If the father of the Lumière brothers predicted that cinema was "an invention without a future", the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague turned it into an art of the absolute present: in the cinephile Paris of the fifties, nothing mattered more than the films, not even life, as Truffaut stated. Richard Linklater He has created a free and joyful work, vital and luminous, seemingly light and full of humor, but which contains within it a defiant and countercultural discourse (the defense of filmmaking as a radical artistic gesture) and which addresses a key moment in the history of cinema, refusing to explain it as something of the past. The legendary filming ofAt the end of the getaway, debut work Jean-Luc Godard's emblematic film of the French New Wave serves as Linklater's excuse to map (or rather, fabricate: in this film about the art of invention, the choice is always to print the legend rather than recount reality) that cinephile Paris where Rossellini's cinema coexisted. But, above all, the director of Boyhood It uses Godard's film and the people who made this crazy adventure possible (from the actors, the absolutely modern Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, to the director of photography, including thescript) to advocate, from the present, a freer way of making films and to defend cinema as an art that is also a work of craftsmanship created, in a tumultuous and miraculous way, as a team.

At 65, the American Richard Linklater (Houston, 1960) is one of the world's most in-form filmmakers: a few months ago he premiered the magnificent Blue moon And this Friday a new marvel arrives in theaters, New WaveA sparkling film that recreates with rigor and a great sense of humor the historic filming ofAt the end of the getaway, of Jean-Luc Godard, a foundational masterpiece of the French New Wave. Linklater answered questions from ARA and other media outlets a few months ago in San Sebastián.

I don't know if Blue moon It's the best film of the year, but I would venture to say it's the most heartwarming. This is no small feat, given that it begins by announcing the death of its protagonist, Lorenz Hart, the lyricist who forged a memorable collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers, to whom we owe milestones of musical theater such as My funny Valentine or the song that gives the film its title. But Hart, who in the film has the features of a shrunken Ethan Hawke with a prosthetic bald head, possesses enough charisma to make us forget the mournful anticipation and gladly accompany him to the bar where he takes refuge from the premiere ofOklahoma!, a show that his colleague Rodgers performed with Oscar Hammerstein. To the spite of that infidelity is added the nervousness of the imminent encounter with the young woman who has fascinated the homosexual Hart, who projects onto her a naive romantic ideal.

"You know the expression for better or worseWell, I'm entering the phase for bad of my life," says the protagonist of Blue moon, presented this Tuesday at the Berlinale. The phrase could serve as a summary of the vital moment of Lorenz Hart that he tries to capture Richard Linklater in this film about one of the greatest lyricists of American popular music of the 20th century, who formed a successful tandem with composer Richard Rodgers: My funny valentine or the same Blue moon are two of hundreds of songs they created until Hart's alcoholism pushed Rodgers to seek out a more reliable lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein. The night in 1943 in which the film is set Blue moon It is precisely the premiere of the musical Oklahoma!, Rodgers' first collaboration with Hammerstein, a stratospheric success that, in some way, closed the door to resuming the Rodgers & Hart tandem.