Thursday, April 17, 2014

Cahiers du Cinema's Special Director Issues (+ JLG's)

Every 100 issues Cahiers celebrates by getting an important film-related figure to edit that particular issue or make an hors-séries. It's usually an important director for the magazine. The person who is chosen is supposed to reflect the current editorial and aesthetic sensibility. For N.100 it was Jean Cocteau, for N.200 it was Henri Langlois (who was only its focus), for N.300 it was Jean-Luc Godard, for N.400 it was Wim Wenders, for N.500 it was Martin Scorsese, and for N.600 it was Takeshi Kitano.

With issue N.700 coming up in May 2014 the question that people are trying to figure out is who will be featured? Under Cahiers' current chief editor Stéphane Delorme they have been so good at championing its major directors through Événements and interviews that one wonders who they will highlight and what else could be said about them? Based on their recent emphasis, if I were to guess who will be picked it could potentially be Xavier Dolan, the Safdie brothers, Werner Herzog, Lars von Trier, Harmony Korine, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Abel Ferrara, Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg, Philippe Garrel, Leos Carax, Alain Guiraudie, Yann Gonzalez, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Gus van Sant, or Clint Eastwood. But regardless whoever they choose or whatever they do, the magazine has been of such high quality recently in terms of youthfulness, inspiration, combativeness and poetry that you just know it will be good!

In the meantime here is Jean-Luc Godard's special N.300 issue from May 1979.

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