PARIS: Filmmaker Jacques Rivette, one of the leading lights of French New Wave film movement of the 1960s who revelled in cinematic improvisation, died on Friday. He was 87.

Among the best known of his languid, intellectual movies is fantasy drama “Celine and Julie Go Boating” (1974), which lasts more than three hours and is replete with literary and film allusions.

Rivette, whose 28 films included 1991 hit “La Belle Noiseuse” (The Beautiful Troublemaker) and “Paris Nous Appartient” (Paris Belongs to Us), was born in Rouen, northern France, on March 1, 1928, the son of a pharmacist.

He started out as a film critic, like other future French New Wave pillars Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer, writing for the Cahiers du Cinema magazine, serving as its editor-in-chief from 1963 to 1965.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2016