Cyril Collard

He may have made only three films in his relatively brief life, but Cyril Collard certainly extended his "15 minutes of fame" to near cult status with the release of his last, the bold and unflinching Savage Nights (1992). The notorious French filmmaker, actor, writer, musician and poet was born in 1957 of libertine Parisians who gave him a standard Catholic education in Versailles. Collard forsook a college science degree for a career in film and in the early 1980s finally turned his passion into a reality. He became assistant to director/writer/actor Maurice Pialat with both the film À Nos Amours (1983) [To Our Loves] and several of his music videos and TV programs. Collard showed more than promise after directing two short films Grand huit (1982) and Alger la blanche (1986), the latter a frank, racially-tense study on passion and violence. His TV series Le Lyonnais (1989) (aka Taggers), in which he also composed the score, scrutinized the life of teenage graffiti artists. He was fe