Editor's Note.

By Mark Peranson

The cover image for this issue of Cinema Scope is a beautiful, simple (maybe not so simple) still—in proper aspect ratio—taken from Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s ultimate film, Quei loro incontri. (I have chosen to use the original title because I like the way it sounds.) It is allowed to stand on its own, unsullied by text, the two black strips above and below standing for both mortality and the medium to which Huillet and Straub chose to dedicate their lives.

As the year ends, we are already seeing an increase in the number of cinema “celebrity” deaths, by dint of the fact that as the 20th century progressed, the number of celebrities increased exponentially. Robert Altman, Philippe Noiret, and many others have passed in the few weeks before this issue was put to bed, but Danièle Huillet stands above them all. Her death must be considered the most significant film event of 2006. And I say this having only seen four of Huillet and Straub’s films—the latest, on a German-subtitled print with which I had to follow along using an English dialogue list. So the image, then, is here left to stand alone, and I find it overwhelming.

I suspect that recent events will, ironically, lead to a wider exposure for their singular cinema, but, for now, in trying to think of the best way to honour Huillet in a manner that appeals to beginners and Straubians alike, I’ve included a piece on Quei loro incontri (the most comprehensive in English to date, I believe), as well as a dialogue between Pedro Costa and Thom Andersen on Huillet and Straub from this past September. This means, to the chagrin of a dedicated handful of Costa-ites, pushing back part two of my interview with Pedro Costa on Colossal Youth yet again. (Lest those who doubt that anybody cares: I have been asked more about that follow-up than anything else in the magazine, both by email and in Toronto, Vancouver, Vienna, Gijón, and parts in-between in the preceding months.)

With the two aforementioned pieces, I’m quite pleased with how this issue has turned out, but for reasons that are hard to capture in words. Perhaps it stems from my belief that there is no real way of reconciling all of the pieces in this issue—an issue where Tony Scott stands alongside The Wire and Abderrahmane Sissako—yet in some unlikely way they make perfect sense together. At least to me. And, also, one should always recall it’s just as important to look at what’s been left out as it is to look at what’s been included.

I’ve always strived for diversity in the writing and the films covered in the magazine; sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. But this somewhat impossible issue, one bridging various kinds of approaches to seeing and writing on cinema, seems to me to be what the ongoing project of Cinema Scope is about: both providing alternative views (or, if you will, revisions) on established truths, but also, simply, highlighting filmmakers who have achieved something worth praising.

—Mark Peranson