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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad, and today my guest is James Quant.

He's the senior curator, programmer at the Cinematheque, Ontario.

And this is a special program.

He has edited a collection of essays,

new and old,

the very great French filmmaker Robert Brisson,

who recently died at the age of 98.

Brisson is a passion of mine.

More than that, he is the adapter of several novels, one of the most interesting adapters

of literature to the screen.

He's done Bernanos, the Diary of a Country Priest.

He's done several Dostoevsky's, Tolstoy, and the translation is into a cinema style all of his own.

I wanted to talk about person because it seems to me that many of the aesthetic devices

that I most respect in fiction, minimal, meditative, silent, despairing, searching for grace are present in Brisson's films and that he has been an influence to the most significant film, music, poetry, and novel writing of our century.

Now, could you speak a bit?

Can you describe your interaction with the Brescon films, James Quant, editor of Robert Breson,

...