![]() ![]() I immersed myself in it with a passion, not without falling into certain traps. The Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980) project was my first experience as a co-producer in public broadcasting. In this role I was also responsible for co-productions with Swiss cinema. In 1979 I was appointed head of fiction production at TSR. Sauve qui peut (la vie)įollowing the events of May 68 and a serious motorcycle accident in Paris, and after four years of experimentation with film and video in Grenoble, Godard’s return to the land of his childhood was a good opportunity for him to reconnect with films intended for normal distribution in cinemas. I suspect him of also watching so-called entertainment programmes… More seriously, he often expressed his admiration for TSR’s flagship current affairs programme Temps Présent, as shown in this letter contradicting his disdain for TV. He claimed to loathe it as killing the art of cinema and at the same time he needed to exist on television and in fact dreamed of making programmes, particularly showing tennis matches. It should be said at the outset that JLG’s attitude to television media was ambivalent. I like being recognised as a film-maker in my hometown in Rolle.” It’s local in a good way without the snobbery of Paris. He told me why after a tennis match one day: “When I go on Defaye’s show people in Rolle recognise me in the street the next day and my butcher serves me the best cuts. Without making a fuss about it, following his 1977 move to Rolle, a lovely little town on the shores of Lake Geneva, a few kilometres from his birthplace in Nyon, Jean-Luc Godard watched Spécial Cinéma and was happy to take part. It must also be said that the post-show dinner in a Geneva nightclub was an incentive for guests to come back. After a team had promoted their film on the programme, its box office improved overnight. Directors and actors from Europe, America and Asia were encouraged to come to Geneva by film distributors and cinema managers. They could be certain that their words would not be cut or censored, or distorted by editing. Spécial Cinéma had no trouble finding guests since filmmakers and actors enjoyed the challenge of live television. His poor eyesight led him to choose clothes that caught the light. But there was a rationale behind Christian’s bright suits and shirts. ![]() On the trivial side, some colleagues criticised Defaye’s wardrobe, which they saw as too flashy. The success of Spécial Cinéma aroused jealousy, some of it trivial, some less so. 1 As head of fiction (1979-1989) and later of programming at TSR (1993-2003), I made sure that Swiss television films produced and made by the broadcaster were promoted on the programme. An argument on Spécial Cinéma between Buache and then superstar Alain Delon has gone down in history. Claude Goretta, Alain Tanner, Michel Soutter, Francis Reusser, Daniel Schmidt, etc., were regulars, as was Freddy Buache, head of the Cinémathèque Suisse, a respected critic and great defender of auteur cinema. ![]() The programme also featured numerous items and entire shows on Swiss cinema. Over more than 20 years Spécial Cinéma hosted many of the world’s major stars and directors, including Alain Delon, Kirk Douglas, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Henri Verneuil, Claude Sautet, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani, Sophia Loren, Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Simone Signoret and many more. ![]() Through this show Defaye, the director Christian Zeender (future head of the cinema department at the Swiss Federal Office of Cultural Affairs), co-producer Christiane Cusin and ex-announcer Claudette Defaye, Christian’s wife and co-presenter, popularised the art of cinema in French-speaking Switzerland. At 20:00 every Monday its presenter and producer, Christian Defaye, a journalist from Lyons, would present the evening’s new film and the items for that evening’s Spécial Cinéma, which usually went out immediately after the film. Spécial Cinéma got into its stride when it moved to Monday evenings. It was originally broadcast on Tuesday evenings and was sometimes taken off to make way for screenings of football matches, since at that time TSR had only one channel. First broadcast on Septemit came to an end in the spring of 1995, following the death from cancer of its main producer and presenter, Christian Defaye. Spécial Cinéma was a weekly programme on Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR, public broadcaster in French-speaking Switzerland). ![]()
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