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The present article reveals how the interest of modern artists in Giotto has contributed to his reevaluation in the second half of the 19th century. It also brings up the argument, that the theoretical discourse is nourished by contemporary artistic practice and that the reason why art history is interested in Giotto is due to the fact that artist pioneers, like the Pre-Raphaelites in England, have opened a new perspective on the understanding of this oeuvre. The present article is therefore interested in the different ways of accessing the work of Giotto, by means of travelling, photography and museums as well as the way how several major artistes—such as Ingres, Puvis de Chavannes, Edgar Degas, Van Gogh, Ferdinand Hodler, Maurice Denis, Carlo Carrà and Mark Rothko—took an interest in his art and comprised it with the theoretical material being at their disposal.

Bertrand Tavernier and Jean-Pierre Coursodon's approach of American cinema in Cinquante ans de cinéma américain is quite original: the authors rewrite or complete their articles in each new edition of their book. This way of proceeding is useful to take a step back about a subject which has been much reviewed in the french cinema magazines, especially in the sixties. Tavernier and Coursodon's articles discuss and strike down some prejudices and rectify some mistakes and imprecisions. They also reflect on judgement criteria. Nevertheless, each new vision of a film reveals judgement's precarity and vagaries. Such variations lead to reconsider films' unity insofar as the critics single some sequences or shots out, for their strangeness or singularity. Instead of delivering formal knowledge of their subject, Tavernier et Coursodon present themselves as collectors who are able to change their mind and eager to expose some remarkables films' pieces.

Founded in 1949, the German Democratic Republic fascinated the French for a long time, and probably even more after its disappearance. Despite the geopolitical tensions due to the Cold War, film exchanges between the GDR and the West did exist from the late 1940s. After 1989, several film retrospectives have been organized in France around the DEFA, the GDR's state-run cinematographic company. However, despite the real diversity of the DEFA cinematography, only a handful of films are screened. This article explores the French interest within the three last decades for East German films censored by the communist regime in 1965-1966, and their “rediscovery” in French festivals since the 1990s. It aims to understand whether or not this “rediscovery” occurs at the detriment of the discovery of other films produced in, or about the former GDR.

In May 2020, the Cinémathèque de Toulouse offered a thematic program about witches as historic figures, popular characters and entities of subversion. The Cinémathèque structure, which has a role in the conservation as well as in the distribution of the cinematographic heritage, is as such closely linked to the experience of reiterated viewing. Within this organization, the scheduler has the delicate task of implementing this experience of watching anew. His choices concerning the movie programme tend to induce an intimate experience of reiterated viewing and rely on his anticipation of the reactions he can spark within the contemporary viewer. Through interviews with the scheduling team at the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, this article questions the praxis of watching anew, by following the genetic path of the “Witches!” thematic.

This article covers the subject of “watching again” in the practice of the detective film analysis. Analyzing a film requires to watch it multiple times in order to correct one's first perceptions that are always partial and often inaccurate. In the case of the detective film, the elucidation of an enigma emphasizes the knowledge gap between the then spectator and the analyst. On the contrary, we will show how analysing requires to stay mindful to the lingering of first impressions. The article centers around the study of three films that repeat an entire part, a scene or a shot in order to rectify what we saw in a previous instance. This kind of structure is compared to other aesthetic apparatuses based on a similar two-parts visual experience: the anamorphosis (distoration and restoration), the trompe l'oeil (illusion and disillusion) and the polyvision (perception and memory). Nevertheless, it appears that each time the repetition device used in these films comes with a call for the analyst to remembering their first impressions.

This article deals with the representation of visual elucidation in film. Starting with the analysis of Matthieu Bareyre's On ne sait jamais ce qu'on filme (2016), we investigate the construction of the cinematic image as proof. Although a key asset in the development of modern surveillance rhetoric, the evidentiary quality of the visual image stems from a century-long history. Louis Feuillade's early accidental surveillance film Erreur tragique (1913) and Chris Marker's post-Apocalyptic classic La jetée help us discern the specific procedures of this history. Visual elucidation often resembles an interrogation procedure: images, as witnesses, are submitted to intensive, repetitive questioning. In this paper, we describe the mimetic repetition that is at stake in elucidation sequences: both the image and its observer have to stutter in order to generate an image of the truth.

The current multiplication of screen surfaces, easier access to reruns of all kinds, and our personal developments are anthropologically modifying the relationship with the image, and the consumption of film. In addition, the most frequent opportunity that is offered to review not an entire film, but an extract, lies in the operation encompassing many productions where we witness, through the gaze of a character, the projection of another film, generally legitimized by the history of cultured criticism. So “seeing again” sometimes means saying goodbye to the illusions of adolescence, or quite simply giving yourself the means to understand more fully the complexity of a production.

Appropriation is an art movement born in the United States of America at the end of the 1970s. By taking possession of pre-existing images, forms, advertising, or works of art, appropriation artists raise question of authorship, originality and authenticity. The movement encourages the viewers to reconsider what a work of art is ontologically, and urges them to reexamine the systems of values and validations. Using the cinema as a support to question the idea of a work which is not a copy but a mere autonomous original piece, the text points out the transgressive dimension of appropriation: criticizing the sacred aura of art, acting like a vampire, it subverts the established order—although paradoxically celebrated by the art market it seeks to undermine. Exceeding the appearances, appropriation art requests not to simply see again, but to review.

In this paper, I will focus on the double meaning of the french word “doublure” (meaning either “lining” while related to clothing or “body-double” in a cinematic perspective) in order to create a parallel between two contemporary novels: Nathalie Léger's La robe blanche and Nelly Kaprièlian's Le manteau de Greta Garbo. Whereas in the movie industry, a body-double is an often anonymous person, lending his/her body for a specific period of time in order to replace an actor/actress for specific shots, in the fashion industry, the word “doublure” refers to the lining of a piece of clothes, meaning a material used as the inner surface of a garment. In both novels, several movies are looked at through highly subjective point-of-views, centred around the theme of the clothes, whether it is its symbolic or social role, or the potential overlapping of the female figures. Therefore, in this case, clothing and fashion offer opportunities to consider the relationship to the female body and its depiction in the arts. This coupling, working on both a poetic and thematic level, also ensures that the spectatorial act of watching again and interpreting is linked to the action of sewing and darning, and the movie itself being linked to the textile.

In 1921, internationalist art critic Joseph Billiet founded his gallery to counter the merchant-critical system and reclaim modern art. Opting for social efficiency, he opposes art as entertainment. It federates the researches of artists who aim at constructive synthesis and supports committed artists. For these purposes, as an art historian and curator, he shapes a tradition of the modern. It is also written in Moscow where Pierre Vorms, who defends the gallery, goes.