Richard Linklater sheds light on past and future of Indie films at Cannes
The director Richard Linklater receives a thunderous standing ovation at Cannes
Richard Linklater’s recent film, Nouvelle Vague, a cinematic tribute to Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave movement, received a memorable standing ovation.
The loudest applause in the ovation was from Linklater’s longtime friend and indie film revolutionary, Quentin Tarantino.
“He’s one of my oldest film buddies, so to have him there was cool,” Linklater said.
The brand new film explores Godard’s rebellious filmmaking spirit during the creation of a cinematic revolutionary movie, Breathless. This movie changed filmmaking with its notable jump cuts and handheld style.
Linklater found himself thinking about the parallels between his journey with the 1990s film, Slacker, and Godard’s.
“I told Quentin last night that I felt like I was 28 again making this film,” he shared “I remember on ‘Slacker,’ I felt the pressure of, yeah, everybody’s looking at you like you don’t know what you’re doing. And you’re full of confidence and cinematic ideas and revolution, and then the real world is around you kind of going: ‘Oh yeah? So, what now?’ It’s an exhilarating, but fraught mindset.”
Comparing the cultural shift between the 1960s and 1990s, Linklater noted how he, Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, and others once disrupted Hollywood conventions.
However, he’s sceptical if such a revolution could occur again at this time.
“It still happens, but the mainstream doesn’t fully embrace or acknowledge it,” he said, blaming today’s obsession with financial success.
