Olivier Assayas

Olivier Assayas
Born	January 25, 1955 (1955-01-25) (age 56) Paris, France
Spouse	Maggie Cheung (1998-2001) (divorced)

Olivier Assayas (born January 25, 1955) is a French film director and screenwriter.

He made his debut in 1986, after directing some short films and writing for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.

Career

Assayas's father was French director/screenwriter Jacques Remy (1910–1981).^{[citation needed]} Assayas started his career in the industry by helping him. He ghostwrote episodes for TV shows his father was working on when his health failed.

His film Cold Water was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.^[1]

His biggest hit to date has been Irma Vep, starring Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung, which manages to be a tribute both to French director Louis Feuillade and to Hong Kong cinema.

While working at Cahiers du cinéma, Assayas wrote lovingly about European film directors he admires but also about Asian directors. One of his latest films is a documentary about Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

He married Hong Kong movie actress Maggie Cheung in 1998. They divorced in 2001, but their relationship remained amicable, and in 2004 Cheung made her award-winning movie Clean with him.

He married actress-director Mia Hansen-Løve. They met when Hansen-Løve, then seventeen at the time, starred in Assayas' 1998 feature Late August, Early September, but "[they] didn't get together until [she] was 20".^[2]

In April 2011, it was announced that he would be a member of the jury for the main competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.^[3]

Influences

“

That radicality in cinema involved just being outside of the world of modern images, and the key to it was the work of Robert Bresson, who has been by far the most important influence in my work, and intellectually it’s been the influence of Guy Debord—basically, you know, it’s been Debord-Bresson, Bresson-Debord, the things that’ve always defined my framework, the way I look at the world.[4]

”

Awards

• Prix Jean Vigo 1992 with Paris Awakens (Paris s'éveille)

Filmography as director

• Carlos (2010)
• L'Heure d'été (2007)
• Boarding Gate (2007)
• Paris, je t'aime (2006) (segment "Quartier des Enfants Rouges")
• Clean (2004)
• Demonlover (2002)
• Sentimental Destinies (2000)
• Late August, Early September (1998)
• HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien (1997)
• Irma Vep (1996)
• Cold Water (1994)
• A New Life (1993)
• Paris Awakens (1991)
• Winter's Child (1989)
• Disorder (1986)
• Winston Tong en Studio (short documentary) (1984)

References

1. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Cold Water". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2988/year/1994.html. Retrieved 2009-08-31. 
2. ^ "The film that changed my life: Mia Hansen-Løve". guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jun/27/film-changed-life-mia-hansen-love. Retrieved 2010-09-25. 
3. ^ "The Jury of the 64th Festival de Cannes". Cannes. 2011-04-20. http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/article/58042.html. Retrieved 2011-04-20. 
4. ^ [1]

External links

• Olivier Assayas at the Internet Movie Database
• Olivier Assayas at AlloCiné (French)
• Interview with Olivier Assayas at IFC.com
• Reverse Shot: Olivier Assayas
• New York Times article on Assayas
• Bringing Down the House: A Conversation with Olivier Assayas, The Notebook, mubi.com

Persondata
Name	Assayas, Olivier
Alternative names
Short description	Film director
Date of birth	1955-1-25
Place of birth	Paris, France
Date of death
Place of death