Assayas on Assayas is far more than a career-spanning interview. Beginning with his cosmopolitan childhood and extending through every stage of his artistic development, Olivier Assayas uses a conversation with critic Jean-Michel Frodon as a springboard for an expansive exploration of cinema, memory, literature, politics, travel, and the creative process. Moving freely between intimate recollection and detailed accounts of filmmaking, Assayas traces the origins of all his films through to demonlover, revealing the ideas, collaborations, accidents, and obsessions that shaped them.
At once a portrait of the artist and a chronicle of contemporary cinema, the book follows Assayas from his formative years as a critic at Cahiers du cinéma to his emergence as one of the defining filmmakers of his generation. Along the way, he reflects on artistic influences, creative partnerships, the realities of film production, and the perpetual tension between personal experience and artistic expression. Candid, intellectually restless, and deeply personal, Assayas on Assayas offers an unparalleled portrait of one of contemporary cinema’s most influential filmmakers, and a rare glimpse into the relationship between a life lived and a life transformed into art.
Olivier Assayas (b. 1955) is one of France’s most acclaimed contemporary filmmakers. After writing for Cahiers du Cinéma in the early 1980s, he emerged as a director with Disorder (1986) and went on to make a diverse body of work that includes Cold Water, Irma Vep, Demonlover, Summer Hours, Carlos, Clouds of Sils Maria, and Personal Shopper. Renowned for his intellectually adventurous and formally innovative films, Assayas has also written extensively on cinema and published books on filmmakers including Ingmar Bergman and Kenneth Anger.
Translated from French by Paul Cronin.
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