Go West

In 2021, I met Michel Ciment, author and critic historical figure of international cinephilia and well-known actor of the magazine Positive. I was very touched by his eclectic and humanistic approach to cinema, his great finesse, his curiosity and his interest in all the arts around cinema. "Go West" collects 26 interviews with different generations filmmakers in Hollywood, from Fritz Lang to Quentin Tarantino, and represents thus the dialogue between Michel Ciment and American directors on a fifty years. With this book, I would like as a publisher share with new generations of film enthusiasts, but also film enthusiasts more experienced, the work of Michel Ciment, of the Positif magazine, of this part of cinephilia recognized worldwide – but today confronted with continuous challenge of the transmission of knowledge in a history of forms put to badly affected by the ultra-cultural industry and its overproduction, the amnesia that it carries with it its dictatorship of the present. There are no old films, no old books or old authors; only works that have not been discovered. Michel Ciment was above all a ferryman; through his work he belongs to a community of individuals, of Enlightenment, so precious to their contemporaries and future generations. Enlightenment that it is up to us today to keep them lit by always moving towards what we do not yet know. Towards the West. Directors interviewed: Budd Boetticher, Richard Fleischer, Fritz Lang, Gordon Douglas, Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, Richard Brooks, John Frankenheimer, Irvin Kershner, Sidney Lumet, Robert Mullligan, Arthur Penn, Franklin J. Schaffner, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Alan J. Pakula, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, Sydney Pollack, Oliver Stone, Woody Allen, Tim Burton, The Cohen Brothers, James Gray, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino. Note : As a preface to “Go West”, an interview between Michel Ciment and Julien Magnani.