Episode 4: Nostalgia in action

After much delay, we’re back! For the moment I can only afford to do Animus work in my spare time, and until this weekend, I basically had none. This could of course all change if the Substack gained more paying subscribers, so if you like what I’m doing with it, please spread the word far and wide. 

This is the first episode Manuela and I recorded after she’d returned to London from her acting workshop in Paris, and for a time we foolishly believed it would be the final episode for the podcast. It didn’t take long before we realised that there was too much to say for one episode, so here, we focus on Manuela’s week of film watching just before Paul and I joined her and got to experience the wonders of moviegoing in the French capital for ourselves. 

At the Forum des Images, Manuela found that the very large screening room was in fact perhaps not the best place to watch Tsai Ming Liang’s The River (1997), and longed for the more intimate and less sparsely populated spaces of smaller independent cinemas she’d visited. What would the director of Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) make of that situation? 

And what about Kleber Mendonça Filho? Manuela saw the Brazilian filmmaker’s most recent film, Pictures of Ghosts (2023), in a packed screening at the Louxor, where the documentary about the defunct cinemas of Filho’s childhood was preceded by an introduction from a French author promoting his book about the vanished cinemas of Paris — there used to be even more! Watching Filho’s film, Manuela felt nostalgic for a time of cinema-going she never knew. But since she was surrounded by so many people with the same longing, maybe what they were all yearning for wasn’t so out of reach. 

Nostalgia was also du jour at Le Champo, the last of the three cinemas on the Rue Champollion that Manuela visited (check out the previous episodes of the podcast where we talk about La Filmothèque and Reflet Medicis). This is perhaps the most iconic cinema of the three, with queues often visible outside on the Rue des Écoles. It features two screening rooms with 2K projectors and 120 seats each, and one of them can also project from 35mm. The cinema hosted a retrospective titled Le Losange, 60 ans de cinéma, celebrating 60 years of French production and distribution company Les Films du Losange. French director Éric Rohmer was one of its founders, and Manuela was lucky enough to see two of his films, the incredibly prescient The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (1993) and the wonderful A Summer’s Tale (1996), each introduced by members of the cast. But first, she had the distinct pleasure of talking to a slightly cranky, lovely, French old lady while they were waiting for the film to start. Do you even remember the last time you met someone in that way? How different would going to the cinema be in the UK if films weren’t always preceded by trailers and ads so loud that you can’t talk to the people you’re with, let alone strangers? 

And if we can’t do without ads, could we perhaps try film clubs? After a screening of Henri Verneuil’s conspiracy thriller I… For Icarus (1979) at Reflet Medicis, Manuela stuck around for the film club discussion organised by members of Les Cinesthésies, who select a film and invite a speaker to discuss it from a philosophical lens. The professor who was invited this time opened the conversation by openly admitting that he didn’t like the film — only in Paris!!! 

If you have any questions or comments for Manuela or me, you can reach out on Instagram at @animus_mag, on BlueSky at @animusmagazine.bsky.social, or by email at contact@animusmagazine.com.

If you like this episode, please share it far and wide! Becoming a True Cinephile member is the best way to support Animus, but you can also make a one-time donation — every little helps. 

–Elena Lazic