Cahiers du cinéma. The site.

The slightly cheesy, slightly cool (in a "Let's go out to the lobby!" sort of way) Flash intro still greets you when you hit the Cahiers du cinéma site, but what lies behind it is new. Of the greatest immediate interest are the archives. At the moment, you can view PDFs of a selection of issues - #1 (April 1951), #100 (October 1959), #200 (April/May 1968), #300 (May 1979), #400 (October 1987) and #500 (March 1996) - the complete issues. And the full library, all 70K pages of it, is headed online "soon."

Of course, if, like me, you don't read French, you'll be spending some time with Google, but fair enough. Clicks (rather than euros) away are pieces by Bazin, Renoir, Truffaut, Godard, Henri Langois (on the 25th anniversary of the Cinémathèque) and the rest, and besides, as with most magazines, the most fun's to be had just leafing through them aimlessly.

But there are other places to wander: Selections from the current issue (#602; one piece in English even), stills from city shots, a calendar of events, a new forum, a few more reads and, most playfully, Takeshi Kitano's "Ciné-manga interactif." He snapped 69 photos; you make your selections, write your captions and place your storyboard alongside those from Kitano and others. Among those who participated in the run-up to issue #600 were Olivier Assayas, Catherine Breillat, Arnaud Desplechin, Hong Sang-soo, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and others. Many others.

Thanks, Frederic.

Posted by dwhudson at June 8, 2005 7:01 AM