Michel Reilhac: Twice Upon a Time
Michel Reilhac is currently Head of Cinema for the French/ German public cultural broadcasting company ARTE France, acquiring about 100 films a year and co-producing each year around 25 independent features worldwide. He speaks to us about the new storytelling language in the making.
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ABOUT Michel Reilhac
” Michael is a key personality in the French audiovisual and filmmaking landscape. He says, we will learn from our mistakes as we try things. We are inventing a new language as we learn how to use the new tools of interaction and participation that engage us and the audience in a more complex flow of exchange around our stories.
He was raised in different countries in Africa, in the desert and in the jungle, until he was 18. Michael then became a dancer while doing my MBA in international marketing. He is always trying to find reasons for understanding how he always end up getting fascinated for the unknown and the wild.
He works in Europe for Arte, a public cultural broadcaster. The films they do aren’t thrillers. They’re not cast driven.They’re not defined by market rules of supply and demand. They are not designed to recoup investment. The films they do (28 from all over the world each year ) are auteur driven, they are mavericks in the industry.
Arte actively look for daring atypical non formated projects that explore new frontiers in film language and pioneer new themes. Those films are not safe, they are not easy, but they are the nuclear heart of innovation. He says, “they plant the seeds for the likes of Rodrigo Cortez to be harvested later by the industry.”
Michael speaks from a place where independent films are pushed out of the market because they are not products. These films are seeds thrown in the wind, they are risky visions, they are dreams and not yet commodities. That being said he says his point is, quoting Marshal Mc Luan, “The medium is no longer the message, the medium is a mess.”
The VIDEO
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