Agnès Guillemot

Born 1931-12-03 · Roubaix, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France

Died 2005-12-17

Agnès Guillemot was renowned for her collaboration with the Nouvelle Vague directors, having worked on numerous films with both Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. She edited sixteen films for Godard, beginning with Une femme est une femme, followed by Contempt, Alphaville, Bande à part , Masculin Féminin, Vivre Sa Vie, Weekend, etc. In some cases, she was the sole editor; on others, she worked either with Françoise Collin, Lila Lakshmanan, Dahlia Ezove, Lila Herman, Marguerite Renoir, or Delphine Desfons. During that same period, Guillemot edited four films for Truffaut, including L’enfant sauvage/The Wild Child and Baisers volés/Stolen Kisses. In the late 1970’s she edited five films for Jean-Charles Tacchella, including Cousin cousine and Il y a longtemps que je t’aime. In the 1990’s she was the editor of three films for Catherine Breillat (Sale comme un ange/Dirty Like an Angel, Romance and Parfait amour!/Perfect Love.) Guillemot also edited films for several other women directors, including Nicole Garcia, Catherine Corsini, Francesca Comencini and Paula Delsol. “Editing has one marvelous thing—you are alone with the material and you listen. I use many metaphors, metaphors you use when talking about painters and sculptors. They look at a landscape, a stone; the stone inspires them to do this or that. Editing is the same. The material is given by somebody else, but I listen to it afresh. I do not try to make it mine, I try to produce what it can do. The object is inside—it must be made to come out. It is exactly this—I listen, I look a long time with all my being and I extract what the director wants.” —Agnès Guillemot interviewed in “Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing” by Roger Crittenden.