Claire Denis at the NYFF

Claire Denis with two actors (Isaach de Bankolé, William Nadylam) from her new film The White Material during the Q&A at the NYFF on Saturday, October 10. It is the third film that Denis has shot in Africa, following Chocolat (1988) and Beau Travail (1999), each made a decade apart. It's as though Denis, who spent her childhood in various regions of Africa, was periodically drawn back to the country she first considered her home. (Born in Paris in 1948, Denis – whose father was a civil servant – spent most of her childhood moving from one part of Africa to another. She only returned to France as a teenager. Not surprisingly, her interests as a filmmaker have often been focused on displaced individuals living on foreign soil – which was her own experience both growing up in Africa and returning to France as a young woman.) This is not to say that these films should be understood as autobiographical or sentimental. Indeed, Denis is one of the least sentimental directors working today. She has also developed, over the years, an impressionistic, rhythmic style of filmmaking that should be seen by all who are interested in rethinking the nature of "narrative" as it applies to the medium of film. (The best place to start? See I Can't Sleep and Beau Travail. And see The White Material, if/when it finally picks up a US distributor.)

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