J.M.G. Leclezio recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and it is natural that his various books are now arousing wide readership. He is not only a novelist, but also a brilliant essayist, a kind of essayistic poet, and this book on cinema is a wonderful example of that. Regulars of film clubs (of which there are many to this day) and simply film buffs will be pleased to discover that the Western intelligentsia is a “fan” about the same films that were shown at “museum” screenings in Russia. Paying tribute to the silent period, Leclezio talks about his impressions of Pasolini's Accatone, Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers, Japanese cinema and much more. And he smoothly moves on to much more modern problems - “Bollywood” and the phenomenon of critical social cinema in Islamic Iran. The book is also captivating in its ambition - it is, in essence, a poetic story of the tenth muse, which the great writer let “through himself.”