Weight in measure

KJ: Did you see his films when you were a teenager?

OA: I saw them without understanding them - I just thought they were beautiful, exciting, and hip. When I watched them again a few years ago, what struck me was the way it all made complete sense. I admire the honesty of Anger's work: he never made a film twice, never made one for money. I was also impressed by how much has been stolen from him - things he invented, that came out of his life experience, have become visual gimmicks. You see this in everything from music videos to Hollywood movies.

KJ: What is the relationship between your films and painting? A critic in Cahiers du Cinema recently remarked that your work oscillates between two poles - writing and painting, Do you agree?

OA: I might not have said it that way, though I suppose it makes sense. However, I'd like not to oscillate, but to connect those two things as strongly as I can. I don 't want to be pedantic about it, though, because when you're dealing with the connection between painting and cinema, it can quickly become too . . .

KJ: . . . too labored . . .

OA: . . . but when I was a teenager until I was twenty-five, painting and drawing were an important part of my life. Although I wouldn't dare look at those things now, I think they taught me a lot about how to capture invisible things, how art can capture emotion, I love words, and somehow consider myself a writer, but I still know that the strongest things are said without words. So what I'm looking for, in terms of filmmaking, is to connect those two things - to use words and . . . non-words (laughter),

KJ: I don't know if this is happening in France, but in the United States some journalists are calling French filmmakers of your generation the "new New Wave." Do you see this as media hype?

OA: Yes, it's hype. Whenever you have more than one interesting filmmaker in France at a time it becomes a "nouvelle Nouvelle Vague." I suppose I can only give the standard response, which is that historically the New Wave was extremely important. They invented a different kind of film, with new values, a new way of relating to the cinema of the past; they benefited from new techniques, lighter cameras, and more sensitive film stock. And they opened the way for everything that happened afterward. In that sense the New Wave can't happen twice. But I will say that today there are perhaps more exciting French directors than at any other period, and I'm happy to be working here because I can have a dialogue with many interesting artists. It's not only the older generation of the New Wave who are still making exciting films, but people like Philippe Garrel, Andre Techine, and Benoit Jacquot, who are producing their more mature work. You have younger directors, such as Cedric Kahn, Arnaud Desplechin, Patricia Mazuy, and Claire Denis.

KJ: What about the line some are drawing between the work of filmmakers like yourself and Arnaud Desplechin, and others, like Gaspar Noe and Mathieu Kassovitz, who make films about the underclasses in France?