-2

I gave a Master Class and had the opportunity to “quote” my friend Weinstein, which was the subject of an article in Hollywood Reporter. A reader’s reaction: “I love it when a European gives the middle finger to Harvey. So refreshing.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/amelie-director-questions-weinstein-plans-767538

November 2014. In Hollywood…

Schmoozing with all the networks, like HBO, Netflix etc… The idea being to back a script for a TV series pilot written by Tony Krantz, The Phantom of the Opera. The project was nice, I didn’t have my own script ready, and Hollywood was full on with television series, so why not give it a try? But Phantom didn’t catch on immediatly. However Amazon liked my work and offered me Casanova.

October 2014. Promotion in Rome and Tokyo

news japon 2

After surreal Italian-style chaos, hyper strict Japanese-style order… I met up again with Kyle Catlett in Tokyo, who displayed a number of martial arts skills on stage, in the company of a japanese child star. As always the Japanese are charming and can’t do enough for their guests.

news japon 3

news japon 1

news tokyo 4

As translations are long (see Lost in Translation…) I drew some portraits of the journalists. One of them even gave me his cap because I liked it!

I also ran into Claudie Ossard, producer of Delicatessen, The City and Amelie, who was filming with Ana Girardot.

Spivet did well there.

October 2014. Lights in Lyon

I was MC at Alien night at the Halle Garnier in front of 4,000 spectators… sitting on wooden chairs. Mattresses were arranged at the rear for those who might crack. I was told that only a few dozen spectators left before the end. Could it be that the last true movie buffs are all in Lyon?

A nice meeting and lunch with Paolo Sorentino (I’ve seen La grande Bellezza 7 times).
And with Dan Ohlmann, who runs the Miniatures and SFX museum. Himself a miniaturist genius. He had managed to recover, among others, the Alien Queen, fix her up and staged her. Spectacular.

news lyon

September 2014. Festival of Deauville

news deauville

I was a member of a jury composed of former jury presidents, as well as Marie-Claude Pietragala with whom I became friends. Costa Gavras, Claude Lelouch, André Téchiné, Vincent Lindon, Pierre Lescure. Every breakfast was a pretext for an anecdote contest. Lelouch carried Charlie Chaplin up the stairs of his Club 13 and Mr Chaplin turned to hand him some change… I fell in love with Whiplash which won the grand prize and the public’s choice award.

June 2014. Munich Festival

news munich 2

I met up again with Kyle Catlett. A beautiful 3D projection, despite the “RealD” system. I sat next to the mayor of Munich who texted during the entire projection. I wonder what would happen if I did the same during one of his speeches… Wim Wenders was as lovely as ever, and congratulated me. I was pleased because he filmed in Montreal after me and used my favorite technicians, whom I had recommended. Along the way a quick visit to the sublime “Allianz Arena”. TS will make an honorable showing in Germany, like all of my films.

nws munich 1

1 2 3 4 5