Conversations with Christian Metz

From 1968 to 1991 the acclaimed film theorist Christian Metz wrote several remarkable books on film theory: Essais sur la signification au cinema, tome 1 et 2; Langage et cinéma; 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, development, and application of these concepts. The interviewers act as curious readers who pose probing questions to Metz about his books, and seek clarification and elaboration of his key concepts. Metz also reveals a series of curious and unusual insights, including the contents of his unpublished (and now apparently 'lost') manuscript, the social networks operative in the French intellectual community during the 1970s and 1980s, Metz's relation to the Filmology movement, and his views on Gilles Deleuze's film theory.