Weekend video

The choice of video again is an echo of my current preoccupation with the past. For many who watch the almost five minutes excerpted from Roman Polanski's first English-language film Repulsion, it will be reminder of how very beautiful Catherine Deneuve was in 1965 at the age of twenty. Not that I disagree, of course.

But for me it has further resonance. The segments not shot on a bridge over the Thames were all filmed in the immediate vicinity of South Kensington Station, where you alighted from the tube if your destination was Frog Valley, the streets close to the Lycée Francaise. Few readers will be surprised to learn that I lived for many years in South Kensington, moving only reluctantly to Kangaroo Valley (Earl's Court) when family-sized space was called for.

Le Petit Club Francais needs a word of explanation. In those days I was still a bit idealistic; one of my heroes was the documentary film maker Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North), for whom the club was a kind of home away from home. For a while I really dreamed of making films which would make a difference. Ah, youth!