François Truffaut

• French filmmaker, born in 1932 in Paris, died 21 October 1984 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

  François Truffaut’s childhood was marked by his hatred for school and his conflicts with his mother (his father was unknown). He found solace in reading and countless hours at the cinema. At the age of sixteen he spent several months in a youth rehabilitation centre for unpaid debts of the film club he had created. When he left the centre, André Bazin took him under his wing and helped Truffaut publish his first film reviews. At the film magazine Cahiers du cinéma and the magazine Arts, he became friends with Godard, Rivette, Chabrol, and Rohmer, who became inseparable and together revolutionised French film reviewing, eventually becoming the French New Wave movement. In 1958 he made a short film The Mischief Makers followed a year later by The 400 Blows, the first volume of an autobiographical saga featuring Antoine Doinel, Truffaut’s fictional counterpart played by Jean-Pierre Léaud. This film, universally recognized as a decisive work, launched the filmmaker’s career that includes more than twenty feature films. His entire life was devoted to film in all its aspects: he acted in several of his own films and in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he produced Rivette and Pialat’s first films, and continued to write film reviews regularly, notably in his most famous work, Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock, a book of interviews with the master of suspense.

• Une visite (short film, 1954) - The Mischief Makers (Les Mistons, 1957) - A Story of Water (Une histoire d'eau, realized with Jean-Luc Godard, 1958) - The 400 Blows (Les Quatre cents coups, 1959) - Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste, 1960) - Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim, 1962) - Antoine and Colette (Antoine et Colette, medium-length film from the movie L'Amour à 20 ans,1962) -  The Soft Skin (La Peau douce, 1964) - Fahrenheit 451 (1966) - The Bride Wore Black (La Mariée était en noir, 1968) - Stolen Kisses (Baisers volés, 1968) - Mississippi Mermaid (La Sirène du Mississipi, 1969) - The Wild Child (L'Enfant sauvage, 1969) - Bed and Board (Domicile conjugal, 1970) - Two English Girls (Les Deux Anglaises et le continent, 1971) - Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (Une belle fille comme moi,1972) - Day for Night (La Nuit américaine, 1973) - The Story of Adèle H. (L'Histoire d'Adèle H., 1975) - Small Change (L'Argent de poche, 1976) - The Man Who Loved Women (L'Homme qui aimait les femmes, 1977) - The Green Room (La Chambre verte, 1978) - Love on the Run (L'Amour en fuite, 1979) - The Last Metro (Le Dernier métro, 1980) - The Woman Next Door (La Femme d'à côté, 1981) - Finally, Sunday! (Vivement dimanche !, 1983)