From 1968 to 1991 the acclaimed film theorist Christian Metz wrote several remarkable books on film theory: Essais sur la signifi cation au cinema, tome1 et 2; Langage et cinema; Le signifiant imaginaire; and L'Enonciation impersonnelle. These books set the agenda of academic film studies during its formative period. Metz's ideas were taken up, digested, refined,reinterpreted, criticized and sometimes dismissed, but rarely ignored. This volume collects and translates into English for the first time a series of interviews with Metz, who offers readable summaries,elaborations, and explanations of his sometimes complex and demanding theories of film. He speaks informally of the most fundamental concepts that constitute the heart of film theory as an academic discipline - concepts borrowed from linguistics, semiotics, rhetoric, narratology, and psychoanalysis. Within the colloquial language of the interview, we witness Metz's initial formation and development of his film theory. The interviewers act as curious readers who pose probing questions to Metz about his books, and seek clarification and elaboration of his key concepts. We also discover the contents of his unpublished manuscript on jokes, his relation to Roland Barthes, and the social networks operative in the French intellectual community during the 1970s and 1980s.

Collection of erotic films by French director Alain Robbe-Grillet. 'The Immortal One' (1963) stars Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Françoise Brion as a sad man and a beautiful woman who meet unexpectedly and persue a passionate affair. 'Trans-Europe Express' (1967) tells the story of a film director, Jean (Robbe-Grillet), his producer and his assistant as they ride the Trans-Europe Express train from Paris to Antwerp. In 'The Man Who Lies' (1968), Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as Boris, a man who is believed to have betrayed his country during World War II. After he is taken in by the family of a dead rebel, he witnesses the lesbian affair between the man's sister and a servant and must decide whether to continue down the path of deception or get back on the straight and narrow. 'Eden and After' (1970) is an erotic horror starring Catherine Jourdan and Lorraine Rainer as students who take part in a series of games in a quiet café. In 'N. Rolls the Dice' (1971), a young man who makes a living playing dice becomes haunted by the image of two women with short hair. 'Successive Slidings of Pleasure' (1974) examines the story of a young woman believed to be a witch. When her partner Nora (Olga Georges-Picot) is found dead, stabbed through the heart with a pair of scissors, she is incarcerated in a convent prison where her sexual fantasies are perceived as the devil's work.