Director Claire Denis (“Beau Travail” “High Life”) wrote an essay for Vulture, in which she describes how she’s been keeping busy with a new film project, watching movies, and cooking.
“I’m working in the mornings on a new script because I am also preparing a feature film for the end of fall in Central America with Robert Pattinson and Margaret Qualley,” wrote Denis. “This, of course, is already postponed. But in the meantime, I’m writing.”
Much like yours truly, Denis is also catching up on cinema that she may have missed over the years.
“I’m watching films at night sometimes, too,” she said. “Last night, I watched a Michael Mann movie, ‘Thief’…I thought I was going to watch a lot of [Yasujirō] Ozu movies, and I watched a few, but then I realized that, given my situation, it would be hard if I only went back to the films I have a very strong relation to.”
Denis continued, “I’ve also tried to catch up with some films through Apple TV. Sometimes old films, sometimes new; I don’t want to watch one type of movie. I did watch Michael Powell’s ‘The Edge of the World,’ a very important film for me. I saw ‘Shaft,’ the original, by Gordon Parks. I saw two films by Marguerite Duras. I watched the films of Oshima Nagisa and a few films by [Shōhei] Imamura like ‘Vengeance Is Mine.’ I think I saw six or seven films by Imamura last week — an orgy of Imamura!”