Olivier Assayas

Kent Jones is an internationally recognized writer and filmmaker. He writes regularly for Film Comment and his work has appeared in many magazines, newspapers, anthologies, and catalogues. In 2007, Wesleyan University Press published Physical Evidence, a selection of his writings. In 2009, he was appointed Executive Director of The World Cinema Foundation. He has worked with Martin Scorsese on numerous projects and documentary films including My Voyage to Italy (1999), Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007) which he wrote and directed, and the Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning A Letter to Elia (2010). He is preparing a feature film, It Never Entered My Mind, for the winter of 2012.

• Preface, by Kent JonesWestway to the World, by Glenn KennyBlack Boxes. Désordre, by Jeff ReichertCold Comforts. L'Enfant de l'hiver, by Alice LovejoyWhen You Leave, You Want Time to Stand Still. Paris s'éveille, by Michael KoreskyMoving On. Une nouvelle vie, by Kent JonesRevival. L'Eau froide, by Howard HamptonThe Strange Case of Irma Vep. Irma Vep, by Larry GrossAfter Art Cinema. HHH—Portrait de Hou Hsiao-hsien, by Kristin M. JonesThe Soul in Times of Danger. Fin août, début septembre, by Richard Suchenski"How Futile Work Is." Les Destinées sentimentales, by B. KiteStop Stop Start Again. Demonlover, by Nick PinkertonBetter to Fade Away. Clean, by Chris ChangThe Doctor Is In. Noise, by Gina TelaroliAnywhere and Everywhere. Boarding Gate, by Kent JonesCosmic Pulses. Eldorado, by Geoffrey O'brienThe Secret Life of Objects. L'Heure d'été, by Greil MarcusWhat the Film Wants. Carlos, by Kent JonesLost Companions and Fleeing Ghosts. Après-Mai, by David Phelps, Kent JonesEarly and In-Between. Short Films, by CollaboratorsDenis Lenoir, Éric Gautier, Sylvie Barthet, and Luc Barnier in conversation with Kent Jones, by Olivier AssayasTen FilmsTimelineFilmographyBibliographyContributorsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgments

A thoughtful, personal survey of Assayas's career by American critics edited by Jones and an English translation of Assayas's 2002 memoir 'A Post-May Adolescence: Letter to Alice Debord', both published in handsome volumes by the Austrian Film Museum, expose this tension in Assayas's work: between a desire for risk and a sensitive intelligence resistant to easy solutions; between allegiance to cinema 'degree zero,' a cinema of presence, and a romantic fascination with the passage of time...Jones, who writes four of the essays himself, has been in correspondence with Assayas for two decades, and the richness of the book is due not only to his deep affinity for Assayas's work but from the dialogue that has developed between the two of them on the nature of cinema and art.