ROGER LEENHARDT

DIRECTING

Roger Leenhardt (23 July 1903 – 4 December 1985) was a French writer and filmmaker. Born in a bourgeois Protestant family, this brilliant student of philosophy was very soon fascinated by cinema.

Through a cousin, he started working for the newsreel program Éclair Journal and in 1934 set up his own production company with René Zuber, "Les Films du Compas," later known as, "Roger Leenhardt Films.” As a critic in the journal Esprit, he was considered one of the most perceptive observers of pre-war France and strongly influenced André Bazin and the entire "Nouvelle Vague.” Thanks to his series of articles known as "La petite école du spectateur," cinema became considered as an art and a language in its own right.