Éloge des lianes, Un monde méconnu. Annik Schnitzler and Claire Arnold. With contributions and illustrations by Francis Hallé and Sarah Cardinal

15.5 × 24 cm 266 pages color illustrations in a supplement featuring coedition institut lumière/actes sud august 2022 retail price: 25 €

A press attaché for twenty years, Corinne Bacharach worked on the Festival d’Automne, the Cahiers du cinéma, the Festival Premiers Plans in Angers, the Fipa, the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, and Christian Bourgois and Odile Jacob editions. Under the umbrella of her own communication agency cb/c, she collaborated with the Avignon Festival from 1989-1991 and participated in the inauguration of sites like the Entrepôt with Frédéric Mitterand, La Ferme du Buisson and the Carré d’Art in Nîmes. She managed communication for mahj and managed the program of its auditorium from 2000-2017.

(© Pierre Jamet)

MARGOT CAPELIER, THE CASTING QUEEN

Corinne Bacharach

The author of this work, Corinne Bacharach, had the chance to meet Margot Capelier in her lifetime and went into carry out in-depth research and gather testimonies of artists to produce portraits of the artistic director, a figure of the shadows whose name has been forgotten. Thus the author overcomes this oversight in cinematic history by shedding light on the life of this icon of French cinema who worked as a casting director with the great filmmakers of her time Fred Zinnemann, Gérard Oury, Joseph Losey, Roman Polanski and Patrice Chéreau. In France, Margot Capelier was the first to turn casting direction into a recognized, respected profession in its own right. Such was her love of actors, she went to the theater every night and revealed a number of talents including Michael Lonsdale, Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche and Lambert Wilson. Her art was to associate the reading of the text with actors’ personalities. Her advice became indispensable to many, both to American directors when they were filming in France and to French and European filmmakers. Born Marguerite Leibowitch

(© Archives Jérôme Diamant-Berger)

in Paris in 1910 to Jewish parents from Odesa, she met Jacques Prévert in 1934, a life-changing encounter. Prévert introduced her to the Groupe Octobre, then hired her as an assistant during the Second World War, during which he protected her. In this book Margot Capelier appears an independent woman, a caring mother and a loyal friend who won over the hearts of her friends and family as well as several generations of artists thanks to her acute perspicacity, her passionate temperament and her vicious sense of humor.

“I have set out on the trail of an adventurer, a pioneering woman, a larger than life character whose public world mingled with her private existence. Without her, French cinema would probably not have the same color.”

(© Archives familiales)