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Im Alter von 83 Jahren ist die große französische Produzentin und ehemalige Unifrance-Präsidentin Margaret Ménégoz gestorben.

Margaret Ménégoz (Credit: Imago / Abacapress)

Die französische Filmproduzentinnenlegende Margaret Ménégoz ist am 7. August im Alter von 83 Jahren verstorben. Von 2003 bis 2009 war sie zudem Präsidentin von Unifrance. Sie produzierte ab 1975 über Les Films du Losange, der von Barbet Schroeder und Éric Rohmer 1962 gegründeten Firma, zahlreiche Filme, darunter auch als Koproduzentin deutsche Werke wie Wim Wenders‘ „Ein amerikanischer Freund“, Rainer Werner Fassbinders „Chinesisches Roulette“ oder Volker Schlöndorffs „Eine Liebe von Swann“. Auch produzierte sie vier Filme von Michael Haneke: „Wolfszeit“, „Caché“, „Liebe“ und „Happy End“. Für ihre Produktionen wurde Ménégoz mit zahlreichen Preisen der wichtigsten Festivals der Welt geehrt, darunter der Spezialpreis der Jury beim Festival de Cannes für „Die Marquise von O.“ von Rohmer, der Goldene Bäre für „Pauline am Strand“ (ebenfalls Rohmer) und der Goldene Löwe in Venedig für Rohmers „Das grüne Leuchten“. Für...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Filmmaker, libertine, and decadent visionary Rainer Werner Fassbinder went through more doomed romances in the 1970s, the peak of his epic career, than even the most tragic poet could fit into a lifetime. For one, there was his affair with Moroccan actor El Hedi ben Salem, the star of “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,” a time marked by alcohol and drug abuse, psychological torment by all parties involved, and which ended with Salem going on a stabbing spree and later killing himself. But then there was Armin Meier, an orphaned butcher whom Fassbinder cast in “Chinese Roulette,” “Satan’s Brew,” and “I Only Want You to Love Me.” After their eventual split, Meier downed four bottles of sleeping pills during the week of Fassbinder’s birthday,...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

Filmmaker, libertine, and decadent visionary Rainer Werner Fassbinder went through more doomed romances in the 1970s, the peak of his epic career, than even the most tragic poet could fit into a lifetime. For one, there was his affair with Moroccan actor El Hedi ben Salem, the star of “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,” a time marked by alcohol and drug abuse, psychological torment by all parties involved, and which ended with Salem going on a stabbing spree and later killing himself. But then there was Armin Meier, an orphaned butcher whom Fassbinder cast in “Chinese Roulette,” “Satan’s Brew,” and “I Only Want You to Love Me.” After their eventual split, Meier downed four bottles of sleeping pills during the week of Fassbinder’s birthday,...

With the passing of Anna Karina, a curtain has fallen on the French New Wave, that fabled cinematic movement that brought fame to the man who made her name, Jean-Luc Godard. Yes, Godard is still with us, as is “Breathless” star Jean-Paul Belmondo (practically the last of the living New Wave legends), but his moviemaking compatriots François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jacques Demy, and, most recently, Agnès Varda are gone, and with them the spirit of playful abandon that Karina perfectly embodied.

In such Godard classics as “A Woman is a Woman,” “Pierrot le Fou,” “Alphaville,” and “Made in USA,” Karina appeared as a gamine and a femme fatale at the same time. Not since Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich had there been a director-and-star tandem so potent. The closest to it would be Philippe Garrel’s partnership with Nico — although the avant-garde blue plate specials made by...

Michael Ballhaus, the acclaimed, three-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer who worked on Gangs of New York and Goodfellas, died Tuesday evening in Berlin after a short illness. He was 81. Born August 5, 1935 in Germany, Ballhaus was an accomplished cinematographer, working closely with Rainer Werner Fassbinder on 16 films, beginning with 1970's Whity and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Satan’s Brew and Chinese Roulette, among others. Ballhaus also worked with Martin…...

Above: Danish poster for Maid for Murder a.k.a. She’ll Have to Go (Robert Asher, UK, 1962).Next week is a red letter week for New York cinephiles because Anna Karina is coming to town. Nouvelle vague icon, muse of Jean-Luc Godard, and one of the most alluring presences in cinema, Anna Karina, now aged 75 and still gorgeous, is gracing us with her presence at three of New York’s temples of cinema: at Bam on Tuesday, May 3, where she will talk to Melissa Anderson following a screening of A Woman is a Woman; at MoMI on Wednesday, May 4, where she will have a conversation with Molly Haskell following a screening of Pierrot le fou; and at Film Forum on Friday, May 6, where she will kick off a week long run of Band of Outsiders and the accompanying series Anna & Jean-Luc. It would be easy to fill this post...

It’s no real secret that we’re reaching a tipping point with home video. Streaming is proving a better and better option for the casual consumer every day, and even the cinephile dollar, which has rather successfully driven home video decisions for the past couple of years, has such services as Hulu, Fandor, Mubi, and – soon – FilmStruck vying for their attention. Physical distributors have subsequently doubled down on their most successful and acclaimed models. Criterion is going big on new-to-disc, big international titles with new restorations (Brighter Summer Day, Paris Belongs to Us, A Touch of Zen) and lavish new editions of American classics (The New World, Dr. Strangelove). Kino is investing in silent classics (Fantomas, The Phantom of the Opera, Diary of a Lost Girl) while diversifying to include more American studio titles. Masters of Cinema is going into deep specialty stuff with an Early Murnau box and Edvard Munch.

Donald Trump vs. Starbucks' War on Christmas. The War on Christmas: The movies that come to mind We're still in November, but the War on Christmas – according to online buzz, a second cousin once removed of the War on Cops – has begun. Weeping and gritting of teeth has seized certain population segments in the U.S.A. (and perhaps other countries as well) after Fox News, that beacon of intellectual freedom at the end of the cable news tunnel, announced that … Starbucks' holiday season cups are a) red b) devoid of Christmas decorations. Could it be a satanic conspiracy disguised as politically correct inclusiveness? The result of a communist takeover at the Seattle-headquartered company? Cruel and unusual Christian persecution in the form of paper cups? Your guess is as good as mine. Far-right Republican icon, U.S. presidential candidate, and 2015 political circus ringmaster Donald Trump seems to think that Starbucks...

Straight from the final week of The New York Film Festival here's Jason on Olivier Assayas' new film Clouds of Sils Maria, starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart.

If I was going to make a sort of Cinematic Mad Libs where I filled-in-the-blanks with all my favorite people, places, and things, which then somebody would take that list and turn that into a movie, there's a good chance that Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria would be the result. Noun-wise we have my favorite actress Juliette Binoche. Place-wise we have the Swiss Alps, my favorite place in all the world. And Thing-wise we have Rainer Werner Fassbinder's play (and movie) The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Sils Maria tosses all these ingredients into a pot and cooks up a stew that listen, I was just never not gonna like. It was made for me! And it is delicious.

A new retrospective puts the unconventional film-maker back in the spotlight. About time too says John Patterson

Pier Paolo Pasolini's gruesome murder nearly 40 years ago – his own Alfa Romeo was driven over his head after a rent-boy dispute/homophobic ambush/political assassination (the controversy endures) – was followed by the posthumous release of his most notorious succès de scandale, Salo, Or The 120 Days of Sodom, that poison feast of cruelty and excrement.

A murder you can't bear to think about, topped by a movie you can hardly bear to watch: it's unsurprising, perhaps, that people forgot about Pasolini very quickly indeed, relegating him merely to queer-bashing murder victim or the guy who made that rape, torture and shit-eating movie. It all left a very poor taste in the mouth.

There's another Pasolini, though. In fact there are several: the Marxist, the playwright, the documentarian, the poet who ranks high in the 20th-century Italian canon,...

The first images of Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon,” a film shot in a delicately lambent palette suggestive of old gelatin silver prints, is of a shrub-ringed meadow, a horse and rider approaching steadily from the horizon. Set in the peaceful period just before Germany’s entry into World War I, it seems poised to offer up a storybook location: all mewling animals, rustling leaves and pies cooling on windowsills. Then the horse goes flying through the air, tripped by a length of wire strung across its path.

For those familiar with Haneke, who’s made a career of sinisterly tweaking idyllic settings, this is a mostly hollow surprise. More accurately, it functions as the mean punch line to a quick visual joke. For in his oeuvre these storybook locations, in this case the bucolic old Germany of quaint villages and little farms, exist not only as legends to...