The French director Paul Vecchiali, author of a “rebellious, reflective and hypersentimental” cinema, died this Wednesday at the age of 92, the newspaper Le Monde revealed, citing the filmmaker’s producer.
“Although he has not always had the recognition he deserved, his work is still valued by those who know him and is considered a great influence by a whole nebula of young disciples,” wrote Le Monde.
Director, screenwriter, producer and actor, Paul Vecchiali has signed around 50 films, including “Les Ruses du Diable” (1965), “Femmes Femmes” (1974), “Requiem for a Woman” (1979) and “Le Cancre ” (2015), which he directed and starred with Catherine Deneuve.
In 2017, Vecchiali was in Portugal for a retrospective held by the IndieLisboa festival in conjunction with the Portuguese Cinematheque.
At the time, Cinemateca recalled that Paul Vecchiali was a contemporary of the Nouvelle Vague, but his cinema was not aligned with any movement: “Profoundly singular, Vecchiali’s cinema bears the mark of the independence of its production conditions and the freedom of its focus”. .
Vecchiali made his debut in 1961 with the film “Petits drames”, but the work remains unpublished, as the negative was lost.
From the filmography, among the best-known films are the comedy “Femmes Femmes”, screened in Venice, “Requiem for a woman”, “Once More” (1987) in which he addresses the advance of AIDS in the 1980s, or “Les sept déserteurs” (2017) and “Train de bias”, shot simultaneously, with the same crew and cast.
Vecchiali founded the production companies Les Films de Gion, Unité 3 and Diagonale, and wrote about cinema for various publications, including Cahiers du Cinéma magazine.
Source: TSF
