Project class of film director uand scenarist Claire Denis

Annual theme "Fragile Identities"

Summer term 2014

In cooperation with the Department IV Documentary Film, University of Television and Film Munich (HFF)

Claire Denis (born April 21, 1948, Paris) is a Paris-based filmmaker and one of the major artistic voices of contemporary French cinema. She grew up partly in Cameron, Burkina and Djibouti as a daughter of a colonial-official. Claire Denis enrolled in the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (now École Nationale Supérieure des Métiers de l'Image et du Son) where she graduated in 1971. At the beginning of her film career, she worked as an assistant director to Dušan Makavejev, Costa Gavras, Jacques Rivette, Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders. Claire Denis made her film debut in 1988 with Chocolat, a luminous depiction of malaise of the post-colonial world. Since 2002 she has been Professor of Film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Her work has dealt with themes of colonial and post-colonial West Africa, as well as issues in modern France.