Renato Berta

When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence, he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example, as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of artistry and how it corresponds to the individual behind the camera. A wealth of archival footage brings us close to many directors and actors in Schmid’s circle. If you’ve never seen a Daniel Schmid film, you are sure to want to after watching this portrait of his life.

In the summer of 1986, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub were working in the park of an old Sicilian mansion and in a clearing at the foot of Mount Etna shooting Der Tod des Empedokles. Assistant cameraman Jean-Paul Toraille toyed around, so to speak, with his first video camera, filming the daily work on the set. Now, 24 years later, he was joined by Jean-Marie Straub in editing the material into a film. Anyone who expected the shooting of Les Avatars de la mort d’Empédocle to be an austere affair, an exercise entirely devoid of humour or a Straubian tour de force is proven wrong: so much lightness, joy, concentration, spells of waiting for the sun to come out – and even proper slapstick in between – is hard to find.

Swiss filmmaker Daniel Schmid died on August 5, 2006, and German filmmaker Werner Schroeter on April 12, 2010. They were close friends, and along with Jean Eustache, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Philippe Garrel were the most innovative filmmakers of the post-New Wave era.

In 1996, Marcello Mastroianni talks about life as an actor. It's an anecdotal and philosophical memoir, moving from topic to topic, fully conscious of a man "of a certain age" looking back. He tells stories about Fellini and De Sica's direction, of using irony in performances, of constantly working (an actor tries to find himself in characters). He's diffident about prizes, celebrates Rome and Paris, salutes Naples and its people. He answers the question, why make bad films; recalls his father and grandfather, carpenters, his mother, deaf in her old age, and his brother, a film editor; he's modest about his looks. In repose, time's swift passage holds Mastroianni inward gaze.

Renato Berta, director of photography who won a César in 1988, this time appears in front of the camera under the direction of Paul Lacoste, who retraces the creative process of the Swiss filmmaker. Between archive images and anecdotes about his shoots with the greatest independent directors of his time (Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and even Louis Malle...), Renato Berta confides how, from a script, he imagines the scenes of a film.

A hommage to Jean-Marie Straub's and Danièle Huillet's film Quei loro incontri (2005), and to their access to cinema itself. In various encounters and conversations Nestler offers an insight into their life and work, including passages from Italian poet Cesare Pavese.