Initially this issue was intended to be a response to Susan Sontag’s concern whether the
cinema, the quintessential twentieth century art form, would survive and continue to produce
films that would elicit a sense of wonder and excitement. We decided to devote the issue to
any film/s, pre or post twenty-first century, that inspire one to discuss their centrality to life.
In addition, we dedicate it to the memory of two New Wave directors, Jean-Luc Godard and
Bertrand Tavernier. We are also honouring Godard as an innovator who not only challenged the
distinctions of essay vs fiction, classical vs modernist, but also acknowledged a history that he
respected and remained committed to. We are including an interview with Bertrand Tavernier
published in Cineaction No. 7, December 1986 with the editors of this issue as our tribute to
him. Their oeuvre reminds one of what Sontag was referring to in terms of a cinema that
mattered.