Paul Vecchiali (28 April 1930 – 18 January 2023) was a French filmmaker and author.
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Biography
Vecchiali was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, and grew up in Toulon. His father was accused of collaborationism after the Second World War.
After studying at the École Polytechnique, Vecchiali was called up for military service in Algeria in 1956, where he supervised construction projects. He returned to Polytechnique as an instructor in 1961 and became part of the Paris cinephile milieu around the Studio Parnasse, where he encountered filmmakers including Jean Eustache. That year he made his first feature, Les Petits Drames, starring Nicole Courcel and Michel Piccoli; the unfinished film is now considered lost.
In 1976, Vecchiali established the production company Diagonale with Cécile Clairval. The company combined film production with a catering business whose income helped finance its films. It developed into a collective of filmmakers, actors and technicians who frequently worked on one another's productions, including Jean-Claude Biette, Jean-Claude Guiguet, Marie-Claude Treilhou and Gérard Frot-Coutaz.
Vecchiali's cinema drew extensively on the French melodramas of the 1930s while combining melodrama with formal experimentation and autobiography. His films frequently addressed sexuality, homosexuality and social or political taboos, including the death penalty in La Machine, the legacy of wartime collaboration in At the Top of the Stairs, and the AIDS crisis in Encore.
Encore was the first French film to depict the AIDS crisis, addressing it through the life of a gay man.
Despite recurring difficulties in obtaining financing, Vecchiali continued making films into his eighties and nineties. From the mid-2000s onward, he increasingly worked independently from his home in Provence, making small-budget digital productions. Between 2015 and 2018 alone he completed five films, and his later work continued the combination of melodrama, formal experimentation and highly economical production methods that had characterized much of his career.
Vecchiali died in Gassin, Var, on 18 January 2023, at the age of 92.
Selected filmography
Les Ruses du diable (1965)
L'Étrangleur (1972)
Femmes Femmes (1974)
Change pas de main (1975)
La Machine (1977)
Corps à cœur (1978)
That's Life (C'est la vie) (1980)
At the Top of the Stairs (1983)
Rosa la rose, fille publique (1985)
Encore / Once More (1988)
The Guys in the Cafe (1989)
Wonder Boy (1994)
Zone Franche (1996)
Love Reinvented (1997)
Tears of AIDS (1999)
A Vot' Bon Cœur (2004)
A Diagonal Portrait of Paul Vecchiali (2005)
Le Cancre (2016)