Olivier Assayas Hates Nostalgia

Our friends at Grolsch Film Works have a website where you can find out what they’ve been up to and read/watch interesting stuff about films. Every week we'll be plucking the highlights. This is that.

All hail the return of Alejandro Jodorowsky! After 23 years, the legendary Chilean-French director of El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973) and Santa Sangre (1989) is set to release his first directorial effort since 1990's The Rainbow Thief. The film is called The Dance of Reality and it looks… well, incredibly "far-out". But then, we shouldn't really be surprised should we?

Forget that the trailer isn't in English – it doesn't matter. Those colours! That wig! That dog in the hat! This is easily the greatest news we've heard since hearing Paul Thomas Anderson's new film has gone into production, mainly because Jodorowsky is the cult filmmaker par excellence. And, as evidenced by this trailer, there really is no one as visually audacious as the 84-year-old.

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Each month our panel of higly esteemed judges will choose ten films to be shortlisted and showcased on the Grolsch Film Works website. Quarterly our Judges will choose three winners from that quarter of entries. The first place winner from each quarter will have a chance to win the grand prize of being nominated by Grolsch Film Works for the San Francisco International Film Festival.

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French director Olivier Assayas is one of the most interesting and versatile talents working in world cinema today. Formerly a film critic for landmark publication Cahiers du Cinéma, his subsequent filmmaking career has taken in everything from intimately observed dramas (Cold Water, Late August, Early September), technological thrillers (Demonlover) and even epic crime biopics (Carlos). Assayas’ latest, Something In The Air (French title: Apres Mai), is a subtle, stirring and semi-autobiographical look at a group of friends in a suburb outside Paris in the early 1970s. As they struggle to keep the revolutionary fire burning after the explosive student and worker riots of May 1968, friendships fall apart and a host of tough lessons are learned. We sat down with Assayas recently to chat about music, the importance of avoiding nostalgia and the complexities of the protest movement.

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Originally worn as an undergarment in the 19th century by miners and stevedores, the T-shirt as outerwear look was adopted by the U.S. Navy during or following the Spanish-American War. As Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Marlon Brando popularised the white tee as outerwear, closely following on the look in The Wild One (1953). Once James Dean wore the tee with blue jeans and a red leather jacket in Rebel Without A Cause (1955), the T-shirt’s fate was sealed as an icon of rebellious adolescence.

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Keep your peepers peeled for more Grolsch Film Works updates next week. Go to grolschfilmworks.com to see what’s happening right now.